Electric car charging points broken in Cookstown

EFFORTS will be made to replace several electric car charging points which haven’t been working in Cookstown.

A local councillor said he found it “astonishing” that three out of the five charging points in the town haven’t been operational since July. UUP councillor, Trevor Wilson said, “The government is trying to encourage people to buy electric cars.

“However, in areas like Cookstown we do not have the infrastructure yet to make this valid. The fact that we only have five public charging points is not good enough and then the fact that only two are working is astonishing. This has been made worse that at the weekend the charger outside the leisure centre is not accessible after 6pm.”

The Electricity Supply Board (ESB), the organisation in charge of maintaining public charging points in Cookstown, stated that the chargers will be replaced as part of updates across the network.

A spokesperson for ESB said, “We currently have five charging stations in full in the Cookstown area of which three unfortunately are not working and are part of the LUF replacement program that we are currently carrying out. We have started replacements on a phased basis in Northern Ireland.

“I will ask the team to prioritize these additional three points at Union Place, Burnavon Theatre and South West College Cookstown if possible.”