Funding for electric vehicle charging points in Hampshire

Hampshire County Council has agreed to enter the final stage of the Department of Transport (DfT) application to receive £6,662,000 over five years to create local electric vehicle infrastructure (LEVI).

The grant is intended to provide on-street electric vehicle charging infrastructure (EVCI) and, therefore, support Hampshire residents without off-street parking in switching to electric vehicles.

Once allocated, the county council will start developing a plan to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

The plan will focus on postcodes where households do not have off-street parking and where infrastructure is anticipated to be required as a priority to support Hampshire residents’ switch to electric vehicles.

Hampshire County Council officers said: “What we are talking about here is to put into areas where people can’t charge on their driveways, and it may be what’s holding them back from buying an electric vehicle if they’ve got no mechanism to charge it locally to where they live.”

It is estimated that the number of on-street residential charge points that might be provided through the initiative is around 8,500.

The total LEVI funding allocated to the county council is £6,662,000, which DfT will release in two staged payments of 90 per cent and then 10 per cent.

The first stage will be released once DfT has agreed to the authority’s commercial arrangements, and the second and final stage will be released after DfT has reviewed the draft contract.

Officers also said that the EV charges would be “low charges” of no more than 7kW, “similar to what you might get at home”.

They added: “So if you’ve got lots of charges in a road and everyone wants to charge at the same time, then the electricity flow will drop so that it will be less than seven kilowatts.”

The rollout of LEVI-funded electric vehicle charging infrastructure is anticipated to start in autumn/winter 2025/2026.