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Welcome to Business Reporter's Best of British Business campaign.  As electric vehicles become an increasingly common sight on UK roads,  the conversation about public charging infrastructure  is more urgent than ever.  Millions of people, particularly in urban areas,  face significant barriers to EV adoption  because they can't charge at home.  In this interview, we explore the realities of public on-street charging,  the role of local government,  and how companies like Chargy are stepping up to close the gap. So what happens when forward-thinking councils  and innovative providers come together  to tackle one of the biggest challenges in the EV transition?  I'm joined by John Lewis, CEO of Chargy,  and Kieran Fitzel, EV Lead at Brighton & Hove Council.  John, Kieran, welcome. John, to you first.  EVs and charging infrastructure very much in the spotlight at the moment. Just give us what is the current state of play in the UK. Sure, yeah. So it's obviously a growing industry. It's a relatively new industry.  It's really taking off. So last year, over 20 % of new vehicles registered were EVs. In the first quarter of this year, it's up to 25%. So  over the next five, six years, you'll see that move to 100 % of all new vehicles will be EVs. In terms of charging, charging infrastructure is clearly absolutely critical for this so people can move around. There's been a big growth over the last year as private investments come into charging. There's now 75,000 public charges in the UK and that charging focuses on both  what we call hubs, which is similar to a motorway service station, but also local charging for people who are parking up,  be it in a car park or on the street. Is it easy to make that switch to EVs? So having transitioned to an EV myself, what I've found is it's really easy. Right. Especially if you have a driveway. Yes.  Because if you park your  car at home, you can charge overnight. It's a bit like having a mobile phone. You leave the next day with a full charge. What we're doing with our solution is giving that very equivalent solution to people without a driveway. So when they pull up outside the house at night and park on the street or in a car park if they're in an apartment, they too can plug in, charge their car overnight in one of our chargers and they've got a full charge the next morning. Karen, do councils have  the will and indeed the funding to  help people make the switch? I think they certainly have the will. What we don't probably have is necessarily the expertise or certainly the funding to be able to invest in.  the public charge point  infrastructure. We've been very fortunate in  being awarded further funding from central government. So we have over three million pounds that we've recently received, which is going to enable us to roll out  over 2,000 additional charge points over the next um three years in Brighton and Hove. Kiran, can you tell me more about the partnership between Brighton and Hove and Chargy?  How and why it developed and what your key considerations were when you're thinking about developing charging infrastructure? So I think Bryant has always been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to um electricity. um In the  1880s, we introduced the first streetlamps into the city. think there was over two miles of streetlamps.  That was shortly followed by the introduction of the first electric railway.  So the Volks railway in Bryant is still running to this day. It's the longest running uh electric railway in the country, in the world, in fact.  So we've always been at the forefront of innovation. So when we went out to contract last year for our expansion of our current EV network, so we have about 500 charge points  across the city at the moment,  and we wanted to increase that. We're obviously working towards our net zero targets in 2030,  and we foresee that there's going to be a need for a  minimum of 2,000 charge points within the next three years. But what we've been able to achieve with um the exercise is significantly more than that. um So Chargy have come back to us and said we can deliver 6,000 charge points within six years. So that's fantastic for us. That's fantastic for our residents as well. And for us, what attracted us to Chargy was  the low costs in terms of  using existing infrastructure, because that was really important. We have a network of  lamp columns out there that have an electrical connection. So Chargy's solution uses the existing infrastructure that we have in the street. And what that means is that we're not disrupting residents. We're not digging up the pavements. We're not cluttering the pavements with additional charge points either. So we're using that existing network of  infrastructure that's in the city. The cost of the solution meant that it  could be rolled out at scale.  And also the financial backing that CharG has as an organization  meant that um it  built trust in that relationship and uh reassurance that what was being put in now is going to still be there in 15 years' time.  John, we just heard Kieran there talk about the partnership. From Brighton Hove's perspective, what about from Chargis' perspective? Yeah, so we're very excited about this partnership. We'll be working with Brighton and Hove to develop charging infrastructure across Brighton, up to 6,000 charge points on the street to serve people without their own driveways. We see this as one of the first significant uses of the government's Levi funding to develop local on-street charging. It's a real turning point for the country because councils elsewhere are going to be deploying the same types of solutions. What Brighton did particularly well  is first of all,  thorough sort of investigation into what the market can do. So market engagement, they've done a number of trials with different providers to understand the types of solutions that work for their residents. And then they ran a very thorough, I mean,  obviously a government procurement process to assess the different options. In particular, what I would say is they structured that in a way that was very  know, attractive to private investment to make the network much larger than it would have been otherwise. Over the next five years, up to about 6,000 charge points. We will be working with the council and residents to put those in the right place. It's really important that charge points go both where they're needed today, but also where they're going to drive need in the future.  Also really important that they're, you know, reliable and available  and a good user experience because that then encourages people.  to adopt further EVs and use them. I think that's really important because this is a journey for both of us  and also our residents as well. So many of our residents don't currently have an EV or may not even be thinking about getting an EV. But at some point we're hoping that when they do look to switch out their current vehicle, they will switch to an electric vehicle. Is this sort of partnership common?  Well, I don't think um it is at the moment,  but it will be. So the government has made available over 300 million pounds across the country to local councils  to embark on this similar journey to  put charge points  out  for the general public to use. I think what we're going to be seeing over the next couple of years in particular  is a real surge in demand  for experienced and experienced operators. So we're very fortunate, I think, to be one of the first to go out to market.  hoping that we can do is allow us to learn from our own experience.  So I've made it very clear  within the local government circles that  what we do in Brighton will be open.  The learning from that will be available to others to be shared across local government sectors. John, finally, what's next for charging?  Yeah, so we're obviously very focused  on this space in terms of delivering charging for people who don't have a driveway.  We already have 4,000 Chargers nationwide. We've been around for seven years. We're very focused on the driver experience,  recognising that what we're doing here is helping people  on their journey to sustainable transport.  And over the next five years, we're targeting to help a billion drivers  on that journey.  John, Kieran, thank you so much.  That was John Lewis, CEO of Chargy  and Kieran Fitzel from Brighton and Hove Council. uh you