Story · Energy map · about 3 min
Charging ahead? Where public electric-car chargers are
Switching to an electric car depends on being able to plug in. These maps, from the Department for Transport, show how unevenly public chargers are spread.
Chargers per person
On 1 July 2026 Britain had 121,171 public EV chargers. Per 100,000 people the middle council had 139, but Hammersmith and Fulham had 1,380, about 10 times as many, while North East Derbyshire had 38. 36 of 361 councils have less than half the median.
How many in total
In raw numbers Westminster leads with 2,893 chargers, 2% of all of them, yet the ten best-supplied councils together hold 17%: the chargers are spread thinly across the whole country rather than piled into a handful of places. A charger in a busy centre may serve many more people than one in a village, so neither count nor rate is the whole picture.
London, closer up
Zoom in on London with both layers on. 8 of the ten best-supplied councils per person are London boroughs. Many Londoners have no driveway to charge at home, so kerbside and car-park chargers do the work a garage plug does elsewhere. Click any borough for its figures, and remember that the colours are per 100,000 people; the data has no count of cars.
For classrooms and curious minds
Questions to talk about, alone or in a group.
- Who is least likely to have a driveway to charge at home, and so most reliant on public chargers?
- Is one charger in a busy centre the same as one in a village? What would a fairer measure look like?
Try it on the map: Zoom in on your own area with both layers on. Is your council above or below the median?
The figures above are calculated from the datasets listed on Data & sources and are approximate: many map layers are modelled or interpolated. Read each layer’s caveats on the map.