West Berkshire Council has appointed Ubitricity to supply, install and manage up to 250 electric vehicle charge points, expanding its existing charging infrastructure network for residents without driveways.

Ubitricity will deploy up to bollard-based 250 charge points across West Berkshire

It’s part of a four-year contract between the council and Ubitricity, owned by Shell and a provider of charge points in on-street and residential locations.

The deal comes after Ubitricity passed the milestone of its 7,000th UK charge point; reinforcing its work to bring more publicly available EV charging to the millions of UK drivers without private parking while also helping local authorities establish accessible charging infrastructure.

Ubitricity will deploy up to 250 charge points across West Berkshire using its bollard solutions, which take power from existing streetlamps and are ideal for rapid residential rollouts, provide a low-power, low-cost and near-home charging option for councils and local authorities.

West Berkshire Council is able to draw on grants covering up to 60% of residential charge point procurement and installation costs. The Ubitricity charge points charge at a speed of up to 5kW and can be installed in as little as three hours.

Cllr Adrian Abbs, Executive Member for Climate Action, Recycling and Biodiversity at West Berkshire Council, said: “With the increase of private EV ownership, especially with second- and third-hand EVs becoming prevalent, it’s important that we work to ensure residents without private charging points can still have access to chargers. It is also essential that we work towards the right network of public chargers across West Berkshire and so remove range anxiety for all types of EV owners.

“Just as important as the installation is the maintenance and so availability of the charging points. This initiative is a step towards our desired end goal of enabling clean air, cost effective transport for as many as possible.”

Toby Butler, UK managing director at Ubitricity, said: “Across the UK we are seeing growing demand from councils and local authorities of all sizes for our industry-leading public charging infrastructure. We are the UK’s largest public EV charge point operator with more than 7,000 charge points now live and are delighted to be welcoming West Berkshire Council into our ever-growing portfolio of partners.”