High Wycombe’s Handy Cross park and ride will get a new drive-thru coffee shop and electric vehicle spaces, Buckinghamshire Council has said.

The car park off Handy Cross roundabout currently has 383 standard parking spaces but is ‘underutilised’ according to the council.

The authority is therefore proposing to turn part of the site – which it owns – into an electric vehicle (EV) ‘charging plaza’.

This would include between 30 and 40 ‘ultrafast’ EV charging points and a drive through food and beverage kiosk with toilet facilities.

A ‘well-known coffee franchise has been suggested’, according to council plans for the site, which were approved by cabinet on Tuesday this week (July 16).

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Clive Harriss, the cabinet member for culture and leisure, told the meeting that the proposed EV spaces were in a good location, given their proximity to the M40 motorway and A404.

He said: “The greatest criticism of electric vehicles is the lack of charging facilities. The other thing is that it is so strategically located. We are a short space outside of London.

“If you have come down to London for a meeting or whatever, then you have got the opportunity to put a vehicle on charge here and disappear off down to Wales or alternatively go up north, so it is a fantastic location – something that we really should make the most of.”

Council leader Martin Tett, who chaired the meeting, added: “Once it gets known about, I can see people maybe even coming off the motorway to use this.”

The park and ride car park is ‘under-used and as such produces minimal income’ according to the council.

The coach station at the park and ride ‘has not attracted the number of services that were anticipated’, the council said, while there has been a ‘significant drop’ in use of the car park since before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Council plans state that over 200 spaces at the park and ride would be retained, while providing Buckinghamshire with a ‘flagship example’ of an EV charging hub and the council with a ‘significant additional revenue stream’.

The council was first approached about creating a charging hub at the site last year and said it had received 15 expressions of interest from different parties following a tendering process.

The cabinet’s decision on Tuesday essentially gave the relevant council departments the authority to enter into the necessary legal agreements with the chosen tenant – subject to planning permission being granted – in order to being the EV charging plan to fruition.

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