Tourists and residents are facing issues due to broken and slow electric vehicle chargers on North Yorkshire’s coast, council bosses have been warned.
A tourist visiting Filey was recently forced to drive his electric car to Bridlington in order to charge it after all six of the EV chargers in the council-run car park were broken, a councillor has said.
“It’s just not good enough,” said Independent Coun Sam Cross, who represents Filey on North Yorkshire Council.
Speaking at a full meeting of North Yorkshire Council, Councillor Cross recounted the plight of the tourist who had to drive 10 miles to charge his electric vehicle:
"We have six EV charging points in file in the council car parks and sadly, none of them were working. Yeah, brilliant. And he travelled from the other side of the country. And then to add insult to injury. When he looked at them, because they're only seven kilowatt and I'm no expert on it, But to look at them, it would've taken him 14 hours for him to charge his car.
"But with the good news though, he went to Tesco's in Bridlington, put it on charge, and he got it free, and it was done in two hours. Sadly, they don't match up to the quality that is needed in the area."
Councillor Malcolm Taylor, the executive member for highways and transportation responded:
"We have just recently in the last few weeks, and we're just getting over the line, entered into a contract to provide the EV vehicles across the county.
"We will be prioritising those that we've inherited from former legacy authorities that are defunct at the moment to get those online before enhancing them, the offer right across the county. It's a considerable investment.
"Thankfully, it's not going to cost the council tax payers of North Yorkshire money because it's come from a central government grant for which we are very grateful.
"So we should see some improvements, some much needed improvement right across the county, which will hopefully bear fruit for our visitors and our residents."
Two years ago, North Yorkshire Council estimated that 724 chargers would be needed by 2025, and 3,161 charge points by 2030, of which half would need to be publicly funded at a cost of £10.3m.
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