Number of electric car charging points in Bedford has risen by more than a tenth in past year

A Volvo car being charged using a Ubitricity lampost EV charging point.

The number of public electric vehicle charging points in Bedford has risen by more than a tenth over the past year, new figures show.

It comes as Vauxhall, who analysed the data, said more must be done to meet the rising demand for electric cars.

Figures from the Department for Transport show there were 131 publicly available electric vehicle charging devices in Bedford as of October, including 33 rapid chargers.

Overall, it is up 14% from 115 charging devices in October of 2022.

Across the UK, there were nearly 49,220 publicly available chargers as of October – a 42% jump from 2022. Of them, 8,908 were rapid chargers.

The figures also show on-street electric vehicle chargers for homes without driveways have increased by 69% in the last 12 months, with 4,094 new installations recorded in the last quarter.

James Taylor, managing director at Vauxhall, said: "It’s a good signal, but we’re still at the beginning of the journey. We need to up the pace if we’re to make sure the 40% of households without driveways are not left behind in the transition to electric vehicles and do more outside of London."

He added: "The 4,094 new installations is a start, but next year it is forecast there will be hundreds of thousands more new EV cars being registered to comply with the Vehicles Emissions Trading Scheme – we are making progress, but more is needed to match demand."

The availability of chargers varied across the UK, with the highest in London where there were 193 chargers per 100,000 people. On the other end of the scale, Northern Ireland had just 23 per 100,000 people.

In the East of England, there were 52 electric vehicle chargers per 100,000 people.

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: "We’ve put more than £2 billion into helping people switch to electric vehicles, and in October one in four new cars bought came with a plug."

They added: "The number of public charge points has increased by 42% since this time last year, and we've allocated £381m across every area in England to deliver tens of thousands more local chargers – particularly helping drivers without access to off-street parking."