RESIDENTS with an electric car could soon be able to use the city’s car parks to charge their vehicles overnight for free.

Worcester City Council is moving to offer free overnight parking for electric vehicles after

The permit scheme would allow electric vehicle owners who live in the city and within a kilometre of a charging point to recharge their cars overnight between 6pm and 8am without any parking charge.

Electric car owners would still have to pay the standard fee for charging their vehicles.

Earlier this year, councillors agreed to spend up to £55,000 to install six electric charging points at Tallow Hill car park – enough to charge 12 vehicles in one go – and four electric charging points in the King Street car park, which are due to be up and running soon.

The installation of the new electric charging points was also paid for using £68,500 of government money from the ‘on-street residential charging scheme’ – which comes with a stipulation that the council must offer free overnight access to its car parks for charging.

Council car parks are already free between 9pm and 7am.

The government’s ‘on-street residential charging scheme’ supports councils to offer electric charging points to residents without off-street parking.

The council is looking to introduce a permit scheme for the chargers which would mean permit holders must use an electric or hybrid vehicle and live within one kilometre of a car park with electric vehicle chargers.

They must also be charging cars from the beginning of the session and would be charged the standard tariff for charging vehicles – which increased in September to 60p per kilowatt hour (kWh) at the rapid charging points in St Martin’s gate car park and 45p for other fast chargers.

To allow vehicles with larger batteries to fully charge, the council has upped the maximum length of a free stay in ‘rapid’ electric charging bays from one hour to two. Those using ‘fast’ charging bays could stay for up to ten hours but would have to be paid for.

Permit holders could only stay between 12pm and 6pm and then take advantage of free overnight parking.

The environment committee meets in the Guildhall on November 7 to discuss the plans.