EVERY house or bungalow built in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole will have to have an electric car charger if proposals are approved.

BCP Council’s cabinet gave its backing to a new parking policy document on Wednesday, which would also relax parking requirements for town centre developments.

Councillors said the new rules “made sense” but they still need the approval of the full council before coming into force.

The document will be used to determine decisions on planning applications and has been put together to replace the three policies the council inherited for each town last year.

But it also followed concerns parking rules in town centres were too strict, leading to developers focusing too much on student accommodation at the expense of standard housing.

Cabinet member for transport and sustainability, councillor Mike Greene, said it was also an opportunity to contribute towards national and local carbon neutrality aims.

“[This] either reduces – or in some cases eliminates – parking requirements for residential developments in town centres,” he said at Wednesday’s meeting.

“It does it for two reasons – the first is that our roads are incredibly congested and we will be required by the government to build new dwellings.

“If we allow the rate of car ownership to grow at the same rate as our residential development then what is already a very serious problem will get worse in a very short period of time.

“The second is we are also supporting the council’s – and the government’s – commitment to the climate emergency.”

Should the new document be adopted by the full council in the new year then it will require all new homes and bungalows to have at least one car charger.

Parking requirements for town centre residential developments will also be either scrapped or relaxed in a bid to increase the financial viability to developers.

Cabinet member for regeneration, councillor Phil Broadhead, said current parking requirements were “sending the wrong message”.

“It often drives the unviability of these schemes and we’ve been in a position before where we’ve been driving away the very developments we want because of the out-of-date parking requirements,” he said. “This will unlock a lot of that.”

He said the current parking requirements for standard residential projects had put off developers which instead turned to student accommodation where there are no limitations.

The document was unanimously approved by the cabinet and will now go to the full council for a final decision on whether it should be adopted.