Liverpool is set to be the most electric-car friendly city in the North

Liverpool City Council is set to install a network of 300 on-street electric vehicle (EV) charging points – with the locations chosen by local residents and businesses - trebling from 150 to 450.

With these new installations, Liverpool would have the third largest public charging network in the UK, behind London and Coventry, using the most recent government data published in October.

Liverpool City Council said it is ‘looking to address the north-south divide in EV adoption and take a big step towards achieving its carbon net zero target by 2030.’

The rollout comes as part of a two-part project which will see ubitricity, a wholly owned Shell subsidiary, take over the repair of Liverpool’s existing charging infrastructure and then rollout more charge points to help enable residents to make a transition to EV .

The new ubitricity charge points, will be installed directly into existing street lampposts and take just under 2 hours to install.

The rollout has been led by community requests, and will allow residents to easily charge hybrid and electric vehicles on the street where they live.

Cllr Dan Barrington, Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Highways for Liverpool City Council said: “I’m delighted we’ve begun to install this new network of EV charge points as it provides a huge boost in tackling poor air quality and reducing the city’s carbon footprint.

“This programme puts down a real mark of intent to provide the necessary infrastructure to help the move away from petrol and diesel powered cars. The fact that the roll-out is being led by community requests means the points are going where the demand is needed most which means they’ll be getting maximum usage. And hopefully the demand will grow meaning the need for more charging points to be installed.”

The rollout of the new charge points is set to complete in Spring 2023.