Zest EV chargers are now live at Alexandra Street Car Park, replacing the old Blink units, part of a 3,000-space Southend rollout backed by £1.4m of LEVI funding.
Electric car drivers can plug in at Alexandra Street Car Park again. Southend-on-Sea City Council confirmed on 11 August that new charging points at the city centre car park are now live, operated by Zest, the company delivering the city’s new public charging network. The new equipment replaces the previous chargers at the site, which were run by Blink.
The council’s announcement does not say how many chargers the new installation has or how fast they are. For reference, its charging points list, which at the time of writing still shows the old line-up, recorded the previous Blink setup at Alexandra Street as five 7kW points and two 50kW rapid chargers. We will update this page when the council publishes the new configuration.
The bigger rollout behind it
Alexandra Street is the latest visible piece of a much larger programme. In November 2025 the council signed a 15-year agreement with Zest to deploy more than 3,000 public charging spaces across the city, a mix of lamp post, fast and rapid chargers, with installation phased from early 2026. The council calls it one of the largest local EV charging schemes in the UK.
The programme is funded by £1.4 million from the Government’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund plus Zest’s own investment, at no cost to the council. The council’s project page says sites will be chosen to give charging access in all parts of the city, with a particular focus on streets where residents have no off-street parking, and that the chargers will take contactless payment, use Type 2 sockets that work with all electric vehicles, and run at up to 50kW depending on the site.
Zest kit is already dotted around Southend: the council’s list shows two 7kW points at the Civic Centre Car Park and single 5kW lamp-post chargers at five residential addresses: Hadleigh Road in Leigh-on-Sea, Fleetwood Avenue, Elderton Road and Ditton Court Road in Westcliff, and Moseley Street in the SS2 postcode area.
What it means for you
Parking charges still apply on top of charging. Alexandra Street is a Zone 2A council car park in the city centre; the usual tariffs in our parking in Southend guide apply while you charge. The council does not publish a fixed electricity price for the bays, saying only that charging fees vary by provider and are kept in line with the local and regional average.
You must actually be charging. In council charging bays the vehicle has to be plugged in and actively charging, within the bay markings and within the maximum stay. Civil Enforcement Officers can ticket cars that are parked without charging, overstay, or sit outside the markings, so unplug and move on once the battery is done.
Paying should not need a membership. The council’s project page promises contactless payment on the new network alongside the Zest app, so a casual visitor can charge without signing up to anything first.
No driveway? This programme is aimed at you. The lamp-post chargers already installed on residential streets are the model for much of the 3,000-space rollout, and the council has said site selection prioritises areas without off-street parking.
If a charger is faulty, Zest runs the network: its customer support is at customersupport@zest.uk.com. Questions about the wider programme go to the council’s EV team at southendEVsolutions@southend.gov.uk.
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