Electric vehicle charging points have been installed in two National Parks in Yorkshire as part of a programme to make all of the UK’s National Parks EV-friendly by the end of 2025.

The scheme has seen 18 new EV charging points go live in the Yorkshire Dales National Park and North York Moors National Park, funded by BMW UK through its Recharge in Nature partnership with National Parks UK.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park has gained 12 of the new charge points, at the Malham National Park Visitor Centre, the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes and the Grassington National Park Visitor Centre. In the North York Moors, six chargers are now live at Sutton Bank National Park Centre and a further six will shortly be installed at Danby Lodge National Park Centre.

The three-year Recharge in Nature programme will see EV chargers installed across all 15 of the UK’s National Parks in the next two years, encouraging the use of EVs both by visitors – 5.1 million people visited the Yorkshire Dales National Park alone in 2022 – and those who live and work in the Parks.

“Part of our responsibility as National Parks is to conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of our Parks and this includes facilitating more sustainable journeys to Yorkshire’s National Parks,” sai Neil Heseltine, Chair of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority. “We’re so pleased that our partnership with BMW UK will support those who are travelling to Yorkshire’s National Parks in EVs, to do so with more confidence.”

BMW sees the scheme as part of a need to accelerate the installation of charge points across the UK – currently one third of the UK’s close to 54,000 public charging points are located in London and according to BMW Corporate Communications Director Graham Biggs, at least 300,000 charge points should be live by 2030.

“It’s important that the distribution of these chargers is spread right across the UK and we need to ensure that our countryside is brought up to speed with the bigger cities,” Biggs said. “Access to nature for everybody is so important and we’re pleased to be supporting the Recharge in Nature partnership to enable and encourage this through EV infrastructure, bus services and community engagement programmes.”