Gullies in pavements that would enable residents without off-street parking to charge electric vehicles outside their homes could be allowed by county council highway chiefs in Hertfordshire "in a limited set of circumstances".

Currently those with electric vehicles but without driveways have to rely on public charging points in car parks, supermarkets or other commercial stations – which can be a distance from their homes.

And once there, they can find the cost of charging vehicles at public charging points can be up to 10 times more than charging at home.

But at the latest meeting of the county council's highway and transport cabinet panel, officials revealed they were looking at the possibility of allowing gullies to be built into the pavement "in some circumstances" in the future.

The thin channels would allow residents to run a cable from their home to their cars without it trailing on top of the pavement.

And, according to council officials, they could increase "chargepoint equity", address "gaps in the network" and help to enable EV uptake.

The installation of a gullies would only be possible in future if the county council was to make changes to it's EV charging policy.

But the possibility – "in a limited set of circumstances" – was outlined to councillors as part of an 'electric vehicle chargepoint update'.

Among circumstances where the gullies could be used were said to be areas with "prohibitively high" connection costs or insufficient space for the siting of charging-points.

Alternatives catalogued in the report included trailing the cable 'bare' across the footway – or covering it with a 'cable protector'.

Currently none of these options are permitted by the county council and would be subject to enforcement action.

According to the report presented to councillors at the meeting the council's focus should remain on the provision of publicly available chargepoints, rather than private installations.

And at the heart of the update was the council's use of £6m Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) funding, awarded to the council  specifically for the delivery of EV charging infrastructure.

It was reported that the council was expected to "go out to the market" in the next few weeks – with contracts available for three geographical areas within the county.

And as part of the work the council expects a minimum of 1500 chargepoints to be installed – equivalent to 3000 sockets.

According to the report, 90 per cent of the LEVI capital funding has already been allocated to the county council.

And Liberal Democrat Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst asked whether any interest on the money would be used to fund the installation of additional charging points.

Officers told Cllr Giles-Medhurst that the funding was held centrally by the council, noting that "as an entire council we have pressures from our overall borrowing to which we are paying interest on".

But he asked for a written response outlining the amount of interest that would have been accrued.

In response executive member for highways and transport Cllr Phil Bibby suggested that this was more of a treasury management issue than highways and transport.

According to data shared with councillors EV charging at home costs between seven and 10 pence per kWh – compared to between 50 and 70 p/kWh at public sites.