Welsh Government challenged over delays in installing Electric Vehicle charging points in North Wales

North Wales MS Mark Isherwood has today challenged the Deputy Minister for Climate Change over concerns that 21 Electric Vehicle rapid charging points announced for Wales last June have still not been installed.

Transport for Wales are working on behalf of the Welsh Government to deploy this rapid EV charging infrastructure, with installations to be spread across four Local Authority areas: Denbighshire, Gwynedd, Ceredigion and Powys.

Mr Isherwood raised the issue in Wednesday’s meeting of the Welsh Parliament, when questioning the Deputy Minister over how the Welsh Government is developing a sustainable transport network in North Wales.

The Deputy Minister told Mr Isherwood that “Our North Wales Metro Programme will transform rail, bus and active travel services across North Wales”, but Mr Isherwood stressed that Electric Vehicle Charging points will be key to a sustainable transport network in North Wales and asked why the 21 rapid Electric Vehicle charging point set to be installed by Transport for Wales are not yet in place.

He said: “In February, I wrote to you in support of a constituent who asked for ‘help in finding out why Transport for Wales, TfW, is taking so long to install the 21 rapid electric vehicle charging points announced last June’.

“In your reply, you stated ‘The project referred to is a complex one’, ‘there have been delays experienced in obtaining planning permissions, leases and wayleaves’, and Transport for Wales have assured your ‘officials that once they have secured the permissions the sites will quickly move to the construction phase’.

“How, therefore do you respond to my constituent’s subsequent statement ‘that TfW really need to move this along with priority as visitors driving EVs will come to North Wales and find it un-prepared for EV drivers’, who ‘will have disposable income which our local tourist industry would like to be spent in Wales’,  and that ‘the Rhug Estate announced it is installing eight high power car chargers at Corwen – a  few weeks to install eight high power chargers when TfW and Welsh Government can only manage one medium power charger in 10 months’?”

Responding, the Deputy Minister said “that the scheme has hit some snags”.

He added: “TfW do have a programme of work and this does prove to be very complex, for the range of reasons that he set out, and there have been delays for a whole range of reasons, not least due to supply chains as well as legal hold-ups, and also, as we were discussing in the Senedd earlier, the constraints of the grid. And this is another problem where the grid that we have is not fit for purpose to deal with the climate change emergency. Now, these are not things that are within the control of the Welsh Government. So, it’s a complex patchwork of reasons why there have been frustrations.”