All of Springfield Properties future homes will come with already installed cabling for electric car charging points. The Scottish developer’s latest environmental initiative is one of the first in the UK and it will incorporate 7KW cabling to the most practical point in the home, allowing homebuyers to easily install a home charge point.

Innes Smith, Chief Executive of Springfield Properties said: “At Springfield, exploring new ways to protect the environment has been a focus of ours for many years and installing the infrastructure for electric car charge points in our homes was the next logical step for our customers.”

The 3,000-home community in Bertha Park will be amongst the first to benefit from the cabling. This initiative is the most recent one from a series of environmental measures delivered by the housebuilder. Using sustainable materials in the construction of its energy efficient timber-frame homes, offering solar photovoltaic panels as an option, and installing energy efficient hybrid boilers, are all part of Springfield’s green initiative.

“The Scottish Government has pledged that by 2032 all new vehicles sold in this country will be electric but we anticipate that the uptake will increase rapidly long before then. One of our values as a company, is to include everything a customer needs in their new home, so, with this is mind, we wanted to make it as easy as possible for our customers to go electric,” said Innes.

Those that own an electric car can apply for grants from the Energy Saving trust or the Office for Low Emission Vehicles of up to £500 to help them install a 32-amp home charge point. These external plugs are safer to operate, while cutting charging times by 30-60 per cent, depending on the make of the car. Homeowners that have a home charging point can also apply for an Electric Vehicle Loan, which covers the purchase of a new pure electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle of up to £35,000.