It was a case of not such happy returns as the EV points in the Market Place car park in Frome marked their first year - without any sign of being switched on.

The points, part of a roll out of electric charge points across Somerset, are still not functioning, a source of frustration to the growing numbers of those who have electric cars.

It is all about to change, it is hoped, and soon.

Somerset County Council told us that they have been working hard at getting the charge units up and running. They said: " We are working closely with SSE to get the wayleave agreement through so that the electric can be turned on as soon as possible. "

When they do turn live the points will be run by Blink Charging which took over the EVCP company EB Charging, which did not go bust, as some had speculated. Blink began its operations in Greece in 2019 and has so far rolled out over 65,000 charging ports in 27 countries and took on EB's operations in June 2022.

The global management and accounting giant, Deloitte has predicted that global sales of electric vehicles could reach 31.1 million units by 2030 - over a third of all car sales.