IN Brief:
- char.gy has reached 5,000 installed public charge points across the UK.
- The milestone unit was installed in Brighton & Hove, where kerbside charging is being expanded through local authority deployment.
- On-street charging is becoming a larger electrical infrastructure programme as councils address access for households without driveways.
char.gy has installed its 5,000th public charge point in the UK, with the milestone unit delivered in Brighton & Hove as the city expands kerbside EV charging.
The company specialises in on-street charging, including lamp-column and kerbside installations designed for drivers without private driveways or dedicated off-street parking. Its network has grown through local authority programmes that treat public charging as a distributed infrastructure asset rather than a series of isolated installations.
Brighton & Hove is a significant location for the milestone because many residents park on street. The city’s charging plans include additional lamp-column, fast, rapid, and ultra-rapid charge points, creating a layered charging network across residential streets, local destinations, and higher-power public sites.
Kerbside charging has a distinct engineering profile. Installations are typically lower power than rapid hubs, but they are more widely distributed and must work within existing street layouts, footway constraints, parking arrangements, lighting columns, local network capacity, and highway requirements.
Using existing street infrastructure can reduce visual clutter and civil works, but each site still needs careful assessment. Electrical capacity, feeder arrangements, pedestrian access, parking bay alignment, asset ownership, maintenance access, and user safety all affect whether a location is suitable.
The UK charging market is developing across several infrastructure categories at once. Actemium’s Scottish rapid charging hubs and InstaVolt’s battery-backed EV charging sites sit at the higher-power end of the sector, while kerbside networks address the residential access gap that would otherwise slow EV adoption in streets without private driveways. Read more: Actemium delivers Scottish rapid charging hubs and InstaVolt expands battery-backed EV charging sites.
Large-scale on-street charging brings new demands for low-voltage network planning. A single kerbside charger may be modest in power terms, but hundreds or thousands of chargers across residential areas can alter local demand patterns, particularly when charging coincides with evening domestic peaks.
That places more emphasis on load management, connection planning, utilisation data, and coordination between charge point operators, distribution network operators, and councils. Local authorities need charging coverage to expand quickly, while networks need visibility over future demand and the ability to avoid unnecessary reinforcement where managed charging can reduce peak pressure.
Reliability is another operational challenge. Kerbside chargers are exposed to weather, accidental damage, vandalism, variable parking behaviour, and high public usage. Maintenance performance therefore affects both driver confidence and the commercial viability of distributed charging networks made up of many smaller assets.
As deployment scales, standardised installation methods will become more important. Councils moving from pilot schemes to larger concession models need repeatable processes for site selection, consultation, traffic management, civil works, electrical connection, commissioning, asset registration, and ongoing maintenance.
The milestone also reflects a wider shift in public charging procurement. Local authorities are increasingly moving towards long-term infrastructure partnerships, rather than short-term grant-funded installations. Those models can support wider coverage, but they also require stronger assumptions around utilisation, maintenance cost, network access, and resident demand.
Brighton & Hove’s programme shows how kerbside charging is becoming part of everyday urban electrical infrastructure. Public EV charging will not be delivered through rapid hubs alone; it will also depend on thousands of smaller installations embedded into the low-voltage networks and streets where vehicles are actually parked.
More information on Brighton & Hove’s EV charging programme is available through the council’s electric vehicle charge point guidance.
