IN Brief:
- Believ will deliver up to 3,974 standard-plus sockets and 248 rapid sockets across four Hertfordshire districts.
- The £38 million programme combines private capital with LEVI support and includes planning, installation, operation, and maintenance.
- Site design is being shaped by power availability, land constraints, and pavement width.
Believ has been appointed by Hertfordshire County Council to deliver a £38 million rollout of public EV charging infrastructure across Dacorum, Hertsmere, Three Rivers, and Watford. The programme includes up to 3,974 standard-plus sockets rated at up to 22kW and 248 rapid sockets rated at 50kW, adding a substantial volume of local charging capacity in areas where access to private off-street charging remains limited.
Most of the planned installations are intended for residential streets, with rapid chargers due to be installed in selected council-owned car parks. The split reflects the way local authority charging strategies are evolving. Residential charging is increasingly focused on repeat overnight use by households without driveways, while faster public charging is being placed where shorter dwell times and shared access make more sense operationally.
Believ is providing £36 million of the project funding, with Hertfordshire County Council contributing £2.1 million through the government’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure fund. The company is also responsible for planning, installation, operation, and maintenance. That structure gives the programme a longer operational horizon than a simple supply-and-install contract and places asset performance, uptime, and maintenance alongside initial build volumes.
The county has divided rollout responsibility across different areas and providers, which reflects the increasing complexity of local charging delivery. Power availability, street layout, land ownership, pavement width, parking patterns, and civil works all shape what can actually be installed at a given location. Local authority charging programmes are now being designed around those practical constraints rather than around headline charger totals alone.
The Hertfordshire scheme also sits within a larger national shift driven by LEVI-backed procurement. Early local authority charging programmes often centred on pilots and limited networks. Current frameworks are larger, more geographically targeted, and more explicit about long-term operation. Reliability, maintenance response, accessibility, and expansion potential are now central to contract design, particularly where public charging is intended to serve as everyday infrastructure rather than occasional top-up provision.
The combination of slower residential charging and faster public charging reflects a more layered approach to network planning. Standard and fast sockets on residential streets serve longer dwell periods and recurring local demand. Rapid chargers in public car parks support a different usage profile and can offer more flexibility across mixed user groups. As local authorities move beyond small-scale deployment, those distinctions are becoming a routine part of infrastructure planning rather than an afterthought.
Distribution capacity remains one of the quiet constraints behind that growth. Street-by-street deployment has to work around local network conditions, available connection points, and the economics of reinforcement. The councils and delivery partners now moving fastest are often the ones structuring programmes around those realities from the beginning, rather than treating network constraints as something to be dealt with after contracts are awarded.
Believ has published further details on the rollout here.
