Half of UK councils still offer no on-street EV charging, FOI finds

Half of UK councils still offer no on-street charging for electric car drivers, according to Freedom of Information research by Vauxhall, even though more than 90% now have at least one public charger. Of the 265 councils that replied, 50% said they had no on-street chargers at all, down from 66% when Vauxhall first ran the exercise in 2023. If you park on the road outside a terrace or a flat, whether you can plug in near home still depends heavily on which council you live under.

The findings land as councils sign a wave of long contracts funded through the government’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) fund. In recent weeks Peterborough approved a deal that promises nearly six times its minimum number of chargers, and West Sussex opened a consultation on 62 new residential sites. Those deals show where help is arriving first, and how far behind the rest of the country still is.

What did Vauxhall’s FOI research find?

Vauxhall sent Freedom of Information requests to 414 councils between May and July 2026 as part of its Electric Streets of Britain campaign, according to Fleet News. The 265 that replied show steady but uneven progress since 2023, as reported by What Car? and set out in Vauxhall’s press release.

Measure (share of responding councils)	2023	2026
No on-street charging at all	66%	50%
At least one on-street charger installed	31%	39%
Dedicated EV charging officer	31%	46%
Published on-street residential charging strategy	Not reported	32%
At least one public charger of any kind	Not reported	More than 90%

On-street installations peaked in 2025, when 78 councils put in at least one charger, Renewable Energy Magazine reported. Vauxhall’s campaign has also logged more than 13,000 streets that drivers say need on-street charging.

Two numbers stand out. Staffing has improved faster than hardware: the share of councils with a dedicated EV officer rose 15 points, while the share with an on-street charger rose eight. And with only 32% publishing an on-street strategy, more than two-thirds of the councils that replied have no published plan for residents without driveways. Vauxhall has an obvious interest in more people buying electric cars, but these are councils’ own answers, not marketing claims.

Why is Coventry held up as the model?

Coventry is the example the research points to. A partnership between the city council and Connected Kerb has built a network of 1,856 charging sockets, now used by more than 9,000 registered residents, according to Fleet News.

The lesson is commitment at scale, backed by a single operator. Connected Kerb is also the operator behind the new West Sussex and Dorset schemes, so the Coventry approach is spreading. If you want to know how its kerbside units compare with a rival network, see our Pod Point vs Connected Kerb comparison.

What does LEVI money actually buy?

Peterborough is the clearest recent example. The city council’s cabinet has approved a 15-year contract with Believ, backed by £1,075,770 of LEVI funding, under which 1,058 charge points will be installed across the city against a contractual minimum of 185, according to Peterborough Today. That is almost six times what the council required.

It sits inside a bigger regional programme. The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority has £5.4m of LEVI funding, and Believ has committed to 5,585 charge points across the area, 4,655 of them (83%) funded by private investment. The Peterborough contract also includes protections worth looking for in any council deal:

• a cap on the margin Believ can add to the charging price per kWh
• nearly a fifth of the charge points in the most deprived 30% of areas
• £1,016,500 of social value commitments across Peterborough and the Cambridgeshire districts

Installations are expected to begin from late 2026. Spread across 1,058 chargers, Peterborough’s grant works out at roughly £1,017 of public money per charge point. That is LEVI in practice: a modest public sum underwrites a long contract, and the operator funds most of the hardware.

Which councils have signed the biggest LEVI deals?

These are the largest LEVI deals by number of charge points in the reports we have tracked, plus the smaller West Sussex scheme, and most are in southern and eastern England.

Area	Charge points promised	Funding	Operator and notes
Hampshire	17,180	£6.6m public	Believ, plus up to £90m private investment; mostly 22kW AC for overnight use, 800+ rapid points of 50kW or more
Suffolk	About 6,000	£5.3m LEVI	Believ, plus £16m private investment; first site on Ashley Street, Ipswich
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough	5,585	£5.4m LEVI	Believ; 4,655 privately funded; Peterborough gets 1,058
Essex	Up to 5,000 by 2031	£8.3m LEVI	Second largest LEVI allocation to a UK council when announced in March 2026; work due to start summer 2026
Dorset and BCP	More than 3,000 on-street	£16.5m partnership	Connected Kerb
Oxfordshire	More than 1,500 sockets by 2028	Not reported	Connected Kerb and EZ-Charge
West Sussex	62 sites, one dual-socket charger each	LEVI Pilot	Connected Kerb; consultation closes 19 October 2026

Sources: electrive (Hampshire), EV Infrastructure News (Suffolk), electrive (Essex), electrive and Transport + Energy (Dorset), electrive (Oxfordshire).

Hampshire’s deal, described as the UK’s largest LEVI-backed contract to date, stands out. Its £6.6m of public money works out at about £384 per promised charge point, against roughly £883 in Suffolk and £1,017 in Peterborough, because Believ is putting in up to £90m of its own. These are simple divisions of headline figures, not official unit costs, but they show how much of the bill operators now carry. Essex, whose allocation was the second largest to a UK council when it was announced in March, planned to start installing in summer 2026.

Is your street on the West Sussex list?

West Sussex County Council is working with Connected Kerb, with support from the district and borough councils, to install chargers at 62 proposed locations in Adur, Arun, Chichester, Crawley, Horsham, Mid Sussex and Worthing, through the government’s LEVI Pilot programme (West Sussex County Council). Each site would get one dual-socket chargepoint, so two cars can charge at once, plus underground infrastructure so more chargers can be added later with less disruptive work.

The council says parking arrangements will not change at this stage: permit parking, disabled bays and pay-and-display rules still apply. The consultation runs from 21 September to 19 October 2026 on the council’s Your Voice site, and the Sussex Express has published the full list of roads.

What this means for you

Our take: the direction is right, but the pace depends on your postcode. If you live in Hampshire, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex or Dorset, a large funded programme is under way and the main question is when chargers reach your area. If your council is among the half with no on-street chargers and the majority with no published strategy, expect slower progress unless residents push for it.

• Check your council’s plan. Search its website for an on-street or residential charging strategy. Only 32% of councils that replied to Vauxhall have published one, so if yours has not, ask your councillor why.
• Respond to consultations. If you live in West Sussex, you have until 19 October to comment on the 62 proposed sites.
• Register demand. Add your road to Vauxhall’s Electric Streets of Britain campaign, which has logged more than 13,000 streets.
• Ask the right questions. When a deal is signed, ask when installations start, how many chargers your area gets and whether prices are protected by a margin cap like Peterborough’s.
• Look at the alternatives. A cross-pavement cable channel lets you charge from your own home supply; read our guide to installing an EV charger without a driveway and our latest on cross-pavement charging rules in England.

For a fuller walk through every option, our guide to charging for terraced-house drivers covers kerbside chargers, gullies and grants, and our report on UK public charger numbers tracks the national total.