Sean says he breaks the law every time he charges his electric car outside his terraced home in Hull because access to charging is a “postcode lottery”.<\/p>\n
The 51-year-old bought his EV through the Motability scheme two years ago despite knowing he could not charge on his street, but hoped new infrastructure would make it easier for people without driveways to charge at home.<\/p>\n
Unable to install a wall-mounted charger because it would require council permission, he instead uses a cable running across the pavement overnight.<\/p>\n
A Hull City Council spokesperson said: “Under existing legislation, it is illegal to place a rope, wire or similar apparatus across a highway without consent.”<\/p>\n
The local authority is developing a policy on cross-pavement charging, but Sean says changes have not come quickly enough.<\/p>\n
“I knew that it was going to be a problem, but it’s one that hopefully the government was going to try and solve for people,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I just didn’t expect it to take as long as it is and it’s very different depending on where you live so it’s a bit of a postcode lottery, but I knew it was the right decision for us because of the cost-effectiveness of it, especially as you can see the prices of fuel going up as they are at the moment.”<\/p>\n
Sean, a carer who looks after two adults, mainly charges his car at a nearby hospital and public charging sites during the day, but uses a “granny charger” from a domestic mains supply to top up his car overnight.<\/p>\n
Charging at home is generally cheaper than using public charging points. Households on a standard variable electricity tariff currently pay an average of 26.32p per kilowatt-hour for electricity, while Hull City Council’s public charging network charges 30p per kilowatt-hour and chargers at Hull Royal Infirmary are listed at 33p per kilowatt-hour, with parking charges paid separately.<\/p>\n
Sean said he minimises the time the covered cables are across the path, putting them out late at night and removing them early in the morning.<\/p>\n
“You have to be a bit clever with how you do it, obviously you can’t have trailing wires and trip hazards so I have covers that go over it and I’ve written to the council several times to ask to be part of the pilot scheme.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean says he breaks the law every time he charges his electric car outside his terraced home in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-793626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}