A Scottish housebuilder is to install electric vehicle charging points in its new homes.
Springfield Properties’ Bertha Park site, outside Perth, will be one of the first locations where the charging points will be put in. About 3,000 homes are planned at the location.
Springfield raised £25 million by floating on the junior Aim stock market in October and put the cash towards funding five large-scale village developments across Scotland. The company, which employs about 500 people, built 620 homes in the 12 months to May 31 last year.
Innes Smith, chief executive, said that the Scottish government’s aim to have only new electric vehicles being sold by 2032 was likely to encourage more people to make the switch from diesel and petrol.
He said: “We anticipate that the uptake will increase rapidly long before then. One of our values as a company is to include everything a customer needs in their new home, so, with this is mind, we wanted to make it as easy as possible for our customers to go electric.
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“At Springfield, exploring new ways to protect the environment has been a focus of ours for many years and installing the infrastructure for electric car charge points in our homes was the next logical step for our customers.”
Humza Yousaf, Scottish government minister for transport, said: “The ability to charge electric vehicles at home helps to reduce barriers to ownership. It is another positive step by industry in support of our vision to phase out the need for new petrol cars by 2032.”
North Sea fields no longer ‘attractive’ for Rockrose
Rockrose Energy has pulled out of a deal to buy stakes in two North Sea oilfields (Greig Cameron writes).
The exploration company was looking to purchase minority interests in the Scott and Telford fields from Maersk. It had been working on the transaction since September 2016.
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Yesterday Rockrose said that getting consent from the other partners in the fields would have altered the terms of the deal and had made it “unattractive” for shareholders. As a result, it said, it had withdrawn from the negotiations with Maersk, in spite of the Oil and Gas Authority being supportive.
Rockrose joined the London stock market in January 2016, placing shares at 50p each and initially raising £4.4 million to pursue acquisitions. It is one of several independent energy companies making deals in the North Sea as they believe that there is still value to be had in smaller and older field.
Andrew Austin, executive chairman, said that Rockrose was continuing to look at other acquisitions. In December it finalised three deals that gave it stakes in several producing fields. Rockrose is also proposing to return nearly £20 million in cash to shareholders.
Its shares have been suspended since October after Rockrose struck a deal to buy stakes in ten North Sea fields by acquiring Idemitsu Petroleum UK from Idemitsu Kosan, its Japanese owner. The transaction was classified as a reverse takeover and a readmission document has to be published before trading in the shares, which are at 127p, can resume.