Bolton Council waives fees for pavement charging installations

• Bolton Council, in North West England, have decided to waive the fees to install pavement EV charging solutions, on a trial basis.
• Usually, residents would need to pay an additional £565 on top of the installation for a ‘street works permit’, but the so-far temporary halting of this cost could help encourage EV adoption in the area, by significantly reducing the cost of such an installation.
• This installation can then be made even cheaper, with the government’s electric vehicle chargepoint grant.

Will Bolton’s experiment pay off?

While prices for pavement channel installations vary from UK council-to-council, West Berkshire, who recently completed a trial of Kerbo Charge’s solution and approved it for general use, will set back residents £999 (before the £350 government grant is applied). With Bolton Council’s removal of the street works permit, this could make it one of the cheapest places in the country to install such a system.

Bolton has a high proportion of terrace-type housing, which inevitably means that off-street parking is less common. This raises what is one of the most significant barriers to EV adoption for those without off-street parking, particularly considering the cheaper price of charging at home compared to public charging. Removing this barrier by offering pavement charging solutions, particularly at a reduced price, will be crucial in regions with similarly low levels of off-street parking availability.

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Time will tell whether Bolton Council’s trial is successful, and whether this price reduction could be made permanent, to drive EV adoption in the region.

Councillor Hamid Khurram, Bolton Council’s Executive Cabinet Member for Highways, commented:

“There are lots of houses in Bolton without off-street parking which has previously limited opportunity for cost effective car charging. This solution means there are no dangerous cables across the pavement, and it is far superior to using other types of removable cable ramps. I’m sure the cost saving on the installation fee will be of great benefit to many residents.”