Electric Car Charger Grants: The Ultimate Guide

Between ourselves and our partners at EV Wales and EV Tower, we're often asked for guidance on navigating available electric car charger grants, especially by our clients in the public and private sectors looking to build their own charge point networks. As a result, we've teamed up to give a breakdown of the main free grants for electric car chargers available to public sector organisations, businesses, and charities. These are namely:

• The Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS): For businesses, charities, and public sector organisations, covering up to 75% of the total costs of EV charging points.
• The EV Infrastructure Grant for Staff and Fleets: Like the WCS, the EV infrastructure Grant for Staff and Fleets covers 75% of the cost of the work, but with a £15,000 cap, and eligibility specifically for organisations with less than 250 employees only. Organisations qualifying for both can apply for both grants.
• The On-street Residential Charge Point Scheme (ORCS): The OCRS is aimed at Local Authorities to help cover the cost of establishing a public charging network. The deadline for application ends on the 1st March 2024, and the scheme can cover up to 50% of charge point install costs capped at £200,000.
• Local Electric Vehicle Funding (LEVI): This funding is available for English local authorities exclusively, but can cover an average of around £100,000 in the rollout of the EV charging infrastructure across your constituency.

Below, we have a full breakdown of who these grants are available for, and how to apply if they fit your EV charging plans.

How does it work?

Any business, charity, or public sector organisation in the UK is eligible to apply for the WCS grant, provided they can demonstrate a need for electric vehicle charging equipment or a desire to encourage EV usage among their workforce. The application process involves filling out an online form. Once the application is approved, the organisation is issued a voucher code, which can be given to an OZEV-approved installer.

The installer will then deduct the value of the voucher from the total cost of the charge point installation. However, it's important to note that the voucher expires after six months, so businesses should coordinate with their chosen installer to ensure the process is completed within this timeframe. Choosing trusted installers such as EV Wales helps means you’ll be assisted in co-ordinating compliance with grants such as these, by experts and industry professionals who have been through it all before. This grant can also be used alongside the EV infrastructure grant for staff and fleets. 

What are the requirements?

Charge points installed must be registered with the National Chargepoint Registry (NCR). They should be suitable for residents and acknowledge any local parking constraints.

Local authorities must systematically record charge point usage details to be relayed to OZEV quarterly; something made easy when using back-office solutions such as ours which provide in-depth usage reports across all vehicle types through one, easy-to-manage platform.

This grant is for UK-registered companies, charities, or public sector organisations with a maximum of 249 employees, and gives successful applicants money off the cost of wider building and installation work for multiple sockets.

The work can be for sockets planned for immediate installation, as well as for ones scheduled for the future. The EV infrastructure grant can cover things like wiring and posts - which trusted installer partners EV Wales and EV Tower can cover for you.

The grant covers 75% of the cost of the work, up to a maximum of £15,000. You can get:

• up to £350 per charge point socket installed
• up to £500 per parking space enabled with supporting infrastructure
• A maximum of five grants across five different sites.

Each parking space claimed under the grant must be associated with a unique charge point socket, and the closing date for the grant is 31 March 2025.

How can I apply, and what are the requirements?

Your business can receive up to five grants, each supporting a minimum of five parking spaces with at least one working charge point. The charge points installed must be for the exclusive use of staff or fleet vehicles, and the charging infrastructure must comprise a new electrical connection at a metered electrical supply point, such as a consumer unit or feeder pillar, and a dedicated, safe, unobstructed route for electrical cabling from the electrical supply point to all installed charge points and future connection locations.

Before applying, businesses must complete any necessary upgrades to the building’s electrical supply to service its charge points, make arrangements for the maintenance of the charge points once installed, and make arrangements to pay for the electricity and other running costs of the charge points. To start an application, businesses must understand the grant rules and restrictions, agree with their installer about what work they will carry out, and have an account. Again, this process can be streamlined by working directly with a partnered installer to help understand the requirements, and how to deliver your charge points in line with grant restrictions.

This grant is available solely for UK local authorities, and is aimed at providing help with the funding of EV charging stations across the public network. The scheme has recently undergone an update, which we’ll cover in more details below, and the application close date is currently listed as 1 March 2024 or until all 2023 to 2024 funding has been allocated, whichever is sooner - so make sure not to delay your application if it applies to your EV charging plans.

For the 2023-2024 financial year, the scheme has been revised, now covering:

• Up to a maximum of 50% of a project's capital costs.
• Funding capped at £200,000, with the grants for individual charge points not exceeding £7,500 on electrical upgrade costs.

How can I apply?

In order to apply, charge points installed must be registered with the NCR (National Chargepoint Registry), which you can do here. 

What are the restrictions?

Eligible charge points must:

1. Not exceed 22kW power
2. Be located in residential areas
3.  Be available for use on a 24/7 basis (in line with public charge point regulations)

Authorities applying must:

• Provide a plan of charge point locations
• Ensure these locations lack off-street parking. This can be demonstrated through photographs or maps.
• Ensure accessibility to residents through resident parking schemes or permits to ensure that local residents are assured that they will be able to charge their vehicles on a regular basis.

Local authorities must also again record charge point usage details as part of achieving this grant, again being supplied to OZEV for vital policy appraisal and trend spotting. Of course, as previously mentioned, using smart back-office software can easily tick this application box for you, as management systems such as Clenergy’s provides detailed charger information to a single, easy-to-use platform for you to review charging habits internally as well as send externally.

The application form can be found here.

With a closing date again of March 31st 2025, LEVI funding is a scheme that applies exclusively to English local authorities. Aimed at supporting the delivery of charge points for residential use, application for the LEVI funding is done in three stages:

• stage 1: expression of interest
• stage 2: application form
• stage 3: contract review

Under this funding scheme, each a set amount is allocated to each region of England, with a full breakdown on the maximum funding available per region and authority found here. Overall, the amount available for each local authority averages at around £100,000, so this represents a huge opportunity to help offset some of the initial EV charging costs and start streamlining the rollout of a robust charging network across your constituency.

We compiled this guidance alongside key installation partners at EV Wales and EV Tower. Between us, we have the knowledge and experience to help deliver a full EV package, and are looking to do our bit to ensure our national infrastructure is ready to scale up to deliver 300,000 charge points by the current 2030 target. Contacting trusted installers directly can be a great way to ensure you’re making the most of EV grants for yourself and your business, as they’ve navigated the grants before and can help enable you to meet grant requirements ahead of time.

While the initial cost of EV chargers may seem expensive, it’s essential that you make the most of your investment to help recoup costs where possible. And using back-office software such as Clenergy EV’s systems makes this infinitely easier.

We provide real-time charging data and usage statistics across your network, helping you identify charging habits and opportunities to recoup your initial investment through maximising energy savings. We’ve helped customers like Nottingham City Council do this, who cited the shift to off-peak charging identified by our management system’s data as essential to their saving of £1 million a year since embarking on their EV transition.

To find out what a transition to electric alongside trusted partners such as ourselves and our collaborators can do for you, you can browse the insights section of our site for real-life examples of our expertise in action, or fill in the form below for a low-commitment consultation from a member of our team.