What the UK Can Learn from Norway About Fixing Regional EV Charging Disparity

Why regional charging disparities matter & the current landscape in the UK

Regional charging disparities are no longer a side issue in the UK’s electrification journey Not because the UK is failing to deploy infrastructure, but because the way infrastructure is being deployed produces predictable geographic imbalances.

It is not that the commercials are completely unworkable, but private investment will always favour the approach that has the best opportunity for a strong return on investment. As it stands this is unfortunately incompatible with the national goal of making EVs a truly mainstream mobility option across every region.

The UK now has a sizeable public charging network, and it continues to grow. The most recent quarterly statistics published by the Department for Transport & ZapMap show 86,021 publicly available charging devices as of 1 October 2025.

However, national totals don’t tell the full story about where chargers are, what power they provide, and whether they can be relied on.

On a per-capita basis, the same DfT release reports an average of 127.3 public charging devices per 100,000 people across the UK, but with extreme regional variation. London is reported at 300.8 devices per 100,000, while Northern Ireland is at 38.6. Yorkshire and the Humber sits at 75.7.

Power mix matters as much as volume. DfT’s October 2025 release shows that 20% of charging devices were rated 50 kW and above (17,356 devices), and 11% were 150 kW and above. This is important because different power tiers serve different use-cases. Low-power AC on-street charging can be a lifeline for residents without off-street parking, but it does not solve long-distance travel, rural corridor confidence, or fleet turnaround needs.

Independent watchdogs have been explicit that the UK’s market-led rollout has created a geographic divide. The National Audit Office reported that 44% of public chargepoints were installed in London and the South-East, and that only 15% of chargepoints in England were in rural areas (as of July 2024). A year later, the Committee of Public Accounts still described the rollout as “too few charge points” outside London and the South-East, citing 43% located in those regions and calling out that rural and other regions remain more poorly served.

One final point for context… the next DfT quarterly release (covering up to 1 January 2026) is scheduled for 26 February 2026, and DfT has indicated this update is delayed to enable significant changes to processing and outputs (including EVSE statistics). So, if you are building strategy in early 2026, you are working with high-quality directional data, but the official statistical series is still evolving.

What Norway did differently and what Europe is doing now

Norway is not just better as electrification. It is a case study in treating coverage as a national enabling condition, not an accidental outcome of private investment.

The scale of Norway’s EV adoption is now beyond debate. Official figures published by the Norwegian Road Federation show battery electric vehicles reached a 95.9% share of new passenger car sales in 2025. Reuters reported the same milestone and described it as a sharp increase from 2024. This level of adoption creates political accountability for charging reliability in every region. If 95% of new cars are electric, the charging network is not a niche amenity like it is treated in many other parts of the world.

The mechanisms that matter for UK policymakers, operators, and investors sit in Norway’s charging strategy. The national charging strategy states plainly that Enova has been key for subsidising deployment of publicly accessible charging infrastructure for light vehicles, even as the market matured and most stations increasingly developed on commercial terms. That “mature market plus targeted gap-fill” blend is the lesson. It is not permanent subsidy, that is important, it is strategic intervention where the market will not naturally go.

That targeted intervention is described explicitly in Chapter 5 of Norway’s National Charging Strategy. It explains that Enova’s early programmes in 2015 and 2016 supported rapid chargers along main highways and resulted in 131 rapid charging stations. It then details how Enova supported rapid charging stations in municipalities with fewer than two previous stations, plus competition-based schemes in areas where EV use was not yet common, including installations in remote regions such as Finnmark and parts of Northern Norway.

The most directly transferable element for the UK is the 2022 “gap fill” logic. Norway’s strategy states that the government strengthened Enova with 100 million NOK (circa £7.7 million) in the 2022 state budget so that it could contribute to rapid chargers in areas without an adequate basis for commercial development, and that operators could receive support for up to 100% of approved investment costs. It also describes category rules such as minimum distance requirements (25 km from other publicly accessible rapid chargers, reduced to 15 km for municipalities with no previously deployed or planned rapid chargers). It then reports that Enova awarded support in June 2022 to 58 rapid chargers, 11 normal chargers in areas without a permanent road connection, and one normal charger on a mountain pass. When deployed, rapid chargers would be accessible over the entire country, including areas with low population density and little traffic.

There are two UK-relevant implications in that design:

First, the programme is explicitly location-driven, not output-driven. The category rules are about distance and absence of prior coverage, not total volume.

Second, it aligns incentives with reality. In low-density areas, utilisation will be lower, and without intervention the commercials will be less attractive. Norway did not pretend that the private committee case would suddenly work. It paid to close the gap.

Norway’s strategy also treats enabling conditions as a multi-agency problem. It discusses grid connection as a prerequisite to growth of the network and notes that grid companies are obliged to connect customers and that licensing and capacity constraints still create processing challenges, just at it does in the UK. It also highlights land use and municipal planning as essential, referencing the role of municipalities as planning authorities and the need to allocate sufficient sites in zoning plans.

For UK stakeholders, this matters because a purely “CPO-led” framing is too narrow. If you want even coverage, you need coordination between charging operators, planning authorities, landowners, grid planners, and the agencies controlling road corridors.

Europe’s broader direction of travel

Norway is the sharpest comparator on regional disparity. But it is not the only European market that has moved away from hoping the market will naturally paint in the empty parts of the map.

At EU level, the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation sets binding requirements that make minimum corridor coverage a legal expectation. The Council’s press release on adoption explains that from 2025, fast recharging stations of at least 150 kW for cars and vans must be installed every 60 km along the EU’s main transport corridors (TEN-T). This is, in effect, a coverage rule that forces the system to serve long-distance mobility, not just profitable urban clusters.

Germany has gone further with a state-commissioned build programme aimed at filling coverage gaps. The German Ministry and its national lead agency describe the Deutschlandnetz programme as a tendered network that will create around 9,000 high power charging points by the end of 2026 at more than 1,000 locations, including urban, suburban, and rural areas and unmanaged motorway rest areas. The key point is not the exact number. It is the model: government identifies the “missing” locations and then tenders delivery to private companies, rather than waiting for private capital to decide that a low-utilisation location has suddenly become exciting.

The Netherlands offers a different lesson, focused more on coordinated planning and concessions. The Dutch National Charging Infrastructure Agenda (often referred to as NAL) presents itself as a multi-stakeholder agenda aimed at making charging widely accessible. Its brochure notes that municipalities have increased collaboration through regional concessions for public charging infrastructure. This is a governance point the UK should take seriously: fragmentation of local procurement, without a strong coordinating mechanism, tends to reproduce uneven capacity and uneven outcomes.

In other words, across Europe the trend is consistent: set minimum expectations for coverage, use coordinated procurement or co-investment to fill the gaps, and treat interoperability and reliability as part of infrastructure delivery, not as optional extras later.

What the UK could do to address EV charging regional disparities

If regional charging disparity is to be addressed meaningfully, the response cannot sit solely with central government. Industry actors also have a role in shaping a more balanced network.

First, targeted co-investment models should be expanded. Where utilisation forecasts in lower density areas are weak, blended finance between public funds, local authorities and private operators can close viability gaps. Norway’s gap-fill logic demonstrates that limited, location-specific intervention can unlock national coverage.

Second, procurement should prioritise underserved regions. Local authority tenders and landowner partnerships can be structured to incentivise deployment in areas with low existing density, rather than reinforcing already saturated urban clusters.

Third, grid coordination must move upstream with standing charge certainty for operators. Early engagement between operators, distribution network operators and planning authorities can identify capacity bottlenecks and de-risk rural or semi-rural deployment before sites enter formal development. Coverage planning cannot sit downstream of grid constraints, in addition to volatility in the cost of just being connected to the grid, before a car is charged which must be addressed.

Fourth, reliability and security should be treated as part of regional equity. Areas perceived as higher operational risk, including rural and peripheral sites, are often deprioritised by investors. Designing infrastructure with resilience, security and maintainability in mind reduces perceived risk and supports wider geographic rollout.

Finally, the industry should align around transparent regional data. Consistent publication of per capita density, power mix and corridor coverage metrics would allow policymakers, investors and the public to assess progress more accurately. Visibility of gaps is a prerequisite for closing them.

Regional charging disparity will not correct itself through scale alone. As Norway and other European markets demonstrate, coverage requires deliberate design, coordinated planning and targeted intervention. If electrification is to be genuinely nationwide, industry must move beyond volume-driven growth and begin treating geographic balance as a core performance metric.

About the author

Reuben Elman

Marketing Lead · Formula Space

Reuben leads marketing and thought leadership at Formula Space, working closely with clients, industry specialists and internal delivery teams to understand the real shifts happening across EV infrastructure. His work focuses on turning those conversations, datasets and on-site learnings into practical insight for charge point operators and landowners across the UK and Europe.

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