Dozens of electric charge points to be fitted in Dorset car parks

More than 50 charge points for electric vehicles are about to be ordered by Dorset Council for its car parks.

The fast charge points will be distributed across the council area, including in more than 20 car parks which currently have none.

The news came in response to a question from Cllr Beryl Ezzard who asked what the authority was doing to encourage the switch to more environmentally-friendly motoring.

“I know there has been some work done in encouraging buying electric vehicles, but we have to follow-on to make it easy for folk to re-charge their vehicles within the Dorset Council area where there are very few at the present time,” she said,

“We are all conscious of our climate change and ecological emergency commitment, we need some action now.”

Cllr Ray Bryan, the portfolio holder for highways, travel and environment said he shared the sense of urgency.

“We intend to place an order with a private sector company very shortly to install 53 fast charge point sockets in 23 new car parks and replace the 5 rapid chargers we already have, which have regrettably not been as reliable as we’d have liked in recent years,” he said.

He said that all of the new charge points will have the most commonly used connection types.

By Trevor Bevins, Local Democracy Reporter