The 2026 rates went up to £500 a socket and three schemes closed. Which of the five remaining EV charger grants you qualify for, the rules that get claims refused, and how the money reaches your invoice.
There are five EV charger grants open in 2026, and every one of them now pays up to £500 a socket rather than the £350 it paid before 1 April.
They cover renters and flat owners, households with only on-street parking, residential landlords, workplaces and state-funded schools. All five are funded to 31 March 2027.
Three other schemes closed to new applications on 31 March 2026. So the picture changed twice this year: more money for what survived, and nothing at all for what did not.
This is a guide to which one applies to you, the rules that get claims refused, and how the money actually reaches your invoice.
What changed for EV charger grants on 1 April 2026
Two things happened at once, and most of the advice still floating about online predates both.
The surviving schemes went up from £350 to £500 per socket, and their funding was confirmed through to 31 March 2027. Nothing has been announced for what happens after that date.
Meanwhile three schemes shut to customer applications on 31 March 2026: the staff and fleets grant, the commercial landlord chargepoint grant, and the residential landlord infrastructure grant. Installers had until 26 May to claim against them, with a final evidence deadline of 13 July, so those are genuinely finished rather than paused.
There is one detail worth acting on today. If you applied under the old rate and your chargepoint has still not been installed, you can re-apply at the new £500 rate. That is £150 sitting on the table for anyone whose install has been dragging.
The flats and renters grant and the residential landlord grant also moved onto a new application platform on 1 April, and assessment now takes up to 10 working days.
Which of the five schemes applies to you
Each scheme has its own eligibility test, and you claim under one, not several.
Renters and flat owners. Up to £500 towards buying and installing a chargepoint, for people who rent a home or own a flat, and who have private off-street parking. Shared ownership counts.
Households with on-street parking only. Up to £500, but conditional on fitting a cross-pavement solution such as a charging gully. More on that below, because it is the one with a catch.
Residential landlords. Up to £500 per socket, capped at 200 sockets across all your properties. Open to private landlords, social housing providers, property management companies and public sector bodies.
Workplace Charging Scheme. Up to £500 per socket for businesses, charities and public sector organisations, capped at 40 sockets across all sites.
Workplace Charging Scheme for state-funded schools. Up to £2,000 per socket, again capped at 40. Considerably more generous, and easy to miss if you run a school site and assume the ordinary workplace figure applies.
If you own a house with a driveway and live in it, none of these are for you. That grant closed to owner-occupiers back in 2022 and has not returned. You pay the full price, which our guide to what a home charger costs to install sets out in detail.
The eligibility rules that catch people out
The amount is the easy part. Refusals almost always come down to one of the following, and every one of them is worth checking before you spend anything.
You can only ever claim once. That includes the schemes this one replaced, the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme and the Domestic Recharge Scheme. A previous claim at a previous address uses up your entitlement.
Your parking has to be provably yours. It must be off-street, private, clearly defined and available to you at all times. It does not have to be attached to the property, but you do need to demonstrate a legal entitlement to it. A space you use by custom, or one the neighbours generally leave free, will not survive the paperwork.
Permissions come before the application, not after. If a freeholder, landlord or managing agent has to agree, get that agreement in writing first. It can be asked for at any point.
Lodgers are out. Renting from someone who also lives in the property does not qualify.
So is a house move. If you are moving or planning to, you cannot claim. The property must be occupied and already built, not under construction.
And so is anywhere a chargepoint is already required by law. New build parking that has to have charging provision under the building regulations cannot be funded twice.
The on-street grant, and why it matters round here
A great deal of housing across the Dearne Valley is terraced, and terraced housing generally means parking at the kerb. For years that ruled people out of home charging altogether, and the on-street grant exists precisely to deal with it.
The catch is in the condition. To claim it you have to install a cross-pavement solution: a gully or channel set into the footway so the cable runs beneath the surface rather than over it.
And the footway is the council's, not yours, so the local authority has to permit the work. Provision varies from one authority to the next, and some run their own schemes alongside it.
The sequence therefore runs council first, grant second, installer third. Ask Rotherham, Barnsley or Doncaster what they allow before you commit to anything, because a refusal at that stage undoes the whole plan.
What you should not do in the meantime is run a cable across the pavement under a mat or a strip of rubber. It is a trip hazard on a public footway and the liability for it lands squarely on you.
How the money actually reaches you
You never receive the grant yourself. It is claimed by the installer and deducted from what you are invoiced, which has consequences for the order you do things in.
The chain runs: obtain any permissions, apply and wait for approval, have the work done by an OZEV-authorised installer using a chargepoint from the approved list, then the installer claims. Buy hardware yourself, or book someone who is not authorised, and there is nothing to claim against afterwards.
It is also worth understanding how the cap interacts with the percentage. The grant is 75 per cent of the combined cost of the chargepoint and its installation, up to the £500 ceiling.
On a £600 job that is £450. On anything over about £670 you simply get the £500 and no more. Since most domestic installs cost comfortably more than that, the practical answer for nearly everyone is a flat £500 off.
Landlords and businesses: the bigger numbers, and the gap left behind
At 200 sockets, a landlord scheme claim is worth up to £100,000. At 40 sockets, a workplace claim is worth up to £20,000. Those are large enough to be worth planning a phased rollout around rather than fitting one socket at a time.
But there is a hole where the infrastructure grant used to be, and anyone costing a car park needs to know about it. That scheme paid towards the groundworks, ducting and cabling that sit behind the sockets in residential car parks, and it closed on 31 March 2026. The socket grant survived; the money for the wiring that feeds it did not.
On any site of real size that is the larger half of the bill. Trenching, containment, a supply capable of running several chargers at once, and often a distribution board upgrade to feed them.
It is now entirely on the client, so a rollout budgeted a year ago on the old assumptions will be short. Load management is worth designing in from the start, because staggering the draw across chargers is usually far cheaper than paying for a bigger supply, and that decision has to be made before the trenches are dug rather than after.
We handle that side of it as commercial electrical installation work, and it is the part worth surveying before anybody commits to a socket count.
Getting the installation right, so the claim survives
A grant claim is only as good as the job it is attached to, and there are three grant-specific conditions people trip over.
The chargepoint has to be a model on the approved list, so a unit picked purely on price or looks may not qualify. The installer has to hold OZEV authorisation, which is separate from being a competent electrician.
And the installation still has to meet everything that applies to any charge point: a dedicated circuit with the right protection, notification to your network operator, compliance with the smart charge point regulations, and a certificate at the end.
Where the consumer unit is old or full, that has to be resolved as part of the work rather than bodged around, and our page on fuse board replacement covers what that involves.
FRM Electrical is NICEIC-accredited and based in Wath upon Dearne. If you are weighing up a charger and want to know which grant applies before you commit, our EV charger installation page explains how we survey and quote, and we cover Mexborough along with every other town on our patch.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to already own the electric car?
Not necessarily, but you do need evidence of a real connection to one. Outright ownership counts, and so does a lease of six months or more, a vehicle provided for work over the same period, or a current order for a car not yet delivered. The vehicle also has to appear on the approved list, which covers full electric cars and most plug-in hybrids sold in the UK.
Can I choose any charger, or does it have to come from a list?
It has to come from the approved list, which is not the same as any smart charger on the market. The list is long enough that you are not stuck with one model, but check before you fall for a specific unit. Your installer will normally steer you, because they carry the risk if the claim is rejected.
What if the freeholder or managing agent says no?
Then there is no grant, and no route around it. Nobody administering the scheme can compel a freeholder to consent. It is worth asking in writing and early, and worth pointing out that a gradual rollout across a block is often received better than a single request, since the objection is usually about setting a precedent rather than about your car.
Does it cover groundworks, like taking a cable across a drive?
It covers the cost of buying and installing the chargepoint, so labour and materials are within scope. In practice the ceiling makes the question academic: a job involving digging will be well past the point where the cap applies, so you get the £500 and the rest is yours.
How long does approval take?
Allow up to 10 working days for an application to be assessed on the current platform, and treat that as the minimum lead time before booking anyone in. Approvals do not sit open indefinitely either, so check the date on yours and work back from it.
What happens after 31 March 2027?
Unknown. Funding is confirmed to that date and no announcement has been made about anything beyond it. Given that three schemes were closed outright this year with a few months' notice, the sensible planning assumption is that the date means what it says rather than that another extension will arrive.
The bottom line
If you rent, own a flat, park on the street, let property or run a business site, there is £500 a socket available and a deadline attached to it. If you own the house you live in and park on your own drive, there is nothing, and no amount of searching will turn one up.
Either way the useful move is the same: establish which category you fall into and whose permission you need before you start choosing hardware, because that is where these claims are won or lost.
