Councils receive £36,000 electric car funding

More than £36,000 in government funding will be provided to boost the number of charging points for electric cars in Lancashire, the deputy prime minister has announced.

Under the plans, Hyndburn Borough Council will receive £26,250 and Pendle Borough Council will receive £10,000. Northern Rail, which runs rail services across the North of England, has also been allocated £322,500 to install charging points in train station car parks.

Electric car owners do not have to pay car tax or congestion charges and many chargepoints are free to use. The cars cost from just 2p a mile, which means a family that drives an electric vehicle 10,000 miles in a year would save around £1,000 on fuel costs each year.

Nick Clegg said: “Electric cars are one of the most promising of our green industries and we want to secure the UK’s position as a global leader in both the production and adoption of these vehicles. The extremely low running costs of electric cars help drivers save money and we are allocating more than £9m to boost chargepoints across the country to help drivers to go green. “This means we can lower UK emissions and create high-tech engineering and manufacturing jobs to boost our economy.”