The Idea

Electric cars can reduce pollution and save motorists up to £1,000 a year compared with petrol-powered alternatives. The number sold across the UK has doubled in the last year, and looks set to skyrocket. But with few Camden homes having garages or drives, most residents would need to use public, on-street charging points.

Camden has one of the smallest networks of publicly-available electric vehicle charging points in London, with just 28 points across the whole borough of a quarter of a million people. This compares to hundreds in Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, and Richmond-upon-Thames. Camden needs a dramatic expansion of electric vehicle charging points.

The Conservative Government has given local councils millions of pounds to install these points. Because of this, the cost to Camden Council of installing a new charging point in an existing lamp-post is as low as £250. That means Camden could install 1,000 in current lamp-posts, in a way that doesn’t block the street or require extensive engineering, for less than 5% of the amount it spends on transport and parking every year.

Sadly, Labour-run Camden bid for just 1% of the funding allocated to London, so it’s installing just 33 points, not the thousands that we need. Conservatives have called on Camden to install far more to help residents go electric and take a big step towards cleaning our air.

Scroll down to see our proposal and sign the petition for Camden to go electric.

The Plan

The Conservative Government has given local councils millions to install these points — which can be fitted in existing lamp-posts (so there’s no extra pavement-blocking clutter or construction work) for just £1,000.

We’ve been working with councillors in other boroughs to find the most effective and least intrusive ways to rapidly expand Camden’s sparse charging point network.

In Richmond-upon-Thames, the council won a bid to discreetly install hundreds of new points in existing lamp-posts. They’re being targeted at areas with the most demand, so they’re used. They’re an improvement on Camden’s existing ‘obelisk’ charging point because:

1. There’s no additional street clutter, as they fit inside existing lampposts.

2. As there’s no engineering work, so they can be installed in half an hour, with no street closures.

3. Because they’d be installed in such large numbers, the adjacent spaces wouldn’t need to be reserved for electric vehicles, meaning no loss of parking spaces for non-electric cars.

Across London, the power demands on the street lighting network have fallen by up to 60%, as councils move from fluorescent bulbs to LED lighting, which require less electricity to emit the same level of light. This means there’s enough spare power to charge several vehicles on each street, even with the current infrastructure.

When we’ve asked for more electric vehicles before, Camden responded by asking us to provide evidence that residents want more charging points in their area.

So if you do, let us know by signing our petition.

The Petition