Electric vehicles can soon be charged at five car parks in West Oxfordshire.

The newly upgraded car parks will include 32 ‘smart’ EZ Charge fast charging units, covering 64 parking bays.

Woodford Way car park in Witney is expected to go live first by early April.

The four other car parks, which are due to come online within the next couple of weeks, are Back Lane, (Eynsham), New Street (Chipping Norton), Black Bourton Road (Carterton) and Hensington Road (Woodstock).

Each will offer both ‘tethered’ and ‘socketed’ chargers and can be used with Type 1 or Type 2 connections.

It is part of a project to roll out electric vehicle charging points across the county.

The Park and Charge Oxfordshire project will provide more places to charge on the go and allow residents without off-street parking to park for free overnight and charge their electric vehicles at a competitive price.

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Councillor David Harvey, cabinet member for climate change, said: “Take up of EVs is increasing at an ever-increasing rate and adoption of ultra-low emission vehicles in Oxfordshire is particularly high compared to the UK average, so it’s crucial that we have the infrastructure in place to support those drivers who have already made the switch to electric while encouraging those that are thinking about making the move, to do so.”

The new chargers have been designed and produced by Bicester-based company - EZ Charge - who will operate them.

Councillor Pete Sudbury, Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for Climate Change and Environment, said: “Many councillors have already had residents who don't have off-street parking asking about charging EVs, and we at the county council know we need to accelerate different solutions to that problem."

The Park and Charge Oxfordshire project has £5.4million of funding with £4.1million through the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles via Innovate UK and the On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme.

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The remaining investment has come from commercial partners Zeta Specialist Lighting and UK (Urban Integrated).   

The district council is in early discussions to identify more rural locations where charging points could be installed.

And it is working with its own provider, EB Charging, on a separate project which will see four 7kW charging units installed in Burford car park, providing eight charging bays, under the first phase of planned works.

A grant application will now be submitted to the Government with a final decision made on the installation in late spring.