Tower Hamlets’ roll out of residential EV charge-points has been one of the largest, and fastest, of its kind in the UK – with 2,000 installed in just 79 days. With on-column charge-points firmly at its heart, what lessons can other local authorities learn from its experience?
By Mark Cooper
Street lighting columns, we all know as ILP members, have evolved far beyond their traditional role of illuminating roads and footways.
Across the UK, they are increasingly being used to support connected cities, environmental monitoring and, most visibly, the transition to electric vehicles.
Few projects demonstrate this transformation more clearly than the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where an ambitious programme converted existing lighting infrastructure into one of the UK’s largest on-street EV charging networks. Moreover, it became one of the fastest large-scale residential EV charging roll outs ever undertaken in the UK.
When Tower Hamlets set out to expand access to residential EV charging, the ambition was clear: create a network that would make electric vehicle ownership more practical for residents without off-street parking. The solution centred on an asset already found on almost every residential street – the street lighting column.
Few London boroughs present a greater challenge for on-street EV charging than Tower Hamlets. Covering just under 20 km², the borough is one of the smallest local authorities in England by area. Yet it is also one of the most densely populated, with more than 310,000 residents recorded in the 2021 census and a population that grew by 22.1% between 2011 and 2021 – the fastest growth rate of any local authority in England and Wales.
Tower Hamlets was created in 1965 through the merger of Bethnal Green, Poplar and Stepney, and today combines some of London’s most historic neighbourhoods, including Whitechapel and the East End, with the modern financial centre of Canary Wharf.
With many residents living in flats or properties without off-street parking, the borough has long been recognised as one of the areas where accessible public on-street charging infrastructure will play a critical role in supporting the transition to electric vehicles.
In May 2025, we at ubitricity were awarded a contract to deliver 2,000 on-street charge points across the borough and operate the network over a 10-year period.
By October of that year, all 2,000 chargers had been installed, completing the deployment around three months ahead of our own ambitious programme. In the process, this created one of the largest lamp-column charging networks in the country and the fastest deployment of chargers to have been seen in the UK.
This article intends to consider some of the practical and operational challenges created by a charge-point roll out of this scale and speed and lessons learned along the way that may be applicable, or useful, for others.
FROM TENDER TO DELIVERY
The tender challenged suppliers to provide a large-scale residential charging solution that could be delivered rapidly, minimise street clutter and offer convenient access for residents.
Lamp column charging was a natural fit, allowing the council to utilise existing street lighting infrastructure rather than introducing large numbers of new roadside assets.
Tower Hamlets’ requirement for 2,000 on-street charge points reflected the unique challenges of delivering EV charging in, as highlighted, one of the UK’s most densely populated urban boroughs.
Further, the tender called for a fully funded solution capable of providing round-the-clock public charging while minimising additional street furniture by making maximum use of existing lighting columns.
Accessibility and inclusion – as highlighted in the earlier article – was another important factor. Resident engagement and visual impact were central themes throughout the specification, alongside a requirement for high levels of operational performance and long-term maintenance.
For a borough where many residents do not have access to private driveways or off-street parking, the challenge was not simply installing charge-points but creating a reliable and inclusive charging network that could be woven into the existing streetscape with minimal disruption to the urban environment.
DATA MANAGEMENT
Following the contract award, the project team faced a significant logistical challenge: identifying and approving sufficient locations to support a 2,000-unit roll out while maintaining programme momentum.
Tower Hamlets provided a database of around 11,000 lighting columns across the borough. Using a combination of network planning tools, desktop assessments and local knowledge, ubitricity analysed these assets to identify over 2,500 potential charging locations.
Rather than relying on a traditional sequential process of survey, approval and installation, the project team worked with the council to establish a faster approach. The pool of 2,500 sites received pre-approval, allowing survey and installation activities to take place in parallel. If a location met all technical requirements during the survey visit, installers could proceed immediately.
This decision became one of the defining factors behind the speed of the roll out, as the original tender programme anticipated a borough-wide roll out extending through December 2025, progressing ward-by-ward from Bow East in the north of the borough to Island Gardens in the south.
As delivery progressed, a combination of pre-approved sites, parallel survey and installation workflows and close coordination between stakeholders enabled the team to significantly outperform the contractual programme. The network reached 2,000 operational charge-points in early October, demonstrating how process innovation can deliver greater programme gains than simply engineering improvements alone.
Large infrastructure projects, we all know, rarely succeed through technology alone. In Tower Hamlets, collaboration between multiple organisations proved critical.
Unlike conventional street lighting projects, the programme required close coordination between highway teams, lighting teams, distribution network operators, charging specialists and residents, creating a significantly broader stakeholder landscape than many traditional asset replacement schemes.
TRADITIONAL ENGINEERING
While the project was delivered under the banner of EV infrastructure, many of its challenges, in truth, were rooted in traditional street lighting engineering.
For example, existing lighting assets had to be surveyed, assessed, modified and maintained while continuing to perform their primary function. The project therefore relied heavily on street lighting expertise, with installation teams applying established highways electrical practices, asset management procedures and safety standards throughout the programme. For all of those involved, the project represented the growing convergence of lighting infrastructure and transport electrification.
The council’s project team, including the street lighting department, provided strategic direction, site approvals and resident engagement support. We, in turn, led on the network planning, project management, hardware supply and contract delivery. Installation and maintenance activities, in turn again, were undertaken by Volker Highways, while UK Power Networks (UKPN) supported the deployment through its ‘connect and notify’ process.
Weekly project meetings were established during mobilisation and delivery, creating a structure for rapid decision-making and issue resolution. Real-time project data, shared site lists and continuous communication helped ensure all parties were working from the same information. The collaborative approach was particularly important when the project encountered an unexpected technical challenge.
THE PROBLEM NO ONE FOUND ON THE DESKTOP SURVEY
At the planning stage, the assumption was that the majority of lighting columns would accommodate standard charging hardware.
As surveys progressed, the team however discovered that many columns lacked sufficient internal space to accommodate both charging equipment and the additional protection devices required under the latest edition of BS 7671.In response, we developed an ex-tended-door solution that relocated charging components into a purpose-designed replacement door while maintaining safe access to lighting equipment.
This innovation allowed modern compliance requirements to be met without replacing significant numbers of otherwise serviceable lighting columns. What began as a deployment challenge ultimately became a product development exercise, enabling the vast proportion of the borough’s standard lighting assets to be converted into charging infrastructure.
One of the more complex issues involved columns where access doors faced directly into the footpath. Installing equipment in the conventional manner would have created accessibility concerns and potentially introduced footpath obstruction issues. The solution required more than a simple installation adjustment.
Working closely with a specialist manufacturing partner (Pudsey Diamond), the project team developed a bespoke wrap-around column solution that repositioned the charger access point parallel to the road while retaining the standard charging hardware. This enabled previously unsuitable columns to remain part of the programme.
Crucially, the design, manufacture and approval of these new solutions was completed without materially affecting project delivery timelines. The takeaway here for lighting professionals is a familiar one: the greatest risks in infrastructure projects are often hidden within the existing asset base rather than the new technology being deployed.
SPEED THROUGH PROCESS INNOVATION
The roll out’s success was not driven solely by installation productivity. Much of the programme’s efficiency came from rethinking project processes.
For example, network planning soft-ware was used to evaluate demand, parking patterns, existing infrastructure and accessibility considerations across the borough. This reduced the time required to identify suitable locations and improved confidence that installed chargers would see meaningful utilisation. Behind the physical roll out sat a comprehensive digital asset management platform.
Every prospective location, survey result, approval, installation, test certificate and maintenance activity was tracked through a centralised system, providing real-time visibility across the programme. This allowed project teams to identify risks early, coordinate field resources efficiently and maintain a complete digital record of every asset from survey through to commissioning.
The combination of pre-approved locations, digital surveying tools and a single-visit survey-and-install methodology significantly reduced programme duration.
To that end, the first charge-point was installed on 15 June 2025, just four weeks after contract signature. The 2,000th followed on 2 October 2025. In all, the project delivered 2,000 charge-points in just 79 working days, averaging more than 25 installations per working day across the programme. At peak production, more than 76 charge-points were installed in a single day.
LESSONS FOR THE LIGHTING SECTOR
In conclusion, Tower Hamlets’ experience demonstrates how the lighting sector is increasingly becoming a key enabler of wider transport decarbonisation.
More widely, I would argue that, for the lighting sector as a whole, Tower Hamlets provides a compel-ling example of how existing public assets can be repurposed to support wider transport, environmental and decarbonisation objectives.
The project demonstrates that successful EV infrastructure delivery is not simply about chargers. It is about asset knowledge, engineering expertise, stakeholder collaboration and a willingness to innovate.
As local authorities continue to expand charging provision, and the roll out of EV charging infrastructure continues to accelerate, street lighting networks are likely to remain at the centre of that transition.
Mark Cooper IEng FILP is senior partnership manager at ubitricity
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the September edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
Image: ubitricity
