Electric cars in Milton Keynes

4 August 2010, 17:22 | Updated: 4 August 2010, 18:03

Milton Keynes Council is still finalising the details of an electric vehicle scheme in the new city.

MK was allocated money from the old government to install charging points around the town, which it's hoped would encourage local people to adopt more eco friendly methods of transport - like electric cars.

But the exact details of the scheme are still being discussed with the new coalition government, which is making cuts to projects across the country.

Despite the uncertainty about the scale of the project, the Euro MP for the South East of England visited Milton Keynes today to see how things are progressing.

Catherine Bearder drove an electric car and rode an electric bike.

She told Heart she thinks the project's a great idea - but there's still a long way to go:

"It's early days. We're still in the implementation stage so I hope that it will be grasped by the citizens of Milton Keynes. They have as many concerns as everyone else about what is happening to the planet with climate change."

In MK there's currently around 280 electric vehicles on the road. That's around 0.11% of cars in the news city, and is higher than the national average of just 0.03% - or 12,527 vehicles.

The plan is to get 1,000 electric vehicles on MK's roads by 2010.

The Cabinet Member for Transport in Milton Keynes, Vanessa McPake, hopes the cash turns up.

"I will be very, very disappointed [if we don't get the money]. We had agreement with the government, we're one of only three places in the country [to get the funding] and we're very proud of that. We're just waiting to see the fine tuning, the paper work, to see how we move that forward."

"Obviously we would like things to move at a faster pace, but certainly the people of Milton Keynes are signed up to shifting the agenda - making sure that people do have low emission vehicles. Everybody worries about the fumes and the effects on their kids, and we do know that climate change will make things much tougher for everyone, up and down the nation."