UK EV charger rollout slows despite rising electric car adoption
Electric vehicle adoption in the UK continues to grow, with more drivers switching to battery power each year. On paper, that should make charging infrastructure expansion straightforward: more demand, more investment.
In reality, the pace of public charger installation is beginning to slow — and in some areas, stall entirely. Recent data shows that while charger numbers are still increasing overall, growth is becoming more uneven, more expensive, and more difficult to sustain.
What the data is starting to show
National charger totals continue to rise, but month-on-month growth has flattened compared with earlier phases of the rollout. Progress is increasingly concentrated in a handful of regions, while others see little change over extended periods.
The slowdown is most visible in:
- Residential on-street charging projects
- Smaller towns and rural areas
- Sites requiring grid reinforcement
Why installing chargers is getting harder
Early infrastructure benefited from “easy wins”: retail parks, motorway services and large car parks with existing power capacity. As those locations fill out, remaining sites are more complex.
Operators and local authorities now face a combination of challenges:
- Grid constraints: many locations need costly upgrades before high-power chargers can be installed.
- Planning delays: approvals for on-street and residential schemes can take months or longer.
- Rising costs: construction, hardware and energy connection fees have all increased.
- Utilisation risk: chargers must be used enough to justify investment, which isn’t guaranteed everywhere.
Why this matters for everyday drivers
For drivers with home charging, infrastructure gaps can feel abstract. For those without it, reliability and proximity of public chargers directly shapes daily convenience.
As EV ownership spreads into flats, terraces and multi-car households, pressure shifts away from motorway rapid chargers and onto local, repeat-use infrastructure — the hardest category to deliver at scale.
A shift from coverage to quality
The next phase of rollout appears less focused on adding single chargers everywhere, and more on building multi-bay, high-uptime sites where demand is proven.
That may improve reliability where chargers exist, but it risks leaving some areas behind unless planning, funding and grid coordination improve.
What happens next?
Government targets for charger numbers remain unchanged, but delivery is becoming more dependent on coordination between network operators, councils and energy providers.
Whether the rollout can accelerate again — or settles into a slower, more selective pattern — will shape how accessible EV ownership feels over the rest of the decade.