The council has awarded a 15 year contract for 2,100 charging sockets in residential streets. It owns 52 today, and pays nothing towards the new ones.
Bracknell Forest Council has awarded a 15 year contract to put 2,100 electric vehicle charging sockets into residential streets across the borough, at no cost to the council.
It currently provides 52 publicly available sockets, mainly in its own car parks. The contract is a roughly fortyfold increase on that.
The Cabinet Member for Planning, Transport and Countryside signed it off on 27 August. The call-in deadline is today, 4 September, with no call-in registered, and the award comes into force tomorrow.
How the council pays nothing
The contract is a concession, not a purchase. The supplier installs, owns, manages and maintains the chargers, and earns its money from drivers using them.
The council’s own report is candid about why. It has no funding stream to buy and run chargers at that scale, and no in-house expertise to operate them. Buying 2,100 sockets outright, it estimates, “could cost in the region of £13million”.
Two figures point the other way. The government’s Office for Zero Emission Vehicles put £326,000 into the scheme to attract a supplier. And the winning bidder estimates the council could take up to £2million in revenue share over the 15 years.
The report names the winner only as “Bidder C”. The identity sits in a confidential part of the award report, which is not published.
The scale, in context
The borough is not short of chargers by national standards, which makes the size of this contract the striking part.
Department for Transport figures put 208 public chargers in Bracknell Forest at 1 July 2026, counting every operator. That is 159.0 per 100,000 people, which ranks the borough 107th of 296 UK local authorities, comfortably above the median of about 135.
The national comparison is the one worth holding on to. Across the whole of England, the LEVI programme had funded 643 chargers by the end of March 2026, rising to a provisional 1,268 by the end of June. Bracknell Forest was not among the 15 authorities with LEVI installations recorded at 1 April.
One borough’s contract is therefore larger, in sockets, than everything the national programme has put in the ground so far. A charger can carry more than one socket, so those two numbers are not like for like. The order of magnitude still stands.
Who it is for
The target is specific: residents who cannot charge at home because they have no driveway or garage.
That constraint is what the council’s own screening assessment, written in May 2025, set out to fix. The original brief was much smaller, “a minimum of 400 electric vehicle charging points in residential streets”. What has been awarded is more than five times that.
The same assessment flags two practical points that will matter on the street.
- Accessibility. All charge points must comply with PAS 1899:2022, the standard for accessible charging. The council also wants larger parking bays where that is feasible, because a standard bay and a standard kerb are hard work for a wheelchair user.
- Payment. It expects payment by smartphone app, and accepts that anyone without one will not be able to use the infrastructure.
The council also argues that street chargers should be cheaper than other public charging, with lower overnight tariffs, which matters most to drivers on lower incomes who have no home charger to fall back on.
What it means for you
Nothing changes this week. The report sets out the contract, not a build schedule, and no installation timetable has been published. Neither has the list of streets.
You will not pay for it through council tax. The supplier funds the installation. The council’s exposure is the £326,000 of government money already committed, and its stake is the revenue share.
Watch for the parking orders. Charging bays in residential streets need marked bays and enforceable restrictions, which means Traffic Regulation Orders road by road, each with its own consultation. That is the point at which residents get a say on a specific street, and it is the same process the council has just used for seven roads elsewhere in the borough.
If you already drive an EV, the council’s existing 52 sockets are mostly in its car parks. Charges and locations sit with the parking pages.
The risk the council itself names is commercial: a 15 year concession depends on the supplier staying solvent and interested. Its stated mitigation is financial checks.
Sources
- Bracknell Forest Council, decision 4360: Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure contract award, for the resolution, the 27 August publication date, the 4 September call-in deadline and the 5 September commencement.
- Report to Cabinet Member, LEVI concession contract award, 29 July 2026, for the 2,100 sockets, the 52 existing sockets, the £326,000 OZEV funding, the £2million revenue share estimate, the £13million purchase estimate, the minimum 400 point brief, PAS 1899:2022 and the payment and tariff points.
- Department for Transport, EV charging infrastructure statistics, table EVCI0102, for the 208 public chargers in Bracknell Forest at 1 July 2026 and the 159.0 per 100,000 rate and ranking.
- Department for Transport, LEVI Fund statistics, table EVCI5002, for the 643 and provisional 1,268 England totals and the list of authorities with LEVI installations.
Related
- Bracknell Forest parking: yellow lines on 7 roads: how a parking order is actually made here.
- Parking in Bracknell: council car parks, charges and permit zones.
- Bracknell roadworks and travel: current closures and what is coming.
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