Employers received a share of £3.6 million in Government funding to help deliver more than10,500 electric vehicle (EV) charge points in 2023, new provisional figures suggest.

The newly published data, from the Department for Transport (DfT), shows that since the Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) started in late 2016, a total of 20,708 vouchers have been redeemed worth £19m, equating to 51,449 sockets installed.

In the past year, 5,145 vouchers were redeemed worth £3.59m, helping to install 10,566 sockets.

Cumulative growth of WCS funded sockets

Source: Department for Transport (DfT)

In terms of regional distribution, the south-east had the highest uptake with 7,572 charge points installed, while Wales and Northern Ireland had the lowest, 1,936 and 916, respectively.

Together, Wales and Northern Ireland accounted for 5.6% of total workplace sockets installed in the UK.

Regional distribution of total number of WCS socket installations and per 100,000 of population

Source: Department for Transport (DfT)

When comparing the regional distribution per 100,000 of the population, London had the smallest rate of grant-funded workplace charge points, with 38 installations per 100,000 population.

Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland also had fewer installations per 100,000 than any English region except London.

The DfT statistics come after a study by Drax Electric Vehicles suggested that almost half (48%) of UK employers have already installed EV chargers, while a third (32%) are planning to invest in charging infrastructure over the next 12 months.

The research also revealed that the overwhelming majority (91%) with workplace charging, plan to expand their infrastructure over the next five years.

The Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) provides grants to support the use of EVs, including the installation of charging devices in the UK.

The workplace charging scheme is a voucher-based scheme designed to provide eligible organisations with support towards the upfront costs of the purchase and installation of EV charging devices.

If an application is successful, applicants are issued with a unique identification voucher, which can then be used to install multiple charging devices.

In these statistics, the number of sockets installed is counted as sometimes there is one grant for up to four charging devices in the same workplace car park. More information on the WCS grant is available here. 

Electric vehicle charge point grant

The Electric Vehicle Charge Point Grant (EVCG) provides funding of up to £350 towards the cost of installing smart EV charge points at domestic properties across the UK.

It replaced the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme (EVHS) on April 1, 2022.

The EVCG scheme can be broken down by type of grant: residential landlords; residential car parks; flat owner-occupiers; and people living in rented properties.

Some 5,467 sockets were been installed last year, which equated to approximately £3.7m in grants.

Flats and renters account for 3,169 sockets installed - 58% of installations.

Residential car parks account for 1,677 sockets installed (31%) and the remaining 11% is from landlords’ applications whose grants had installed 621 sockets.

On-street residential charge point funding

The On-Street Residential Charge Point Scheme (ORCS) is available to all UK local authorities to fund up to 50% of the capital costs of installing on-street residential charging devices.

It has been devised to ensure that those without private off-street parking are able to access reliable and affordable charging infrastructure.

The grant has funded 5,274 public charging devices in completed projects since the scheme was established in 2017, equating to £20.8m of grant funding across 139 councils.

Of these, 932 on-street devices were within projects completed in the previous 6 months.

Of the councils that have already completed projects which received ORCS funding, 40 have had further funding awarded to install a further 7,822 charging devices with a grant value of £21.2m.

A further 71 local authorities have also been awarded grant funding, to provide 6,215 on-street public charging devices. This represents a grant value of £33.1m.

The number of on-street approved applications in London outnumber the rest of the country, and account for 55% of all approved applications.

The majority of these approved applications are within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham with 2,500 charging devices and London Borough of Barnet with 1,793 charging devices.