AN ELECTRIC car charging point which cost a council tens of thousands of pounds has been vandalised before it could be used.

Cotswold District Council's (CDC) charging point in the Beeches car park in Cirencester was due to be operational at the end of last year, but a spokesman from the authority said the electricity supplier kept rescheduling the switch-on.

It has now emerged that vandals broke one of the charging handles and several fan covers on the machine last month.

The council only became aware of the damage because an electric car driver – who said he had not been told that the charge point did not go live as planned last year – discovered that the machine was broken when he tried to use it.

A council spokesman said that now it had been alerted to the problem it would fix the machine this week, and then make it operational.

Electric car driver James Noddle, who found the damage to the machine, said he was disappointed by the council's response to the vandalism and the fact that the charging point was not ready to use by the end of last year, as expected.

The Cirencester also said he feared that the location of the charging point made it an easy target for vandals.

"I was just disappointed that they did not seem very interested and tried to pass me on to the police,” he said.

"I think it’d also be a good idea for the council to move the charging point. Its location on the way back from pubs means that if it gets fixed it’ll probably just get smashed up again.”

CDC was awarded £75,000 from the government to install the charging point in the Beeches and another in its car park in Moreton-in-Marsh.

The electric points are free to use and provide enough charge for 100 miles of driving.

A spokesman from CDC said: “We were made aware of the vandalism by an electric vehicle driver, and the incident has been reported to the police.

“The unit is fully insured in advance of it being handed over to CDC.

"Our contractor is currently arranging spare parts to repair the damage and, as far as CDC has been made aware, a replacement unit is not required.”