Northumberland County Council has passed a motion to add 36 electric vehicle charging points across 26 locations, expanding the local authority's existing public charging network.
Most of the new hardware will sit on land the council already owns: 78 per cent of the charge points are planned for council property, while the remainder will be installed on third-party land under licensing agreements.
The infrastructure is being financed with just over £1 million in external funding from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement. According to the council, revenue generated by the chargers will go towards their running costs, management and maintenance, and the funding is intended to support the rollout until 2029.
Installation and upkeep will be handled by the council's in-house EV team.
Cllr Richard Wearmouth, the cabinet member responsible for transport at Northumberland County Council, framed the investment as a response to the scale of the county's road network. He said it was good to see further investment in charging provision and that, with one of the largest road networks in the country, the council needed to ensure the necessary facilities were in place to help people get around.
The charge point programme follows other sustainable transport work in the region. A few months earlier, 14 BYD BD11 battery-electric buses entered service in Northumberland.