All new build homes, supermarkets and workplaces in England will soon be required to provide EV charging points.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the proposed new law at the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference, where he noted that developers will be key in speeding up the roll-out of EV chargers.
The UK Government hopes that by requiring the installation of EV chargers by law, there will be an additional 145,000 chargers installed across England each year.
While the law is aimed at workplaces, supermarkets and new build homes, any building undergoing major renovations will be required to install EV chargers. That should lead to an explosion of new installations, although many of those new chargers will be concentrated in areas where there tends to be more development – such as in London and the South East.
This has prompted Labour to slam the new plans, noting that it does not address the geographical divide in available charging points.
“London and the South East have more public car charging points than the rest of England and Wales combined. Yet there is nothing here to help address this,” a spokesman for the party noted.
The geographical divide is not the only issue with the Government’s new law, with no word on whether there will be any conditions attached to the installation of chargers. Without any conditions, developers would be free to provide just a solitary 3 kW electric vehicle charger with any new development, which wouldn’t help satiate demand for EV chargers.
However, the Government did note that it was hoping to make using chargers easier than ever. It wants to make contactless payments the standard payment method at all new fast and rapid chargepoints, although how this will impact businesses such as Tesla, which handles payments directly through the car, is yet to be seen.