Councils are facing criticism for charging electric vehicle owners annual fees to maintain cable channels, or gullies, installed across pavements to connect homes with cars parked at the kerb.
The charges are intended to cover potential future highway maintenance costs and typically range from £50 to £100 a year. Redbridge Council in London charges £185 annually, while Enfield charges £107. Milton Keynes charges £50 a year for three years after installation; Manchester City Council does not charge a recurring fee.
Fees vary between councils
The annual payments come on top of the cost of cutting the channel into the pavement. Home charging is estimated to cost about a quarter as much as relying on public charging points, but critics and companies installing gullies say ongoing council charges could discourage adoption.
Andy Palmer, a former Nissan executive who helped bring the Leaf electric car to the UK and now runs Palmer Energy, said a one-off charge for connecting a charger to the grid and installing a gully was reasonable.
“But to continue to charge you annually I think is thoroughly unreasonable,” he said. Palmer described charges of up to £185 a year as “basically a rip-off” and said the variation amounted to a “postcode lottery”.
Michael Goulden, co-founder and chief executive of Kerbo Charge, said his company had installed about 3,000 gullies and that roughly half of councils charged an ongoing fee. He said London councils were more likely to impose such charges.
Goulden said councils faced additional maintenance and insurance costs after the two-year original labour warranty expired, but added that fees needed to remain proportionate. “It’s a lot cheaper to charge at home but it [the licence fee] does have a deterrent [effect],” he said.
Planning rules also set to change
Officials have confirmed plans to remove the need for householders to obtain planning permission to install a pavement channel for a home charging cable. The change is intended to simplify the installation process, while councils would continue to manage the use and maintenance of the highway.