As part of our commitment to become carbon-neutral by 2040, our Transport Planning team have been working to develop the public electric vehicle charging network in Dorset. It’s one of a number of measures and will accelerate several actions in our Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy Action Plan.
The project so far
The first phase of installations is coming to an end and so far we’ve delivered 26 chargepoints in 12 locations. A further 11 chargepoints at four sites, which are currently under construction, will also be completed soon. Existing chargers at five Dorset car parks will be replaced with new rapid chargepoints this summer, improving reliability and user experience at these sites.
We’ve not been able to complete planned installs for Westfield Close carpark in Wimborne and Rempstone carpark in Wareham due to complications, so we’re prioritising alternative locations in these towns as part of the next phase. We are working with our suppliers to find funding to locate chargepoints in the popular Lodmoor carpark in Weymouth.
Tell us what you think
With phase 1 coming to an end, we’re starting to look at potential chargepoint locations for the next phases of installations. We need your help to find out where there is need and support for electric vehicle chargepoints, so we can bid for funding. Please complete the online form to give us your suggestions.
You can use Zap Map to see existing locations of all public charging points in Dorset including those provided by Dorset Council in conjunction with our suppliers, Mer.
Because the Government has messed up badly with this, we need charging points everywhere. 100’s of thousands required by 2030
Quite so.
Not just in towns, superfast chargers are needed in all rural villages such as Cheselbourne. There are houses without off-street parking who cannot home charge and no street lights to add chargers do a full network of rural chargers are needed.
Ferndown Leisure Centre car park please
Any new builds, housing and industrial should have a block of charging points. If not individual homes should have them.
It’s the issue of rows of Terraced homes that will be the problem. It would be unrealistic to have cable running across residential pavements to charge vehicles. How does the council intend to deal with this? You have written an Eqa policy but I could not see a solution to this?
Attached to street lamps wherever possible and no obstruction issues with charging cables stretching over pavements.
Supermarkets, high street locations, public car parks
Reliable 22kwh should be min standard with units self diagnosing faults & repair within 60 min.
each location must have two units with power supply laid to allow 300kwh + as vehicles become available & demand increases. Surveillance lighting & security camera to be installed at each location : With current technology advances becoming commercially viable wireless charging will become the norm in next generation car chargers saving cost of cabling like mobile phones
On street lights and alongside surveillance cameras. Village car parks need several points especially areas with regular use eg Bere Regis, Lulworth, Ringstead, Worth Matravers etc etc.
I think that all public car parks and supermarket car parks should have one. Also venues like the BIC, Pavilion leisure centres and nature reserves should have charge points.
It’s not where they are so much as they they need to be fast chargers.
All Dorset villages should have lot of super fast chargers as many homes do not have private drive ways which would mean that power cables would be across pathways.
One or two in a village like Maiden Newton would be useless.
Another point to note is where is all this extra electricity coming from?
I see many suggestions about where ONE should go. This is no good. Nobody wants to wait for an hour or more while another vehicle is being charged, we need multiple chargers just like you get on a traditional filling station. So for a start charge points need to be added at every filling station including supermarkets and on all A roads to ensure the public are confident before they purchase. I own an EV and thankfully do most of my charging from home. My problems start when I need to charge on the road which is why I can only advise people NOT to buy an EV if it is your only car.
Beaminster car park would be an ideal situation.
It would be great to see a charge point in Charlton Down as there are many flats here, and not all the houses have garages or off-road parking adjacent to their properties.
Thanks Lesley, please do submit your suggestion using the online form too, to ensure it’s included: https://dorset-self.achieveservice.com/service/EV_charging_point
Beaminster car park would be an ideal situation.
Outside people’s homes that don’t have a drive.
Can they be put on lamp posts?
I think there should be charge points at every petrol station as eventually we won’t be using petrol or diesel.
I live in the Park District where there are a number of long terraces of houses and (as you well know from the deeply flawed residents’ parking scheme) we are very often unable to park outside our own homes or, indeed, in our own roads. If people here are to move to electric cars then A LOT of charging points will be needed together with a rethink of the current RPS. The thought of cables snaking across the pavement, a danger to all passersby, is ludicrous.
As well as suplying charge points they should perhaps state the price of the charge and the rate of the charge.
To me, the mindset of the politicians (all the politicians) is at odds with their future plans to phase out fossil fuelled vehicles. They talk about adding a few charging points in car parks whereas they ought to be thinking about how to generate sufficient electricity to cater for the number of all the electric cars about to hit the streets in the next few years.
Where are the owners of electrically powered cars who live in terraced housing going to charge their vehicles?
Along with charge points we need to ensure we are able to access appropriately trained mechanics across Dorset. Mechanics able to offer a service at a comparable price. Currently costs are high in some circumstances if you can find someone able to work on your car.
As a general principle, use of the existing network of Petrol Stations should be kept; the network serves us well and has other functions which the public find useful.. We get on well enough without the need for a petrol station right outside our front door. One does not find cars abandoned all over the place because they have run out of petrol.
One should think instead of what we do now if we run out of charge in our battery; we charge it , get it jump-started or get a breakdown vehicle.
But something is missing and I think we should encourage its development and marketing.
I would like to see a simple portable home charge kit which is charged by a domestic socket and can plug into the charging socket of an electric vehicle. It need not be large since it only needs to carry a charge equivalent to 20 to 40 miles, sufficient to go to a “petrol station”.
I suspect that such a thing may well be in development already.
I believe that is where the the solution lies rather than trying expensively to satisfy every ingenious way and location that people can discover to flatten their batteries.
“I would like to see a simple portable home charge kit which is charged by a domestic socket and can plug into the charging socket of an electric vehicle. It need not be large since it only needs to carry a charge equivalent to 20 to 40 miles, sufficient to go to a “petrol station”.”
This is called a ‘Granny Charger’ ! pretty much every EV comes with one as standard. Will Charge my MG5 from 20% to 100% in 17 hrs or so – Not quick but very manageable if you have off street parking
Hi Richard,
As you suggest, every electric car already comes with an ordinary household 13 Amp plug cable. It’s not suitable for charging during journeys because it’s only slow and steady, but if you have a wall socket available (and I know lots of folks don’t) it’s really useful to start each day with your car fully topped up using cheap home electricity prices, at a fraction of the cost of diesel or petrol or motorway chargers.
It’s also good for many overnight stays, at Granny’s for example. That’s why it’s known as a Granny Cable!
Chris
Since we should also be encouraged to use our cars less, the danger is of batteries discharging while sat outside, especially in cold weather, and people like myself who live in a village making unnecessary journeys to recharge just to avoid this. For this reason I think every village should have a charging point.
Why not use some of the space by the Crown Hotel in Blandford. It’s already used for parking and could incorporate a couple of electric points.
Put charging points in car parks near shopping areas; this avoids/mitigates wasting time waiting for charging.
Should also try to ensure coffee shops nearby
Are the charging points being linked to sustainably generated electricity. Would be great to have solar panels on village halls which charge an electric car re-charging point. Is this feasible ?
Hi Julie, yes the fast (22kW) chargepoints, use 100% renewable energy supplied by Statkraft: https://www.statkraft.co.uk/about-statkraft-uk/
I don’t own an EV and have neither the desire, nor the money, to but one. What I need is a decent bus service. And your form seems to be only for people who want a charge point near their home – what about tourists? We need charge points in all car parks before private properties are catered for.
Please could we have one in Broad Road carpark Swanage
Overcombe and bowleaze area. Higher older population .
Underused Overcombe car park. This would service tourist and the many residents of the adjacent flats.
Don’t forget ebike !
Bowleaze cove way car park owned by davenport leisure
I live in The Grove, Westbury, Sherborne, a terrace of 11 homes accessible on foot only. Parking is ‘on road’ in Westbury and these spaces have to accommodate all the vehicles owned by residents living along Westbury and The Grove (and, of course, during daytime hours, those people who work in Sherborne and those who use the train service to get to their work place away from Sherborne who, with no consideration for residents needing parking spaces, choose not to pay to use a suitable public car park !). It would be interesting to know how Boris Johnson and our local authority intend to accommodate all our requirements.
consider charge pionts at council owned attractions such as Moors Valley Park
In the main carpark in Dorchester near Waitrose.
Please put back the three charge point which used to be in the underground carpark under Waitrose in Wimborne Minster.
Waitrose now use this area to store their junk !!
A very simple suggestion for houses where off street parking is not available: A narrow conduit/slot (about 10mm wide) could be put across pavements so people can safely run a cable.
This is a concept that already exists for routing rain water from road fronted houses with no soakaway across the pavement.
Please put back the three charging points which used to be in the underground carpark under Waitrose in Wimborne Minster.
Waitrose now use this area to store their junk !!
Numerous charge points will be needed , so why not facilitate home charging wherever a property has a garage/parking space outside the house? Maybe a contributory grant for householders would be a viable option.
Take that one stage further – why not make provision of electric charge points a condition of planning approval? With the huge amount of housing development that we currently see in Dorset, it should be mandatory for all new houses, which have a garage or parking space, to be built with a charge point. Add to this solar panels on the roof to generate the electricity . . . obvious . . . isn’t it ?
For houses without a parking space, charge points should be available on the roads within the development.
This seems a simple idea which will contribute towards responsible and sustainable development. Could this be implemented on a local level by Dorset Council?
If not, then it will probably require years of government debate before it can be included in national planning policy ! Too late !
dont bother it is a waste of council funds
Before you decide where to put charging points we need to know how the installation and the ensuing supply are to be funded. Residents with assured parking space should pay for their own installation and supply. Residents with no assured parking space must rely on publicly positioned points, but who would pay for these? Would such public points be funded from increased cost per unit of electricity, compared to the cost at domestic installations privately established. Would certain categories of worker (eg emergency services, police, hospital staffs) have priority access to ensure their ability to commute. Would private home-owners be allowed to site solar electricity panels and battery banks to manage their own source?
The whole concept of EVs and their support brings so many novel situations and we haven’t really got a national plan which has been debated and approved by Parliament. Time they got on with it.
Placement in some existing disabled bays for use by blue badge holders please.
In the rich areas, the poor won’t be able to afford a new car. This means the poor will be on their bikes just the way the government want it.
Charging points are needed at Norden Park near Corfe Castle. This will help me decide to convert from Diesel to Electric.
The new charge points in weymouth car parks are massively more expensive to use than the one that has been in the Harbourside car park for some years (and presumably wiill be removed soon). It’s outrageous! You should be making them cheapper to use not doubling the per unit price.
Emphasis should be on private ownership; e.g.
1. All Existing fuel stations funded by fuel companies
2. Home charging opportunities funded by the property ownership
3. Leisure/Entertainment venues funded by owners – that includes National Trust etc.
ONLY Council owned carparks/properties funded by DC
I agree with earlier comments about the need for charging capacity for those who cannot install home charging. But for those of us with EVs with a reasonable range and hone charging capability, what matters is not where we can charge them in Dorset but where we can charge them 100-150-200 miles away. On that basis there need to be charging points at every hotel and B&B and at every visitor attraction.
There has to be a huge rethink about the number of electric charge points that will be required. Many people have no drive or garage – a few charging points in the car parks/supermarkets/attractions will not be anywhere near enough. There have to be points for those with no charging facilities or it will be impossible to switch to electric vehicles.
Who is going to pay the see to upgrade the electrical network for all these charging points,with costs sometimes running into hundreds of thousands of pound for dno applications for upgrades to existing electrical infrastructure for ev points and heat pumps.
A totally ill though out idea of going all electric with no extra additional capacity in the National grid to charge cars and with no plan by Dorset county council to install its own renewable energy or extra capacity for generation to assist the National grid.