Why this is an access question, not just a charger count
In South Kesteven, the difference can be as ordinary as where a car sleeps at night. A household with a driveway can usually plug in at home and leave the car to charge overnight. A household without off-street parking may have to work around a trip to a public bay, parking limits and whatever space is free that day. South Kesteven District Council puts the point plainly: where residents have off-street parking, charging at home is likely to be the “easiest and cheapest option”; without it, people may need communal or on-street charging.
That is why this is an access question, not just a charger count. The council’s own network now lists 20 chargers across five car-park locations: Welham Street in Grantham, North Street and Cattle Market in Stamford, the Community Centre in Market Deeping, and Burghley Community Car Park in Bourne. Those sites matter, but they do not serve every routine equally. Public charging that exists in a town-centre car park is not the same as charging that fits daily life for someone on a residential street. Even within the council-run network, 12 of the 20 listed chargers are in Stamford, which underlines how convenience is shaped by where the bays are, not only by how many there are.
What South Kesteven actually has on the ground
At the moment, someone using the council-run network has a fairly short list of places to aim for: South Kesteven District Council currently lists 20 chargers at five of its car parks. The mix is practical rather than uniform, with 7kW AC at Welham Street in Grantham, 14kW AC at North Street in Stamford, and 22kW AC units at Stamford Cattle Market, Market Deeping and Bourne. The rollout has happened in two clear steps: six dual charge points were installed in 2020, creating 12 bays, and then in August 2025 the Cattlemarket extension in Stamford gained four more dual 22kW chargers, adding another 8 EV bays.
There is also a live sign of further growth in Stamford rather than only a settled network. A planning agenda item for land south of Tinwell Road recorded a proposed 16-bay charging station with seating and toilet facilities, and officers recommended approval subject to conditions. That matters as a pipeline signal, but it is still different from a charger that can be used today. Taken together, this gives a confirmed baseline for the council network, not a complete map of every charging option across the district.
Why distance and routine matter in a 365 square mile district
Geography decides whether a charger is part of the day or an extra errand. South Kesteven covers 365 square miles, and the council-run sites are in specific town-centre locations such as Welham Street in Grantham, North Street and Cattle Market in Stamford, the Community Centre in Market Deeping and Burghley Community Car Park in Bourne. In a district that size, a charger being available somewhere in South Kesteven may still mean a noticeable diversion from the journeys people actually make. Wider research published in 2025 reaches a similar point: charging equity often turns on spatial access and usability, not just the headline total of bays.
Routine is where that becomes practical rather than abstract. A town-centre bay may fit a Grantham shopping trip, a lunch break in Stamford or an appointment in Bourne, but it may fit less well around a school run, an early shift or an evening return to a village outside those centres. Public charging can therefore carry time costs that overnight home charging does not: driving to the site, hoping a bay is free, and waiting long enough for the stop to be worthwhile. Around Grantham and the surrounding settlements, convenience is not really a district-wide average. It is shaped by which town is on the route, and which one is not.
Who finds the system easiest and who does not
For households with a driveway, the charging problem is usually much simpler. South Kesteven District Council says this directly: where residents have off-street parking, charging at home is likely to be the "easiest and cheapest option". The harder version of the same decision falls on people without that space at home. They are more likely to depend on communal, on-street or destination charging, which means fitting energy top-ups around public bays rather than around the end of the day.
The immediate local gap is not hard to describe in 2025. Lincolnshire County Council’s published LEVI response said zero chargepoints had yet been installed with LEVI funding, even though 55 were planned under the pilot, and it also said there were no current plans for cross-pavement charging trials. So, for a South Kesteven household without off-street parking, the more convenient backup options were still mostly either planned, elsewhere, or unresolved rather than available as a settled county offer.
That is why fairness is wider than a simple charger tally. A 2025 systematic review found four recurring equity questions in public charging: spatial access, cost burdens, reliability and usability, and awareness and trust. In plain terms, a bay only feels workable if it is near enough, affordable enough, dependable enough and understandable enough to become routine. On the evidence available, South Kesteven’s current setup clearly favours residents who can plug in at home, even though the local data does not yet show a ward-by-ward map of who feels that disadvantage most sharply.
What would count as progress from here
Progress from here would look less like another headline and more like a change in habit. The extra 22kW chargers added at Stamford Cattle Market in August 2025 matter, and the 16-bay Tinwell Road scheme with officer support suggests more capacity may follow in Stamford. But South Kesteven will only feel fairer when people without off-street parking can charge without building a separate journey around it. More bays in one town are useful; they do not, by themselves, turn charging into an ordinary weekly task across Grantham, Bourne, Market Deeping and the villages in between.
A practical standard already exists in the 2025 equity research. Public charging works better when four things line up at once: the site is near enough to everyday trips, the cost is manageable, the equipment is dependable and the system is easy to understand. Applied locally, that means the next meaningful test is not simply where a press release says chargers have been installed, but whether a resident who parks on the street can top up during a normal shop, shift or evening stop and trust the bay to be available and working.
That is the sharper South Kesteven measure of success: fewer special trips, fewer workarounds, and less dependence on having a private driveway in the first place. Technology earns its place when it disappears into ordinary life.
- [1] Electric Vehicle Public Charging Equity Considerations: A Systematic Review. (2025). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.09726 https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.09726