Exmouth's electric vehicle charge points approved by district council

Exmouth is to get new charging points for electric vehicles in two of its car parks.

District councillors have backed proposals that will see five rapid charging points at the Imperial Road car park, and two at the Town Hall car park. Each charging point serves two bays.

The rapid chargers can top up an empty battery to 80 per cent in around 40 minutes.

East Devon District Council (EDDC) has been invited to join a collaborative project with Devon County Council and an energy supplier, Gamma.

The project has won funding from the Government-funded public body Innovate UK to provide and manage 150 charging units – and needs them to be operational by the end of March 2022.

The county council invited EDDC to host 30 charging units in car parks across the district.

A report on the proposal, recommending the car parks in each town which could host the units, went before the council's Cabinet on Wednesday last week. The meeting, via Zoom, was also attended by several other members of EDDC who were there in a guest capacity.

Exmouth Withycombe Raleigh councillor Steve Gazzard said: "This is great news. Time is not on our side with the climate situation and I think it's imperative that we move forward with this and get the units into the ground, so I hope that Cabinet will fully support this."

Many other councillors spoke out in support of the plan, and the Cabinet voted to go ahead with it.