A total of £68,560 has been made available to Worcester City Council by the Department for Transport to go alongside £55,000 of the council’s own funds to install dual charging points at the city’s Tallow Hill and King Street car parks – allowing up to 20 electric vehicles to be charged at one time across the two sites.

A city bid for government ‘on-street residential charging scheme’ money was backed by ministers, which made money available to help cover the cost of installing electric vehicle charging points at the council-owned car parks.

The spend was backed by the city council’s environment committee at a meeting in the Guildhall on Tuesday (March 14) but some calls were made to add more charging points at some of the city’s ‘forgotten’ areas such as St John’s and Dines Green, Ronkswood and Tolladine rather than placing them all in one part of the city centre.

He said: “When you look at the other areas of the city, for instance in St John’s, within 10 minutes’ walk of St John’s Church you have 2,000 people without off-street parking and would dearly love to have an opportunity to have an electric vehicle but can’t because they’ve got nowhere to charge it.”

He suggested that the city could look at using its community centres – such as Dines Green, Ronkswood and Tolladine – as potential spots for more charging points.

David Sutton, the city council’s deputy director of policy and strategy, said there had been talks on using leisure and community centres as sites for electric charging points in the future.

The number of charging points across the two parks is slightly lower than previously imagined, with council reports from October last year suggesting that new facilities would be provided to charge up to 32 electric vehicles.

Last month, the council backed a move by Italian restaurant Benedicto’s in Sidbury to buy a chunk of land at the neighbouring King Street car park to make way for a two-storey extension – at a loss of two parking spaces.