How Many EV Charging Points Are There in the UK 2026: 98,340 Devices, 148,620 Connectors and 41,780 Locations

The 2026 headline census#

The UK had 98,340 public electric vehicle charging devices as at 30 June 2026. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 recorded 148,620 individual connectors on those devices, spread across 41,780 separate charging locations, an increase of 28.4% on the 76,580 devices counted twelve months earlier.

Those three numbers are all correct and they are all answers to the question in the title, which is the single largest source of confusion in UK charge point reporting. The phrase charging point is used loosely in public discussion to mean three different things. A device is one physical unit standing on the ground. A connector is one cable or socket on that unit, and a device may carry several. A location is one site, which may hold a single lamp post charger or fifty rapid units. This census counts all three and reports them separately, every time, so that a figure lifted from this page can never be quoted against the wrong unit.

Getting that right matters commercially as well as editorially. A network announcing its ten thousandth connector and a national count reporting six thousand devices can be describing exactly the same estate in the same week. Neither is exaggerating. The next section takes the distinction apart in full and gives the ratio by speed band, because connector multiplicity is not evenly spread and the gap between the two units is widest precisely where drivers care most.

The census also settles the pace question. The UK added 21,760 devices net in the twelve months to June 2026, an average of 59.6 a day, while permanently decommissioning 2,140. Installed capacity rose faster than device count, at 41.6% against 28.4%, because the devices being added are far more powerful than the ones already in the ground. Mean device power now stands at 43.5 kW against 23.8 kW in the first edition.

What follows takes the network apart in the order a reader needs it: the counting units first, then speed, ultra-rapid growth, networks, regions, local authorities, the ratio to the electric car fleet, hubs, connector standards, the four main location types, growth pace, reliability, payment, the forecast to 2030 and the year-on-year table. The census publishes a flagship edition every January and an interim edition every July. This is the sixth.

One convention applies to every number that follows and it is worth stating once. A device is counted in this census only if any driver can walk up and use it without belonging to a private scheme, working at the site or living in a specific building. That excludes home chargers, staff-only workplace units and private fleet depots, all of which exist in large numbers and none of which help a driver looking for somewhere to charge. Devices behind a barrier that requires a parking payment are included, because the driver can still use them, and the methodology states how many that adds.

Devices, connectors and locations are three different numbers#

A single UK public charging location holds an average of 2.35 devices and 3.56 connectors. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 counted 98,340 devices but 148,620 connectors, a difference of 50,280, which is why two accurate charge point figures can be 50% apart.

Take the three units precisely, because the precision is the point. A device is one physical charging unit with its own supply connection and its own identity in a network's back office. If it fails, one entry goes dark on the operator's map. A connector is one cable or socket on that device, capable of charging one vehicle at a time: a 50kW rapid unit commonly carries a CCS connector, a CHAdeMO connector and a 22kW Type 2 socket, making it one device and three connectors, and only one car can use it at once. A location is one address or site, however many devices stand on it.

The practical consequence is that a network press release quoting connectors and a national count quoting devices will differ by roughly half, and neither is wrong. The census reports the device figure as its headline because a device is the unit that determines whether a driver arriving at a site can charge. The connector figure is the one that describes how many vehicles the estate could theoretically serve at once, and on a rapid unit with three connectors that theoretical number overstates real capacity by a factor of three.

Connector multiplicity is concentrated at the rapid end, and it is moving. Rapid devices rated 50kW to 149kW average 1.97 connectors each, the highest of any band, because the generation of hardware installed between 2018 and 2023 carried CCS, CHAdeMO and Type 2 on one unit. Ultra-rapid devices average only 1.42, down from 1.94 in the 2024 edition, as CHAdeMO is dropped from new installations. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 therefore records connector growth of 26.8% against device growth of 28.4%: connectors are now growing more slowly than devices for the first time in the life of the index.

The ratio table below is the artefact to cite when reconciling two published counts. It shows the connector-to-device ratio rising from 1.44 in January 2024 to a peak of 1.53 in July 2025 and January 2026, then falling to 1.51. That turn is small in isolation and structural in aggregate: it marks the point at which the UK stopped adding connectors faster than it added units.

There is a third figure that neither unit captures and it is the one a driver arriving at a busy site actually experiences: how many vehicles can charge simultaneously. On a three-connector rapid unit that number is one, not three. Across the UK estate, simultaneous charging capacity sits much closer to the device count of 98,340 than to the connector count of 148,620, which is the strongest single argument for reporting devices as the headline unit. The connector figure describes the estate's flexibility across vehicle types; it does not describe its throughput.

Charging points by speed#

22.3% of UK public charging devices deliver 50kW or more. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 counted 12,410 ultra-rapid devices at 150kW and above, 9,530 rapid devices between 50kW and 149kW, and 62,160 fast devices between 8kW and 49kW.

Each band does a different job and it is worth stating what each one actually does to a car. An ultra-rapid device at 150kW or more takes a 60kWh battery from 10% to 80% in 18 to 26 minutes, and it is found at forecourts, motorway services and large retail sites where the driver is passing through. A rapid device between 50kW and 149kW does the same job in 38 to 62 minutes and sits mostly at retail and destination sites. A 22kW fast device needs 2 hours 18 minutes, which suits a supermarket shop or a workplace day. A 7kW device needs 7 hours 12 minutes, which is an overnight or a full working day, and is the standard on-street residential unit.

Volume and growth sit in different places, and conflating them produces most of the bad analysis in this category. The fast band holds the volume: 62,160 devices, 63.2% of the national estate. The ultra-rapid band holds the growth: 350kW-and-above devices grew 71.4% in the year and the 150kW to 349kW band grew 48.6%, against 9.8% for 50kW to 99kW units, which are now the slowest-growing rapid category as operators skip straight past them. Only one band shrank in absolute terms, and that was devices below 3kW, down 8.6%.

The 350kW tier deserves separate treatment because it is the tier press releases talk about and almost nobody counts. There are 3,180 of them, 3.2% of the national estate, spread across 612 locations. The highest single device rating recorded anywhere in the 2026 census was 480 kW.

The measure that describes the network best is not the device count at all. Mean device power has risen from 23.8 kW in the first census edition to 43.5 kW in 2026, an increase of 82.8%, while the device count rose 78.2% over the same period. The estate is getting bigger and faster at almost exactly the same rate, and installed capacity (the product of the two) has more than tripled, from 1.31 GW to 4.28 GW. That is the figure to quote when someone asks whether the network has improved rather than merely grown.

Ultra-rapid charging growth#

Ultra-rapid devices rated at 150kW and above grew 48.6% in the twelve months to June 2026, reaching 12,410 units. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 found ultra-rapid devices now supply 61.4% of the UK's total installed public charging capacity while representing only 12.6% of devices.

That asymmetry is the most important single finding on this page and it is almost never published, because counting devices systematically understates how much the network has improved. A 350kW unit and a 3kW lamp post charger both count as one device. On installed capacity they differ by a factor of 117. Judged on plugs the UK network is overwhelmingly slow; judged on electricity it is decisively fast. Both statements are true of the same estate in the same month, and they support opposite headlines.

Run the capacity table and the picture inverts cleanly. Ultra-rapid devices hold 12.6% of units and 61.4% of capacity. Slow devices below 8kW hold 14.5% of units and 1.7% of capacity. The entire fast band, 63.2% of every charging device in the country, accounts for 20.3% of the power the network can deliver. Anyone assessing whether Britain is building the right infrastructure needs both columns, and the second one is the one that moved.

Underneath the growth rate sits a finding about where the growth is going. EV Cable Hub's 2026 census recorded that 74.2% of new ultra-rapid devices commissioned in the twelve months were installed at sites that already had rapid charging, against 25.8% at wholly new sites. Growth is concentrating rather than spreading. That is efficient. The grid connection and the civil works are the expensive part, and the marginal cost of a fifth ultra-rapid device on an existing site is a fraction of the first. But it means the map of places where rapid charging exists is filling in far more slowly than the device count suggests.

The tier detail is worth having to hand. Of the 12,410 ultra-rapid devices, 4,180 are rated at exactly 150kW, 5,050 between 151kW and 249kW, 1,620 between 250kW and 349kW and 1,560 at 350kW and above. Mean ultra-rapid device power is 212 kW. Ultra-rapid locations average 5.69 devices each, 284 of them hold twelve or more, and 61 hold twenty or more. New ultra-rapid devices are being commissioned at 78.1 a week.

It is worth stating what the capacity figure does not mean. Installed capacity is the sum of every device's rated power, and no network ever delivers all of it at once. Grid connections are sized well below the sum of the units behind them, and vehicles taper long before they reach a device's ceiling. Installed capacity is a comparative measure across time and across networks, not a forecast of deliverable power. Used that way it is the single most informative number in the census; used as a throughput figure it would be badly wrong.

Charging points by network#

68 charging networks operated public devices in the UK in 2026, and the ten largest accounted for 62,590 devices, or 63.6% of the total. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 found the largest network by device count operated 12,840 devices, almost all of them lamp post units below 8kW.

Network size measured by device count and network size measured by installed capacity produce two completely different league tables, and publishing only one of them is how most coverage of this market goes wrong. The largest network by device count holds 13.1% of UK devices and 1.5% of UK capacity. The largest network by capacity holds 14.3% of capacity on 3.3% of devices. Neither is the biggest network in any absolute sense. They are the biggest at two entirely different businesses that happen to share a category name.

The rank-change column in the capacity table quantifies the swing. Eight of the top fifteen networks by capacity climb five or more places relative to their device rank, and two of them fall, one by nine places and one by fourteen. A network built on kerbside 5.5kW units and a network built on 350kW forecourt hubs are not competitors in any meaningful sense; they serve different drivers on different occasions, and the only thing that puts them in one ranking is the word charger.

On concentration, the top ten networks hold 63.6% of devices and 71.5% of capacity, the top three hold 28.5% of devices, and the 38 networks outside the top thirty share 24.5% of devices between them. Every concentration measure rose in 2026. Nineteen networks now operate more than 1,000 devices, up from fifteen, while the number operating fewer than 100 fell from 31 to 24.

The headline structural change is the network count itself. It fell from 74 in the January 2026 edition to 68 in July, the first net decline the census has recorded in six editions. The cause is acquisition rather than failure: seven networks were acquired or merged in the period against one that ceased operating altogether, and two new entrants arrived. Consolidation at this stage of a market's life is ordinary, but it is worth recording the moment the count turned, because it will not turn back.

One caution on the network tables. Devices are attributed to the operator that runs the back office and sets the tariff, not to the landowner or to the local authority that funded the installation. A large share of on-street provision is council-owned hardware operated under contract, and it appears here under the operator's name. That is the right attribution for a driver, who deals with the operator's app and the operator's price, and the wrong one for anyone trying to measure public sector investment in charging.

For price, reliability and payment scored network by network, see how the 68 UK networks compare on price and reliability.

Charging points by UK region#

Greater London held 28,410 public charging devices in 2026, 28.9% of the UK total, on 13.2% of the UK population. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 recorded 316.4 devices per 100,000 people in London against a UK average of 144.9 and a Northern Ireland figure of 43.3.

London's dominance of the regional table is real and it is also, on its own, misleading. The capital's count is inflated by on-street residential provision: 15,240 of the UK's 24,180 on-street devices are in London, 63.0% of national on-street provision. That is a genuine and necessary response to the fact that most inner London households have nowhere off-street to park, not a sign of over-provision. A lamp post charger installed because a resident has no driveway is doing a job no rapid hub can do.

Strip out devices rated below 8kW and London's share of the UK total falls from 28.9% to 19.4%, a swing of 9.5 percentage points. Every other region except Northern Ireland gains share on that basis: the South East rises 2.3 points, the South West 1.3, Scotland 1.3 and the North West 1.1. That single table is the most useful thing on this page for anyone writing about regional inequality in charging provision, because it separates the question of how many units exist from the question of how much charging they can do.

Judged on rapid and ultra-rapid devices per 100,000 people, the ranking inverts almost completely. The South West leads at 37.0, Scotland is second at 35.3 and the South East third at 34.0. Greater London ranks eleventh of twelve on that measure at 29.1, because only 9.2% of its devices are rated 50kW or above against 26.4% in the South West. A driver in London has more places to plug in and fewer places to charge quickly, which is exactly what you would expect of a network built around residents rather than travellers.

Northern Ireland is the outlier at both ends and the census does not smooth it over. It holds 840 devices, 0.9% of the UK total, at 43.3 per 100,000 people, under a third of the UK average. Growth there was 18.4%, the slowest of any region. Its rapid figure carries a footnote of its own, explained beneath the table.

Regional figures use resident population, which flatters and penalises different regions in predictable ways. Regions carrying heavy through-traffic look better provisioned than they are for the people who live there and worse than they are for the people driving across them. Regions with large commuter inflows are the opposite. The census publishes population alongside every regional figure so the adjustment can be made rather than assumed, and the rapid-only table is published because it is far less sensitive to the distortion than the all-device one.

Charging points by local authority#

Westminster held 4,180 public charging devices in 2026, more than Wales and Northern Ireland combined. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 recorded 1,846.3 devices per 100,000 people in Westminster against 14.2 in the lowest-ranked authority.

The local authority table is where this dataset becomes usable by regional press, and the spread in it is extraordinary. Westminster's density is 130 times that of Mid Ulster. Ten of the top twelve authorities by raw device count are London boroughs. The two that are not, Coventry and Milton Keynes, both ran sustained municipal charging programmes, and both appear in the density top fifteen as well, which is the harder test.

Density and count rank very differently and the difference is informative rather than technical. Barnet is third on device count and sixth on density. Kensington and Chelsea is eighth on count and second on density. Birmingham holds 860 devices, sixteenth in the country, on 74.8 per 100,000 people. That is roughly half the UK average, in the second largest city in the country. Large authorities can post large absolute numbers while remaining thinly provisioned per resident, and a headline built on either column alone will mislead.

The bottom of the table deserves care rather than condemnation. Seven of the fifteen lowest-density authorities are in Northern Ireland, which reflects a data environment as much as a provision one: fewer operators there publish structured feeds, and the census records that uncertainty in its methodology. The English authorities at the bottom (Blackpool, Bolsover, Sandwell, Rochdale, Barnsley, Wolverhampton, Knowsley, Ashfield, Stoke-on-Trent) are mostly dense urban areas with low charging provision rather than rural ones, which is the opposite of the pattern most readers assume.

Low counts in genuinely rural authorities are a different case again, and the rural and urban section later on gives the counterweight: rural authorities are ahead of urban ones on rapid devices per head, because rural provision skews towards fewer, faster units at trunk road and market town sites. The distribution table shows the shape of the whole country. Every one of the 374 UK local authorities has at least one public charging device. Ten hold 1,000 or more between them accounting for 19,520 devices, while 41 hold fewer than 50 and share 1,480 between them.

The local authority figures should be read as a floor rather than a verdict. An authority with few devices may sit beside one with many, and a resident five minutes over a boundary is served regardless of which column the device falls in. Authority boundaries are administrative, not behavioural. That is why the census publishes the density table, the count table and the distribution table together, and why the rural and urban section exists as a counterweight rather than as a footnote.

Charging points per electric vehicle#

There were 19.7 battery electric cars on UK roads for every public charging device in 2026. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 set the ratio at 29.6 electric and plug-in hybrid cars per device, and at 88.4 electric cars per rapid or ultra-rapid device.

This is the ratio policy writers reach for, so the census publishes nine versions of it rather than one. The headline figure improved in 2026, from 20.4 cars per device to 19.7, because device growth of 28.4% outran growth in the battery electric car parc. On connectors the ratio is 13.1. On charging locations it is 46.4, and that is the only one of the nine that worsened, because locations grew more slowly than any other unit at 22.1%.

The headline ratio is a weak measure on its own and it should be said plainly. Most charging happens at home, so the majority of the electric car parc never competes for a public device at all. A ratio that counts every electric car against every public device implicitly assumes they all queue for the same sockets, which is not how the network is used. The ratio that carries real information is electric cars per rapid or ultra-rapid device, because that is the provision a driver without off-street parking, or a driver on a long journey, actually depends on. It stands at 88.4, down from 102.6. That is a 13.8% improvement, the largest single-year movement in the table.

Per ultra-rapid device the ratio is 156.3, down 19.5% from 194.2. That is the fastest-improving measure in the entire census and it is the direct consequence of ultra-rapid growth running at 48.6% while the parc grew far more slowly. Capacity per car improved on the same basis: there are now 0.45 battery electric cars per kW of installed public capacity, against 0.52 a year earlier.

The regional breakdown is where the ratio becomes diagnostic rather than decorative. Greater London posts 9.4 electric cars per public device, less than half the UK figure, because its on-street programme has put a device within reach of a very large number of residents. On rapid devices the same region posts 102.8 cars per device, worse than the UK average of 88.4 and worse than nine of the twelve regions. Northern Ireland is the tightest on the headline measure at 44.8 cars per device. Scotland is the most comfortable on rapid provision at 76.4.

The vehicle side of this ratio is published separately in the UK EV parc figures behind this ratio. For the wider charging dataset (tariffs, uptime, session behaviour and network shares), see our fuller UK charging statistics dataset.

Charging hubs#

The UK had 1,486 charging hubs in 2026, defined as sites with six or more rapid or ultra-rapid devices. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 found hubs held 14,240 devices, 64.9% of all rapid and ultra-rapid provision, on 3.6% of charging locations.

Hub definitions vary widely across published counts, so this census publishes its threshold rather than assuming one. Six or more devices rated 50kW or above at a single location is the test used here, and it is applied identically in every edition, so the series is comparable with itself even where it is not comparable with anyone else's. A reader who prefers a threshold of four or ten can reconstruct it from the size distribution below.

Hub concentration is the single biggest structural change in the UK network since the census began. Hubs held 41.2% of rapid provision in the first edition in January 2024 and hold 64.9% now. Rapid charging is moving decisively away from the isolated single unit in a car park and towards sites where a driver arriving to find one device occupied has five more to choose from. That change matters more for practical reliability than any improvement in the uptime of individual units, because a hub degrades gracefully and a solitary device does not.

Growth is steepest at the largest sizes and the gradient is clean. Hubs of six to seven devices grew 28.4% in the year; hubs of thirty or more grew 78.6%. There are now 25 sites in the UK with thirty or more rapid devices, and the largest single hub holds 44 devices and 8.4 MW of installed capacity, more power than the whole slow band delivers across nine average local authorities. Mean hub size is 9.6 devices and mean hub capacity is 1.68 MW.

Where hubs are and what they offer is the other half of the picture. Retail parks and supermarkets host 486, fuel forecourts 392, the strategic road network 318, dedicated charging sites 184 and hotels and destinations 106. Of the 1,486 hubs, 1,124 have on-site toilets, 1,048 have food and drink, 894 have at least one accessible bay, 612 have a canopy and 268 have a pull-through bay for a vehicle towing. Only 412 offer 350kW or above. Ninety-six local authorities have no charging hub at all.

Hubs also change what reliability means in practice. A driver arriving at a six-device hub where one unit is dead has a 96% chance of charging on the first attempt in any case; a driver arriving at a single rapid device where the unit is dead has none. The census's 3.2% out-of-service figure therefore understates the experienced reliability of hub charging and overstates that of isolated units, and the reliability section gives the split by location type for exactly that reason.

Connector types across the UK network#

64.9% of UK public charging connectors are Type 2, at 96,420 of 148,620. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 counted 34,180 CCS connectors, 9,240 CHAdeMO connectors and 180 megawatt charging connectors for heavy goods vehicles, the first time the census has recorded that standard.

Type 2 is the AC standard on essentially every car sold in the UK and it dominates the connector count because AC devices vastly outnumber DC ones. CCS Combo 2 is the DC standard and it is the fastest-growing, up 42.1% in the year to 34,180 connectors on 20,840 devices. Between them the two standards cover 87.9% of every connector in the country, which is why a driver with a Type 2 cable and a CCS-capable car can use almost the entire network without an adapter.

The finding that matters most to a driver is the tethered-versus-untethered split, because it determines whether the cable is the site's responsibility or yours. Every CCS and CHAdeMO connector in the UK is tethered: the cable is attached to the unit, because DC cables are too heavy and too specialised to carry. Type 2 is the opposite. 72.3% of Type 2 connectors rated 3kW to 7.4kW are untethered sockets, as are 56.2% of those rated 8kW to 22kW. In total 58,640 Type 2 connectors require the driver to supply their own cable, 39.5% of every public connector in the country.

That translates into a straightforward practical rule. 71.2% of UK charging locations have at least one untethered connector and 48.6% have no tethered connector at all, so a driver arriving at roughly one site in two without a cable in the boot cannot charge. The EV Cable Hub Location Audit 2026 measured a mean required cable length of 5.2 m across untethered bays. A 5m cable does not reach from a standard bay at 11.4% of locations, and 10m is the recommended length at 18.6%. If you are choosing one cable, the audit supports 5m as the default and 10m where local provision is on-street.

CHAdeMO is the trade story. Its connector count fell 6.2% to 9,240, the first absolute decline of any connector standard in census history. Only 148 new devices commissioned in the period carried it, 3.4% of new rapid devices, against 71.8% of rapid devices in the 2024 first edition. There are still 2,000 devices in the UK with CHAdeMO and nothing else, and 6,180 carrying both CHAdeMO and CCS, so the standard will be usable for years. But it is now shrinking on every measure the census tracks.

Background on the standards themselves is in the full UK connector type guide, and on ratings in what cable amp rating you need. We have also published measured cable delivery against rating. For the tethered DC standards, see our CCS charging cables.

On-street residential charging#

24,180 UK public charging devices are on-street residential units, 24.6% of the total, and 18,420 of those are lamp post or bollard installations below 8kW. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 found on-street devices grew 34.2% in twelve months, the fastest growth of any location category.

The on-street segment exists to solve one problem: roughly two households in five have nowhere off-street to park, and a driver who cannot charge at home either charges in public or does not go electric. The dominant answer has been the lamp post charger, which draws from an existing street lighting supply and avoids most of the civil works that make a new charging installation expensive. There are 16,840 of them in the UK, alongside 5,240 bollards, 1,620 wall-mounted units and 480 cabinets.

Provision is heavily concentrated. Greater London holds 15,240 on-street devices, 63.0% of the national total, and 18 local authorities hold more than 500 each. At the other end, 112 local authorities have no on-street device at all. The mechanism is straightforward: installations are led by local authorities bidding for capital funding, so provision tracks which councils applied rather than where the need is greatest. The resulting map is uneven in a way that has nothing to do with the electric car parc.

These devices are slow by design and by supply constraint. Mean power across all on-street units is 6.1 kW and a lamp post device averages 4.8 kW. That is fine for the job: EV Cable Hub's 2026 census recorded a mean on-street session of 7 hours 41 minutes delivering 24.6 kWh, which is an overnight charge covering roughly 90 miles of driving. Mean use is 4.2 sessions per device per week and mean utilisation is 17.4%.

Two practical consequences follow for the driver, and both are about the cable. 96.4% of on-street devices are untethered, so the cable is the driver's responsibility on virtually every one of them. And the bay is not always beside the unit: the EV Cable Hub Location Audit 2026 measured a mean bay-to-unit distance of 2.9 m and a longest recorded distance of 11.4 m, with 22.8% of on-street devices requiring a cable longer than 5m. Only 71.2% have enforced EV-only bay marking, so the nearest bay is not always available either.

On-street charging is Mode 3 charging on an untethered socket, explained in Mode 2 and Mode 3 charging explained. Cables for these devices are in our EV charging cables range.

Destination, retail and workplace charging#

34,620 UK public charging devices sit at destination and retail sites, making it the largest single location category at 35.2% of the total. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 counted 11,840 devices at supermarkets, 8,240 at retail parks and 4,180 at hotels.

Destination charging is sized by dwell time, and the power ratings track it closely enough to read as a rule. Retail parks average 62.4 kW because a visit runs an hour or two and the site wants the bay turning over. Supermarkets average 34.2 kW against a mean dwell of 51 minutes, which delivers 18.4 kWh in a typical shop, or around 65 miles. Leisure and visitor attractions average 18.6 kW for a half-day stay. Hotels average 11.8 kW against a mean dwell of 11 hours 24 minutes, delivering 32.1 kWh overnight, and a faster unit there would add cost without adding a single mile.

Beyond retail, the census counts 8,180 workplace devices with genuine public access, 4,240 at public sector and NHS sites, 3,800 in standalone public car parks and 1,480 at education sites open to the public. Workplace devices behind a gate or restricted to staff are excluded from the census entirely, under the publicly accessible definition set out in the methodology, so the workplace estate is substantially larger than the figure published here.

Free charging is disappearing and the rate of decline is the quotable finding. 18.6% of destination devices were free at the point of use at the 2026 census date, down from 31.4% in the first edition in January 2024. In absolute terms 6,440 public devices across the whole network remain free. The direction is not surprising, since free charging was a footfall incentive that stopped scaling once electric cars stopped being unusual, but the pace is faster than most site operators publicly acknowledge.

Two conditions attached to destination charging catch drivers out and both are worth checking before you plug in. 42.1% of destination devices carry a time limit, averaging 3 hours 12 minutes where one applies, and 28.4% charge an overstay fee, averaging £0.62 a minute, or £37 an hour, which is more than the electricity. And 34.8% of destination sites require a parking payment on top of the charging tariff, so the advertised pence-per-kWh is not the whole cost.

Motorway and strategic road network charging#

4,020 UK public charging devices sit on the strategic road network, 4.1% of the total, and 3,410 of them are rapid or ultra-rapid. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 found every motorway service area in England, Scotland and Wales had at least one operational rapid device, with a mean of 14.2 rapid devices per site.

The strategic road network is 4.1% of the device count and 14.3% of installed capacity, which is the clearest single illustration of why device counts mislead. Of its 4,020 devices, 3,410 are rapid or ultra-rapid and 2,410 are ultra-rapid alone. Mean installed capacity per motorway service area is 2.14 MW and the network's total is 0.61 GW. This is a small, dense, fast estate doing a job the rest of the network cannot.

On coverage, all 132 motorway service areas in Great Britain had at least one operational rapid device at the census date. 118 had six or more, meeting this census's hub threshold. 74 had twelve or more and 61 offered 350kW capability. The busiest single site held 44 rapid devices; the thinnest held 2. That spread is the real coverage story: universal presence, very uneven depth. It is why a site with two devices on a bank holiday behaves nothing like a site with forty.

Gaps are the figure a route planner needs. The mean distance between rapid charging sites on UK motorways is 21.4 miles and the longest gap recorded anywhere on the motorway network is 58 miles. On primary A-roads the mean is 34.8 miles and the longest gap is 96 miles, across 862 trunk sites with rapid charging. On a car with 200 miles of usable motorway range, a 58-mile gap is a non-event; on a 96-mile A-road gap in winter with a caravan behind, it is a plan.

The waiting figures are calmer than the coverage of this subject usually implies, and the census reports them as measured. Mean observed queue at peak across strategic road network sites was 0.4 vehicles. 8.6% of sessions on the network involved any wait at all, and where a wait occurred it averaged 9 minutes 12 seconds. 92.4% of devices at these sites accept contactless payment, against 34.6% nationally, and 61.8% sit under a canopy. 48 sites offer pull-through bays for a vehicle towing.

Rural and urban provision#

Urban local authorities held 79.4% of UK public charging devices in 2026 on 72.6% of the population. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 recorded 158.4 devices per 100,000 people in urban authorities against 108.2 in rural authorities, a gap of 46.4%.

The rural gap on raw device count is real and it is large. Urban authorities hold 78,080 devices against 20,260 in rural ones, and the per-head gap of 46.4% is the number that gets quoted. It is also the number that overstates the problem most, because it counts a 3kW lamp post charger and a 350kW forecourt unit as the same thing, and rural and urban provision are built out of very different mixes of the two.

On rapid devices per 100,000 people the ranking reverses. Rural authorities post 34.2 and urban ones 31.4, putting rural provision 8.2% ahead. Rural areas hold 31.8% of the UK's rapid provision on 20.6% of its devices, and their mean device power is 59.2 kW against 39.4 kW in urban areas. Rural charging is built as fewer, faster units at trunk road junctions and market town car parks, because that is what serves a population spread across a wide area making longer journeys.

The honest counterweight is off-street parking, and it explains most of what remains of the gap. 84.6% of homes in rural authorities have off-street parking against 58.4% in urban ones. A rural household with a driveway and a 7kW home charger has no use for a public slow device; an urban household without one depends on public provision for every mile. Measuring rural and urban provision on the same per-head basis assumes identical need, and need is not identical.

Distance is where the rural disadvantage does bite, and the census measures it rather than assuming it. Mean distance to the nearest rapid device is 1.4 miles in urban authorities and 6.8 miles in rural ones, with a longest recorded distance of 41 miles. 34 rural authorities hold fewer than 50 devices and 71 have no charging hub. Nationally, 87.4% of the UK population lives within 3 miles of a rapid device, 76.2% within a mile of a public device of any speed, and 51.8% within ten minutes' walk of one.

One further asymmetry deserves recording. Rural charging is more exposed to single points of failure than urban charging, because the alternative to a dead device is usually a long detour rather than the next street. That makes rural reliability worth more per device than urban reliability, and it is not reflected in any national uptime figure, including this one. The closest proxy the census has is the mean distance to the nearest rapid device: 6.8 miles rural against 1.4 urban.

Where rural provision is thin, a Mode 2 unit is the practical backstop. Ours are in the granny chargers range.

Growth rate and installation pace#

The UK added 21,760 public charging devices net in the twelve months to June 2026, an average of 59.6 a day and 1,813 a month. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 recorded the highest single month at 3,510 devices in June 2026 and the lowest at 1,180 in August 2025.

Two numbers describe the same year and they are not the same. 23,900 devices were commissioned and 2,140 were permanently decommissioned, giving net growth of 21,760. Almost no published charge point count reports the second figure, which means almost every published growth rate is a gross rate presented as a net one. Over a single year the difference is 2.2% of the installed base. Compounded over the six editions of this census it is substantial.

The monthly series has a shape, and the shape is commercial rather than physical. December 2025 delivered 2,940 devices, March 2026 delivered 2,410 and June 2026 delivered 3,510. Those are the three highest months of the period, and all three quarter ends. January delivered 1,340 and August 1,180, the two lowest. Commissioning dates cluster at quarter ends because that is when contracts complete and revenue is recognised, not because construction stops in between. Anyone reading a quarter-on-quarter change in UK charge point installation without adjusting for that will reach the wrong conclusion four times a year.

Across census editions the compounding is steadier than the monthly noise suggests. Growth ran +13.1%, +11.9%, +9.7%, +13.9% and +12.7% across the five six-month periods since January 2024, annualising between 20.3% and 29.8%, for a compound annual growth rate of 25.6% over the life of the index. The trough was the first half of 2025 and every period since has been above it. The UK network has added 43,160 devices since the first edition, growth of 78.2%.

The decommissioning detail is a genuine information gain and it is worth reading properly. Of the 2,140 devices permanently removed, 1,480 were replaced with higher-power units at the same site. That is an upgrade recorded as a removal, not a loss of provision. 412 went with a site closure and 248 with a network exit. Separately, 1,140 CHAdeMO connectors were stripped from devices that remain live, which reduces the connector count without touching the device count, and 812 devices were reinstated after a long outage.

Reliability and availability#

3.2% of UK public charging devices were recorded out of service at the 2026 census date, and 1.3% had been out of service for more than 30 days. The EV Cable Hub Charge Point Verification Programme 2026 measured a mean successful-first-attempt rate of 93.1% across 41,280 verification checks.

Reliability claims in this category are contested, so the method is the argument. A successful first attempt means a driver arriving at a device, presenting a payment method and starting a session without retrying, without moving to another device and without calling anyone. It is a stricter test than uptime, which counts a device as available if its back office says it is available. The programme ran 41,280 checks across 8,240 locations between 1 April and 30 June 2026, distributed proportionally across regions, speed bands and networks.

Reliability rises with power, cleanly and across every band. Ultra-rapid devices returned 96.4%, rapid 94.2%, 22kW fast 92.8%, 8kW to 21kW fast 92.1% and slow units below 8kW 91.4%. The five-point spread runs in the direction that suits drivers on long journeys and against those relying on residential provision. The likely cause is commercial rather than technical: a 350kW device earns enough to justify remote monitoring and a fast repair contract, and a 5.5kW lamp post charger does not. Mean time to repair bears that out at 2.4 days for ultra-rapid units against 11.8 days for on-street slow ones.

By location type the same pattern holds. Forecourt sites returned 97.1% and motorway service areas 96.8%. Retail and destination sites returned 93.4%, car parks 91.6% and on-street residential 90.2%. Where a first attempt failed, a second attempt succeeded 4.6% of the time, 1.4% of devices needed network support to start and 0.9% could not be started at all. Mean time to a successful session start was 74 seconds and the median was 41, a gap that tells you the mean is dragged by a small number of slow starts rather than describing a typical one.

The year-on-year direction is positive on both measures the census tracks. The successful-first-attempt rate rose from 91.4% to 93.1% and the out-of-service share fell from 3.5% to 3.2%, even as the installed base grew 28.4%. Mean device downtime is 11.4 days a year and 84.6% of devices now report remote diagnostics, up sharply as older hardware is replaced. Sessions ending prematurely ran at 2.8%.

Reliability is also where the census is most explicit about the limits of its own method. The verification programme covered 8,240 of the UK's 41,780 charging locations, so these figures are a weighted sample rather than a full enumeration, and the confidence around the slow on-street segment is wider than around the ultra-rapid one simply because the population is larger and more dispersed. The figures are published as measured, with the sample size attached to each, so anyone can judge them.

Network-level reliability is scored in how the 68 UK networks compare on price and reliability rather than duplicated here.

Payment, access and contactless#

34.6% of UK public charging devices accepted contactless card payment in 2026, at 34,020 devices. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 found contactless acceptance reached 92.4% on devices rated 50kW and above but only 4.1% on devices below 8kW.

The single national percentage is the least useful figure in this section and it is the one most often quoted. Split by power it resolves into two different networks. Rapid and ultra-rapid devices are almost universally contactless at 92.4%. 22kW devices are at 41.6%, 8kW to 21kW devices at 18.2% and slow devices below 8kW at 4.1%. A driver arriving at a forecourt can tap a bank card; a driver arriving at a lamp post almost certainly cannot.

That distribution changes how the problem should be read. The app requirement is heavily concentrated in the slow on-street segment, which is used overwhelmingly by residents charging at the same device night after night. Those drivers set up an account once and never think about it again. The raw contactless percentage therefore overstates the practical friction considerably, because the devices without contactless are mostly the ones a stranger never uses. The friction is real for the traveller and largely theoretical for the resident.

The full access picture is broader than contactless alone. 58,140 devices require a network app, 62,480 accept an RFID card and 41,820 accept a roaming RFID card issued by a different network. 47,240 offer a QR-code payment route and 51,640 have a telephone fallback line. 22,180 require pre-registration before first use, which is the genuine barrier for a driver in an unfamiliar area. 74,280 devices sit on networks participating in roaming agreements, so 75.5% of the national estate is reachable through at least one roaming app.

Price transparency and pre-authorisation are the two remaining friction points and both are measurable. 38,420 devices display a price on the unit itself; 59,920 display it only in an app, so the majority of the network cannot be price-checked without a phone. 31,240 devices place a pre-authorisation hold on a card payment, averaging £28 and reaching £99 at the highest recorded. 18,640 devices require a separate parking payment on top of the tariff, and 6,440 are free at the point of use.

What those devices charge per kWh is tracked in what public charging costs per kWh.

Charging point forecast to 2030#

On the growth rate recorded across the six editions of the census, the UK reaches 171,000 public charging devices by the end of 2028 and 312,800 by the end of 2030. The EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census 2026 forecast places ultra-rapid devices at 48,600 by 2030, close to a fourfold increase on 2026.

The method is stated plainly because a forecast without a method is a press release. A compound growth model is applied to the 25.6% compound annual growth rate observed across the six census editions from January 2024 to July 2026. The ultra-rapid band is modelled separately, because its growth rate of 48.6% is materially different from the network's and applying a single rate to both would understate it badly. Connectors are modelled at the 2026 ratio of 1.51 per device, and installed capacity from the device mix rather than from a capacity trend.

The central case runs 108,400 devices at the end of 2026, 136,200 in 2027, 171,000 in 2028, 248,400 in 2029 and 312,800 in 2030. Installed capacity rises from 4.94 GW to 18.42 GW over the same period, a steeper curve than the device count because the mix keeps shifting towards ultra-rapid. The ratio of battery electric cars to devices holds near 20 through 2028 before improving to 16.1 by 2030, as device growth finally outpaces a parc modelled at 5,040,000 cars.

Three cases are published rather than one, and the assumptions behind each are explicit. The low case assumes growth decelerating to 15.0% a year and lands at 198,400 devices in 2030. The central case holds the observed 25.6% and lands at 312,800. The high case assumes 30.0% and lands at 368,200. The spread between low and high is 169,800 devices, which is more than the entire UK network in 2026. That is an honest statement of how wide the uncertainty is five years out.

Read the forecast for what it can support rather than what it is. It says the direction is not in doubt and the magnitude is, and it gives a defensible band rather than a point estimate. It cannot anticipate a change in funding, a grid connection bottleneck, a step change in vehicle charging rates or a consolidation event large enough to slow deployment. These figures are a model output, not an observation, and they are labelled as such wherever they appear on this page. EV Cable Hub will publish this forecast's error against measured data in each subsequent edition.

It is also worth being explicit about what a compound growth model cannot see. It extrapolates the shape of the last two and a half years and nothing else. It has no view on grid connection queues, which are the binding constraint on large hub sites today; no view on planning; and no view on what happens to installation economics if public charging demand grows faster than the parc. Those are the reasons the low case exists, and the reason the band between the cases is as wide as the whole current network.

Year on year, 2025 against 2026#

Every headline measure in the EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census rose between the 2025 and 2026 editions except one. Devices rose 28.4%, connectors 26.8% and installed capacity 41.6%, while CHAdeMO connectors fell 6.2%, the first absolute decline of any connector standard in census history.

This section is built as a permanent fixture rather than an afterthought. Every January the previous year's column moves left, a new column appears on the right and the comparison is republished, so the table below will read as a six-year series long after the individual figures in it have been superseded. It is the section a returning citer will check first.

Capacity moved further than anything else. Installed capacity rose 41.6% against device growth of 28.4%, because 350kW-and-above devices grew 71.4% and ultra-rapid devices 48.6% while the slow band barely moved. Mean device power rose 10.1% in a single year, from 39.5 kW to 43.5 kW. Charging hubs grew 38.4% to 1,486 and their share of rapid provision rose 6.7 percentage points. On-street residential devices grew 34.2%, the fastest of any location category, and contactless-capable devices grew 46.8%.

Four measures moved down and each is worth reading on its own terms. CHAdeMO connectors fell 6.2%, a genuine standards transition. The number of networks fell 8.1%, from 74 to 68, through acquisition rather than failure. Battery electric cars per public device fell 3.4% and per ultra-rapid device fell 19.5%, both of which are improvements despite being declines. The free-to-use share fell a percentage point to 6.5%, even as the absolute count of free devices rose to 6,440.

Three measures are worth watching into the next edition and the census names them now so the call can be judged later. Hub concentration, at 64.9% of rapid provision and rising six to seven points a year, cannot continue at that pace for long without the isolated rapid device becoming a rarity. Contactless acceptance below 22kW, at 18.2% and 4.1%, is the measure most exposed to regulatory change. And the ratio of battery electric cars to ultra-rapid devices, improving nearly 20% a year, is the cleanest single indicator of whether provision is keeping pace with the parc.

The comparison table is also the cleanest test of whether this census is measuring the same thing each year. Definitions have not changed across the six editions: the same publicly accessible test, the same speed bands, the same hub threshold and the same treatment of duplicate listings. Where a boundary or a classification has moved, the earlier edition is restated rather than the current one adjusted, so the series compares like with like and any restatement is visible in the archive.

Previous editions of the census#

This is the sixth edition of the EV Cable Hub UK Charge Point Census. The first edition, published in January 2024, recorded 55,180 public charging devices, meaning the UK network has grown 78.2% across the life of the index.

The census publishes a flagship edition every January and an interim edition every July. Each one is snapshotted to a permanent dated child page carrying a canonical pointer back to this page and a banner stating which edition it is and where the current one lives. Archive pages are never deleted and never redirected, so a citation to a specific edition never breaks, and this page always carries the newest figures under a permanent address.

The longitudinal series is the part that is hard to get anywhere else, and it is why the archive is worth maintaining rather than merely storing. Across six editions the UK went from 55,180 devices to 98,340, from 79,460 connectors to 148,620, from 26,410 locations to 41,780 and from 2,820 ultra-rapid devices to 12,410, a 340% increase in the ultra-rapid count against 78% in the total. Installed capacity went from 1.31 GW to 4.28 GW.

Two things in that series are easy to miss. Locations grew far more slowly than devices, at 58.2% against 78.2%, which is the densification effect: operators keep adding units to sites that already have a grid connection. And the ultra-rapid share of devices rose from 5.1% to 12.6% in two and a half years, which is the single number that best describes how differently the UK network behaves now compared with the beginning of the index.

Because the slug never changes, the accumulated citations to this page point at the current figures rather than at a frozen snapshot. That is deliberate. A writer who linked to this census in 2024 sends a reader to the 2026 numbers today, and will send them to the 2027 numbers next year, while the 2024 edition remains available at its own address for anyone who needs to check what was published at the time.

Interactive tools#

Two calculators built on the 2026 census, three comparators covering regions, local authorities and networks, a searchable table of every figure on this page and an eighteen-item readiness checklist. Everything runs in the browser.

Each tool draws on the tables above rather than on a separate dataset, so the figures behind them are the figures published on this page and can be checked against it. The charging time calculator reproduces the published 10% to 80% times in Table 5 exactly at 60 kWh, and the density calculator reproduces the per-100,000 columns in Tables 13, 17 and 18.