The family parking problem nobody talks about
If you live in a terraced house, a flat or simply a road where the kerb belongs to everyone, owning an electric car can feel like a logistical puzzle. Over a quarter of UK households don’t have off‑street parking, and in coastal towns with narrow Victorian streets that number can be even higher. You can’t dangle a cable across the pavement — it’s unsafe and increasingly illegal — so you’re reliant on public infrastructure. Until now, Devon’s public charging map was patchy at best.
This is precisely the problem the new £8 million LEVI (Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) grant tackles. Combined with roughly £30 million of private investment from operators Believ, char.gy and Wenea, the scheme will put chargers where families actually park: on residential streets, on existing lamp columns, in parish‑council car parks and at public car parks run by seven district councils. It’s not just a “nice to have”; it’s the difference between switching to electric or staying with a petrol car for the school run. We touched on the same challenge — charging when you can’t plug in at home — in our look at what Canada’s apartment‑building charging investment teaches families everywhere.
What’s being installed — and where you’ll actually find them
The 3,000‑charge‑point target isn’t a single batch of identical boxes. The two councils have split the work to match the reality of Devon’s landscape. Wenea will focus on rapid and fast chargers in public car parks, from Exeter’s city‑centre multi‑storeys to seaside car parks in Teignbridge and Torbay. Believ will handle standard on‑street units and community‑car‑park chargers. And char.gy — which specialises in melding charging into existing street furniture — will convert lamp columns into overnight charging points, perfect for residents who return home in the evening and leave again at 8 a.m.
For a family like ours, that’s a meaningful mix. A lamp‑column charger near a holiday let removes the stress of the midnight charger hunt. Rapid chargers in public car parks mean you can top up while the children build sandcastles. Rollout begins within months, with installations continuing over the coming years. If you’re planning to visit the English Riviera or the Jurassic Coast in an electric car, the charging landscape will look noticeably friendlier by the end of 2027.
The announcement follows wider UK investment — for context, Allego recently committed €100 million to 1,400 UK ultra‑rapid chargers, so the south‑west won’t be an isolated island of kerbside power. Devon and Torbay are simply making sure that local streets don’t get left behind.
How much will it cost to charge?
The right charger in the right place only helps if the price doesn’t feel like a punishment. Public charging is more expensive than plugging in at home, but households without a driveway have no choice. The good news is that lamp‑column and standard on‑street chargers operated by Believ and char.gy are typically priced closer to a home energy tariff than a motorway rapid hub. Exact prices will be set by the operators, but early indications from similar UK schemes put overnight lamp‑column charging at around 30–35 pence per kWh, while a council car‑park rapid charger might sit at 50–60 pence per kWh. For a family hatchback with a 60 kWh battery, that means a full charge costs roughly £18–£21 on a lamp column, versus £30–£36 on a fast public charger.
To put those numbers into your own budget, try our charging cost calculator. It lets you compare what you’d pay at home, on a street charger and on a long‑distance rapid, so you can see exactly where the savings — and the premiums — sit.
What Devon families (and visitors) should do now
If you already drive electric in Devon or Torbay, or you’ve been holding off because parking outside your flat looks impossible, here’s a short practical checklist:
- Check your council’s interactive map. Devon County Council will publish details of charging sites as they go live. Torbay Council is running its own cross‑pavement cable‑channel trials alongside this rollout, so keep an eye out if you have a bay directly in front of your house.
- Plan for the transition. If you’re still in a petrol or diesel family car, the arrival of reliable neighbourhood charging removes one of the biggest objections. Use our real‑world range calculator to see whether a typical used EV — say, a 40 kWh Nissan Leaf or a 58 kWh Volkswagen ID.3 — easily covers your weekly school run, shop and weekend trip without needing a top‑up away from home.
- Don’t wait for everything to be perfect. The first lamp‑column chargers may appear near you within a year. Once they do, running an EV without a driveway shifts from “possible but fiddly” to genuinely simple — and you’ll lock in lower running costs long before every terrace in town is electrified.
For anyone planning a family holiday in Torbay, the message is equally clear: by next summer, finding a charge point near your cottage or B&B will be less of a lottery. That means more time eating ice‑cream, and less time explaining to a seven‑year‑old why the car needs another 20 minutes before we can go to the beach.
How long will it take to install all 3,000 chargers?
The rollout begins within a few months and will be delivered in phases over several years. No exact completion date has been announced, but the funding is secured and the operators are appointed, so installations should accelerate through 2027 and 2028.
Can I charge an EV overnight on a lamp‑column charger?
Yes, that’s the whole idea. char.gy’s lamp‑column units are designed for overnight residential use, typically delivering 3–7 kW — enough to add about 100–160 km of range during an 8‑hour sleep.
Do I need a special adapter or cable for on‑street chargers?
Most Believ and char.gy units use Type 2 connectors, the European standard for every modern electric car. You’ll simply bring your own Type 2 cable, which normally comes with the vehicle, plug in and pay via an app or RFID card.
