A new investigation into England’s public EV charging network has found a stark and, in places, alarming gap in how well councils actually know what’s happening with the chargers installed in their name — with some authorities checking every unit hourly, and others holding no reliability data at all.
The Freedom of Information investigation, carried out by Close Brothers Motor Finance, sent requests to 17 English county councils asking how closely they monitor their public charging infrastructure. The results were wildly inconsistent. Northumberland County Council came out on top, monitoring all 487 of its public chargers every hour through a digital management platform and reporting 97% uptime across its rapid network. Surrey County Council also performed well, keeping downtime on its 411 charging sockets below 3%.
At the other end of the scale, Hampshire County Council reported that 39 of its 157 public chargers — around a quarter of the network — were unavailable, with 27 of those deliberately switched off due to low usage. Leicestershire County Council confirmed 10 of its 53 charging sockets had been permanently removed from service. Four counties, including West Sussex, admitted they hold no operational reliability data at all, because responsibility for that information sits with private chargepoint operators rather than the council itself. West Sussex specifically pointed to Connected Kerb as the operator holding the relevant data.
The findings sit against a backdrop of already patchy confidence in public charging. Commercial operators of rapid chargers are required under the Public Charge Point Regulations to report 99% average uptime, though EV Powered has previously reported that 96% of operators are missing that target. Separately, more than half (52%) of drivers surveyed said they never use public charging points at all, citing cost, availability and reliability concerns.
For anyone weighing up a switch to electric — including drivers who rely on public charging because they don’t have off-street parking — the takeaway is a practical one: reliability genuinely does depend on where you live, and it’s worth checking your own council’s track record before assuming the charger down the road will actually be working when you need it.
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