Owners of electric cars in Sandbach could find themselves charging their vehicles at charging points in council owned car parks – if a local councillor has her way.

Cheshire East Council's highways and transport committee discussed installing points across the borough at its highways and transport committee this week.

A strategy has been put together to take the plan further and vice chair Councillor Laura Crane who lives in Wheelock, says she will be fighting to get some installed in the town.

"Sandbach is a key location and the middle of the borough and so is a good location. There are no plans for the town at the moment but I will be pushing to get some here."

The council's highways and transport committee met to discuss the plan, the Cheshire East Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy.

Richard Hubbert, the council's head of strategic transport and parking, told the committee that in the middle of last year there were 2,100 electric cars registered with private users across the borough and, because of the ban on selling new petrol and diesel cars which comes in 2030, that number will grow.

The report to the committee acknowledged that, although the council has invested in providing some electric vehicle charge points "there are extensive gaps in current provision within Cheshire East.

Notably, there is a lack of provision in the Macclesfield area and in areas of other towns where houses do not have off- street parking".

Mr Hubbert said because most council car parks were in prime town centre locations this was ideal for charging points.

"I would be optimistic we could enter into this at no real cost to the authority, it might even be a revenue earner for the authority," he said.

"We need to go through that commercial procurement exercise to get to that position."

Cllr Mike Stewart agreed saying: "I represent an area that's got a lot of houses that open directly on to a road; they're not going to be able to have a charging point. We have to cater for those people."

He said putting the charge points in the council's car parks would help boost the town centres.

"If we want to maintain footfall in our town centres we've got to cater for people taking their cars in and being able to charge these machines," said Cllr Stewart.

He said some supermarket chains were installing charging points "but most of these are out of town sites so, if it's only out of town sites where people with electric cars can go, that will make our town centres even emptier than they are now".

Middlewich councillor Mike Hunter said this could be a real income generator for the council at a time when it most needed it.

"It places us in pole position because of the car park estates that we own," said Cllr Hunter. "We need to make sure we take advantage of those opportunities because, if we don't we're diddling ourselves out of money basically."