Council to profit from electric vehicle charging points at car parks

Richard Evans Local Democracy Reporter

A council is looking to profit from installing electric vehicle charging points across the county.

At a Conwy County Council economy and place scrutiny committee this week, councillors were asked to agree a county-wide approach for installing electric vehicle (EV) charging points in public car parks and council-owned sites.

The committee unanimously voted in favour of the new approach, which will now go to cabinet for further debate.

The report came about after Conwy’s environment, roads, and facilities service sought permission to invite tenders for an operator to work with the council to install and operate electric vehicle chargers in public car parks.

As part of the plans, Conwy will receive a percentage of the income generated.

Growth in ownership forecast

There are currently around 115 publicly available electric vehicle charging points in the county, at locations such as supermarkets and hotels.

According to the report, in 2023 there were 1,116 electric vehicles registered within Conwy, representing 1.4% of all registered vehicles within the county, with this figure forecasted to increase significantly in the next few years.

In 2030 restrictions on the manufacturing of new diesel and petrol engine vehicles will come into effect.

The council says it is forecasted the county will need 238 EV chargers to meet demands in the next 12 months and 2,186 by 2030.

With the number of electric vehicles driven by residents and visitors increasing, the council now says there is an opportunity for charging stations in council car parks to add to the overall provision.

Chairing the meeting, Cllr Mike Priestley said he would like to see the plans go even further to ensure tourists continued to visit the county.

He said: “We rely on tourism, and I think our day visitors are going to be switching over to electric vehicles, and they’ll want somewhere to charge, so if we want day visitors to come to Conwy, we need them to be able to charge their vehicles, but if there is demand, I believe more work will be done on that.”

Cllr Michael Smith said the number of electric chargers currently available in Wales was ‘shocking’ compared to the rest of the UK.

“Although fortunately being able to charge at home, I have used public chargers on my own holidays heading down to London, and the infrastructure in the UK is fantastic; however, in Wales, it is absolutely shocking,” he said.

“With the range of battery sizes becoming larger and needing to turn around charging availability once these sites go live, we would only really want rapid or ultra-fast charging. If you just go for the standard fast charging, which I think is only 50-kilowatt charging, it is going to take more than 40 minutes to charge your vehicle and maybe even longer with the longer-range vehicles.

“So if you are taking a public parking space, and that vehicle is going to be in there longer than an hour, you are not going to have the turnaround of vehicles that you would want.”

“Chicken and egg” situation

Cllr Smith added it was important electric vehicle drivers were not charged for parking when using EV charging points.

He added: “I’m really keen to see this, and it would be good to see what partners you get in because there are umpteen providers of EV chargers, some of them fantastic; some of them are absolutely shocking. There is a real mixed bag out there, but I’m really excited to see how Conwy will deliver this in the future.”

Council officers said different authorities were at different stages of the EV charger rollout but added Conwy had benefitted from being a ‘late comer’ due to being able to learn from other council’s mistakes.

Cllr Samantha Cotton described the need for EV charging points and people buying electric cars as a ‘chicken and egg’ situation.

“If the infrastructure is not there, am I going to buy an electric car if I can’t get it charged or I can’t drive anywhere where there’s not a charger? So the infrastructure needs to be put in place, I suppose, in order to encourage people to get electric cars.”

Councillors were told the recommended approach represented minimal financial risk whilst providing a commercial return for the council.

The committee voted unanimously in favour of supporting the strategy, which would provide ‘publicly accessible EV chargers on council owned sites by procuring a single supplier under a partially funded concessionary model’.