The Government has doubled funding for on-street electric vehicle (EV) charging, pledging an additional £2.5 million to fund the installation of over 1,000 new residential charging points. The scheme, announced by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps on 12 August aims to encourage even more people to choose an electric vehicle by making it easier to charge their cars near home, following a 158% increase in battery electric vehicle sales compared to July last year. Good news for householders but what about people living in residential blocks?
In July, the government announced a consultation setting out proposed changes to the Building Regulations in order to provide every new residential building with a parking space, an EV chargepoint. This would also apply to buildings undergoing a material change of use to create a dwelling.
However, there is a big gap in the consultation paper: it makes no mention of existing residential property. In particular blocks of flats which cannot benefit from on-street charging unless residents park their cars remotely from their homes – not a particularly practical solution.
There are proposals requiring every residential building undergoing major renovation with more than 10 car parking spaces to have cable routes for electric vehicle chargepoints in every car parking space. However, no solutions are offered to the many questions raised by leasehold property, such as how to deal with restrictions on development or modifications within building leases, who pays, and how should costs be allocated among residents when only a percentage want to buy-into EV.
Jamie Willsdon, director of EV charging solutions provider Future Fuel raised these issues with the DoT earlier this month and is hoping to garner support from the residential block sector to put pressure on government to tackle the issues raised by leasehold property. “I was hoping the latest publication from the Department of Transport may have some positive content that covered existing multi-dwelling residential blocks that I could share with our industry. Sadly I find it doesn’t. This is a huge sector and something installers/designers working in the residential block market will need assistance with. I’ll be working hard to engage leading players in the block sector to lobby government on this issue on behalf of flat owners,” He said.
The consultation is available here and closes on 7 October.
