Ealing Liberal Democrat Councillors submitted a motion in 2019 to get Ealing Council to declare a climate emergency.

It was debated at a full council meeting, where all Councillors from all political parties meet. The Liberal Democrat motion was subsequently agreed unanimously and adopted by Ealing Council.

After Ealing Council adopted our motion, in declaring a climate emergency, many other London boroughs followed suit in line with the London Assembly's declaration of a climate emergency and vowed to become carbon neutral by 2030.

One of the priorities of the Southfield Ward Forum since 2018 has been to encourage schemes to improve air quality. One scheme has been to increase the number of EVCP's in our Ward, either by stand alone EVCP's installed by Source London or by retrofitting EVCP's to lamp columns. In 2018 we had no EVCP's in Southfield, now we have over 30 of both types used. This is an amazing 25% of the borough's total.

Though Liberal Democrats have had much success in introducing these to Southfield to enable residents to change vehicles if they wish to do so, there is no time to be complacent, and we are still pushing the Council to introduce more so that residents are not unfairly disadvantaged.

But people clearly who were told to do the 'right thing' and replace their old cars with electric or hybrid cars, are now not able to charge them easily. There are still insufficient charging points compared to demand.

Ealing Council is also not taking requests for additional chargers as they have a backlog of requests which has dampened everyone's enthusiasm to move to EVs and slows progression to net zero.

A simple answer is to allow over pavement charging. But sadly, Ealing Council does not allow over pavement charging and its guidance states this on its website. I have seen many cars being charged all with the cable ramp to stop anyone tripping up and this allows prams, wheelchairs and scooters past.

Hampshire Council allows it and makes sure those that charge their vehicles using their own power sources do so after 8pm and stop charging before 8am whilst using a cable ramp.

Surely this is best practice from Hampshire Council and Ealing Council should learn from them. In the local elections this May the Liberal Democrats want to see Ealing Council change its position and we will be campaigning on this issue.

You can use www.zap-map.com to see where your nearest charging point is, and ealing.gov.uk to apply for a lamppost EVCP, to increase demand and encourage the Council to install one.