Half of Councils Still Offer No On-Street EV Charging

The UK's public charging network passed 122,000 chargers this summer, yet half of the country's councils still offer no on-street charging at all. That is the picture from a Freedom of Information request by Vauxhall covering 414 local authorities, and it explains a strange feature of the charging map: the network is big, but it is not always where the cars are.

What the FOI found

The proportion of councils providing on-street charging has risen from 31% in 2023 to 39% this year. The flip side is that 50% still provide none, an improvement on the 66% of three years ago but a long way from settled. The remaining 11% either did not respond or did not disclose their numbers. More than 90% of councils do have at least one public charger somewhere in their area, so the story is not "no chargers". It is no chargers on the residential streets where cars without driveways actually spend their nights.

Other findings point the same way. On-street installations peaked in 2025, when 78 councils installed at least one device. Only 32% of councils have a published strategy for on-street residential charging, although 46% now employ a dedicated EV charging policy officer, up from 31% in 2023. Councils are staffing up faster than they are building.

Why the gap matters

Vauxhall's research puts 40% of drivers without access to a driveway, which locks them out of the cheapest charging in the country. A driver who can plug in at home pays a fraction of what a driver depending on public chargers pays, and that divide is the single biggest running-cost difference in the electric car market. Where councils do not provide on-street charging, their residents' only option is the public network, at public prices.

The regional skew is stark. More than 70% of the on-street chargers installed across the UK by the end of 2025 were in London, a figure that says less about demand than about borough density, funding capacity and existing lamppost infrastructure. Outside the capital, provision is patchier, and our earlier piece on charging deserts in rural Britain covers what that means for country drivers. For the practical workarounds available today, from lamppost columns to cross-pavement cable channels, see our guide to charging without a driveway.

The size of the gap is easiest to see in money. The AA's latest EV Readiness Index puts home charging at 66% cheaper per mile than petrol, while ultra-rapid public charging runs about 15% dearer per mile than petrol. A driver with a driveway sits on the right side of that spread; a driver who depends on the kerbside network sits on the wrong side of it, every single mile. On-street charging at residential speeds is what moves people from the second group to the first, which is why the council count matters more than the raw national total suggests.

What on-street charging actually looks like

The hardware varies more than most people expect. Lamppost columns tap into an electricity supply that is already in the pavement, which makes them the cheapest option per socket and the natural fit for terraced streets. Dedicated kerbside units, connected by a new supply, cost more to install but deliver higher power and do not depend on the local lamppost wiring being sound. Then there are the cable solutions: a channel recessed into the pavement that lets a household run its own cable from the front wall to the car, protected from the traffic above. Installers such as Char.gy, Connected Kerb and Kerbo Charge specialise in exactly this kit, which is why Vauxhall's street-registration campaign feeds its data to those three companies.

The council's role in all of this is decisive. It owns the streets, licenses the pavement works, and decides whether to bid for chargepoint funding in the first place. That is why the survey's softer numbers matter as much as the socket counts: a council with a published on-street strategy and a dedicated EV officer is one that will install during 2027, while a council with neither is likely to still be at zero however much national money is announced.

The network is growing where the demand is

The same Vauxhall research, drawing on Zapmap data, notes that more than 50,000 public chargepoints have been added since the end of 2023, taking the total past 122,000. On-street devices account for 32% of the public charging network and more than 55% of new installations during 2025, so the build-out is now disproportionately residential even if coverage is not yet universal.

Vauxhall has been running its Electric Streets of Britain campaign since 2023, letting drivers register streets that need charging. More than 13,000 streets are registered, and the company passes the data to installers Char.gy, Connected Kerb and Kerbo Charge. Coventry is the showcase: more than 1,856 public charging sockets serving over 9,000 registered users, with over 900 Connected Kerb sockets within a 15-minute walk of a postcode registered through the programme. Eurig Druce, Vauxhall's managing director, said the focus "must now be on ensuring the right chargers are installed in the right places".

What government is doing about it

Westminster has at least put money and planning reform behind the problem. The November Budget added £200m for chargepoint rollout, including support for local authority charging staff, and promised a consultation on Permitted Development Rights to make cross-pavement home charging simpler. That consultation has since reported: the government's response, published in September, confirms a new permitted development right for cross-pavement charging channels, which will remove the need for a separate planning application once the legislation lands in the autumn, although councils will still approve the works themselves under the Highways Act. Whether the £200m translates into the dozens of councils with no provision at all finally installing their first column is the test for 2027.

The honest read is that the gap is closing, slowly and unevenly. Three years ago two-thirds of councils offered nothing; now it is half. Drivers without driveways should register demand where schemes exist, because both council decisions and installer site selection are demonstrably following the registration maps.