Hi-tech charging points for electric cars are a step closer to being installed across West Yorkshire.

The £475,000 scheme by transport authority Metro will see 14 charging points placed across the county.

Detailed site investigations have now started and Metro is talking to landowners and the network operator to find out how much it will cost to install charge points at each site and how much power will be required.

The chargers themselves would be ‘rapid’ points, which take 30 minutes to charge a vehicle.

These were deemed preferable to the ‘slow’ points, which use a standard 13 amp supply, and can take up to eight hours for a full charge.

Metro’s Bradford spokesman, Councillor Imran Khan, said to start off with, each site would get one charging point, but it was hoped that these would be added to over time.

Coun Khan said the details about how people would pay for the power they used were yet to be decided, but it was likely to involve a machine where people paid by credit or debit card.

Transport bosses successfully applied for a £345,000 grant towards the project from the Government’s Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV). Metro then put forward £125,000 of its own money.

The cash has to be spent by the end of March 2015, and a new report says the project is on schedule to be completed by then.