No Driveway, No Problem. The Government Will Now Pay Up To £500 To Help You Charge An EV At Home

Around nine million UK households do not have a driveway or any form of off-street parking. For years, that single fact has been one of the biggest barriers to switching to an electric car. Without a driveway, you cannot easily install a home charger. Without a home charger, you are reliant on public charging, which can cost up to ten times more per kilowatt hour. And without affordable charging, the financial case for going electric falls apart.

As of April 2026, the government is trying to fix that. A new grant scheme specifically for households with on-street parking will pay up to £500 towards the cost of installing a chargepoint and a cross-pavement cable channel, known as a charging gully, that allows you to charge your car from your home without running a cable across the pavement. It sits alongside existing grants for renters and flat owners, which have also been increased to £500 from their previous level of £350.

But the rules are specific, the process has steps that cannot be skipped, and not everyone who thinks they qualify actually will. Here is how it works…

Who Qualifies And Who Does Not

This is the most important thing to understand: if you own your home and have a driveway, you do not qualify for any version of this grant. The government considers a standard driveway installation straightforward enough that you are expected to pay for it yourself. The grants are targeted at situations where charging is harder to arrange.

There are three separate schemes, all running until 31 March 2027:

The Electric Vehicle Chargepoint Grant for Households with On-Street Parking is the new one. It launched on 1 April 2026 and is aimed at homeowners and renters who have no access to off-street parking at all. If you park on the street because you have no driveway, no garage and no allocated parking space, this is the one that applies to you. It covers up to 75% of the cost of buying and installing a chargepoint and a cross-pavement charging solution, capped at £500.

The Electric Vehicle Chargepoint Grant for Renters and Flat Owners covers renters in any residential property and owners of flats, provided they have private off-street parking. If you rent a house with a driveway, or own a flat with a designated parking space, this is the scheme for you. It also covers up to 75% of costs, capped at £500.

A third scheme exists for residential landlords who want to install chargepoints at rental properties.

In all cases, you must own, lease or have on order an eligible electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle.

What A Charging Gully Is And How It Works

The on-street parking grant is built around a specific piece of infrastructure: the cross-pavement charging solution, commonly called a charging gully. This is a recessed channel cut into the pavement surface between your property and the kerb. It allows you to run a charging cable from a chargepoint on your property wall to your car parked on the street without the cable lying across the footpath where someone could trip over it.

The gully has a self-closing lid. When you insert the cable, the lid closes behind it like a zip, sitting flush with the pavement surface. When you remove the cable, the channel closes completely. Pedestrians, wheelchair users and pushchairs can pass over it without obstruction.

The installation itself is carried out after you receive permission from your local highways authority. The local authority owns the cross-pavement solution and is responsible for its installation and ongoing maintenance. You pay either an upfront one-off fee or an ongoing subscription to use it. Costs vary by council. Some charge a flat annual licence fee of around £50. Others set a one-off payment covering a fixed maintenance period with annual renewal after that.

The gully installation itself starts from around £999, though the final price is set by your local authority. The £500 grant goes towards the combined cost of the chargepoint and the gully, covering up to 75% of the total. For any installation costing £667 or more, you will receive the full £500.

What You Must Do Before Installation

There is a strict process that must be followed before any work begins. Getting this wrong can cost you the grant entirely.

First, you must use an OZEV-approved installer. You do not apply for the grant yourself. Your installer handles the application and claims the grant on your behalf as part of the installation process. If your installer is not OZEV-approved, you will not receive the funding.

Second, your installer must notify your Distribution Network Operator. This is the company that manages the electricity network in your area. For a standard 7 kW single-phase home charger, the installer submits what is called a G98 notification, which can often be done within 28 days of installation. For higher-capacity systems, or if the total electrical load on your property exceeds 60 amps with the charger added, a G99 application is required and must be approved before installation begins.

Nigel King, Group Operations Director at Eurocar Group, highlighted this as a step that is frequently overlooked: “Before installing any charging points at your home, you first need to submit an Energy Networks Association application to your Distribution Network Operator so they can confirm you have the correct equipment and setup.”

He added: “If this is not carried out, you might not be covered on your house insurance if something goes wrong.”

That insurance point is worth taking seriously. Installing a charger without the correct DNO notification can invalidate your home insurance in the event of an electrical fault. It can also result in the DNO disconnecting your charger if it is found to be non-compliant.

Third, if you are applying under the on-street parking scheme, you need permission from your local highways authority for the cross-pavement installation. Not all councils may have the relevant processes in place yet, so it is worth contacting your local authority early to find out whether the option is available in your area.

Why This Grant Exists

The numbers tell the story. Around 33% of UK households have no access to off-street parking. In northern regions, that figure rises to nearly half. Research by EVA England found that 60% of petrol and diesel drivers without off-street parking said they would never consider an electric car, compared with 43% of those who have a driveway.

The cost gap between home and public charging is part of the reason. Home charging can cost as little as 8p per kilowatt hour on an overnight tariff. Public charging averages around 48p per kilowatt hour and can reach as high as 98p at some rapid chargers. Drivers with driveways overwhelmingly report that their EV is much cheaper to run than a petrol or diesel car. Drivers without driveways are far less likely to say the same.

The charging gully grant is an attempt to close that gap by giving on-street households a way to access cheap home electricity for charging, rather than forcing them onto the public network.

The Deadline

All three grant schemes run until 31 March 2027. The government has described this as a final extension, so there is no guarantee of further funding beyond that date.

Given that the process involves finding an OZEV-approved installer, getting local authority permission for the pavement works (if applicable), completing the DNO notification and scheduling the installation, it is worth starting early. Leaving it until early 2027 and hoping everything falls into place in time would be a gamble.

If you do not have a driveway and have been waiting for a reason to look at electric, the grant is there. But the window is not open forever, and the process will not wait for you to catch up.

Sources:

• GOV.UK, changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026
• GOV.UK, electric vehicle chargepoint grant for households with on-street parking
• GOV.UK, electric vehicle chargepoint grant for renters and flat owners
• GOV.UK, cross-pavement solutions for charging electric vehicles
• EVA England, charging divide research
• Energy Saving Trust, cross-pavement charging solutions