Department for Transport

Zapmap has been a trusted data partner to the Department for Transport (DfT) since 2017, providing information on the growth of the public charging network throughout the UK. In 2025, Zapmap was awarded a contract to supply the DfT with open data from public chargepoints. Under the contract, Zapmap aggregates publicly available data from all public chargepoints in the UK and provides this on a periodic basis to the DfT. 

The DfT uses this data as part of its monitoring of the UK’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure, releasing monthly and quarterly statistics on the growth in the number of charging devices across the country. The Department breaks this data down by local authority, power rating and location type.

The DfT’s releases, categorised as official statistics in development by the Office for National Statistics, also utilise historic data from Zapmap going back to April 2020.

“There are no other sources with such comprehensive coverage against which we could verify the Zapmap devices.” – Department for Transport

The DfT leverages Zapmap data to produce its map showing the density of charging devices by local authority.

Thanks to Zapmap data, the DfT produces high-level statistics on a monthly basis, with a more granular view released quarterly. The latter sees the DfT track the number and growth of publicly available electric vehicle charging devices in the UK, as well as a number of other aspects.

Indeed, the data sourced from Zapmap enables the DfT to cover public charging devices by charging speed, to categorise public charging devices by their location category, and to create a breakdown of public charging devices per 100,000 of the population by UK country and region.

“To produce the official statistics, charging device location data is sourced from the electric vehicle charging platform Zapmap,” states the DfT’s official quarterly statistics release.

The result is a detailed analysis of the UK’s charging infrastructure, with comprehensive Zapmap data ultimately enabling the DfT to provide an official information source on the state of EV charging across the country.

In 2026, the metric used by the DfT to track the size of the public charging network changed from devices to EV chargers, to more closely reflect the number of EVs that can be charged simultaneously. In parallel, the power band labels have been updated to provide more intuitive language for consumers, with the power band from 3kW up to 7.9kW  renamed from Slow to Standard and the power band from 8kW up to 49kW renamed from Fast to Standard Plus. Zapmap worked closely with the DfT to define and clarify terminology, ensure statistical alignment throughout the transition and to provide explanatory information and graphics to help communicate the changes to both the public and industry. Full details of these changes can be seen on this EV charger explainer page. 

The Department for Transport is a ministerial department supported by 24 agencies and public bodies. The DfT works with agencies and partners to support the transport network that helps the UK’s businesses and gets people and goods travelling around the country. It plans and invests in transport infrastructure to keep the UK on the move.