Renters Can Now Demand an EV Charger, but the Grant Just Got Harder to Claim

Tenants and flat owners got a real win this year. Under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, a landlord who refuses a reasonable request to install an EV charge point now has to justify that refusal on specific, limited grounds, respond within 42 days, and cannot charge the tenant a fee just for giving consent. At the same time, the government quietly closed three of the eight grant schemes that used to help pay for exactly this kind of installation.

A new legal right, a smaller pot of money

The Office for Zero Emission Vehicles confirmed in guidance published this year that the staff and fleets grant, the commercial landlord chargepoint grant, and the residential landlord infrastructure grant all closed to new customer applications on 31 March 2026. Installers had until 26 May to submit claims for work already done, with a final deadline of 6 July for resubmitting incomplete paperwork. None of those three routes will reopen.

The residential landlord infrastructure grant was the one built specifically for buildings like tower blocks and estates with shared car parks, covering 75% of the cost up to £30,000 for work on at least five parking spaces. That was the scheme most likely to fund charging for a large block of flats where individual leaseholders cannot apply on their own behalf. It has now shut, right as the legal right to request a charger has expanded to cover exactly those tenants.

What is left standing, and what it actually covers

Three household-facing grants remain funded until 31 March 2027: the flats and renters grant, the residential landlord chargepoint grant, and the households with on-street parking grant. From 1 April 2026 the maximum rate on all three rose from £350 to £500 per socket, which sounds like an improvement, and for a single flat owner with their own allocated bay it is one.

But the residential landlord chargepoint grant that survived is capped at 200 sockets per landlord, a small-scale top-up rather than the large infrastructure projects the closed scheme used to fund. A landlord managing a block where dozens of residents want a charger, not just one or two, no longer has a grant route built for that scale of work. They are left applying socket by socket under a scheme designed for individual installations, or funding shared infrastructure themselves.

Landlord permission is still the real barrier

Every version of the household grants, old and new, requires written permission from the landlord, freeholder or property manager before an application can go ahead. Without it, the claim gets rejected regardless of how much grant funding is available. The Renters’ Rights Act reform addresses this by limiting the grounds on which a landlord can refuse and setting the 42-day response clock running, but it does not compel a landlord to pay for the work themselves, and it does not guarantee the grant money to cover it is still there when consent finally arrives.

A tenant who gets consent under the new right, then goes looking for funding, can still find themselves stuck between a capped grant designed for one socket at a time and a landlord unwilling to pay the rest from their own pocket. The legal right to ask has grown. The money to answer yes has shrunk.

A clunky new claims system on top of the funding squeeze

OZEV also moved the flats and renters grant and the residential landlord grant onto a new applications platform this year. The new system has no portal where installers can check the live status of a claim. Instead, installers wait for an email notification when a claim is rejected for further evidence, declined, or approved, and have to keep track of the process themselves. Claims must now include four separate photographs: a close-up of the chargepoint, a shot showing its model and serial number, a photo of the chargepoint with its parking space, and a wide shot of the building. Missing any one of the four can hold up a claim that would otherwise have gone through without a hitch.

Why this collision of policies happened

The Right to Charge reform and the grant closures came from different parts of government on different timelines, and there is no sign the two were planned together. The tenant rights measure sits inside the Renters’ Rights Act, a piece of housing legislation aimed at improving conditions and protections for renters generally, with EV charging named as one example of an eligible sustainability improvement among several others, alongside things like insulation and low-flow water fixtures. The grant closures came from OZEV’s own budget review, part of a wider decision to simplify a portfolio of eight separate schemes down to five ahead of the funding running out in March 2027.

Taken separately, each change has a defensible logic. Simplifying an overlapping set of grant schemes into fewer, clearer routes is a reasonable administrative goal, and giving tenants a real right to request home improvements that support the switch to electric vehicles is a genuine step forward for renters who have been locked out of home charging for years while owner-occupiers had the market largely to themselves. Taken together, though, the timing leaves exactly the group the reform was meant to help, tenants and leaseholders in larger blocks, facing a funding gap that did not exist before this year.

How to Fight Back

If you rent or own a flat and want a charger, apply for consent from your landlord or freeholder in writing now, referencing the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 sustainability improvement provisions, rather than waiting until you have chosen an installer. The 42-day clock only starts once you have made a clear, reasonable written request.

Check which grant still applies to your situation before booking an installer. The flats and renters grant and the households with on-street parking grant remain open at up to £500 per socket, but eligibility depends on where you park and whether your space is off-street, allocated or shared, so confirm your own case against the current criteria rather than assuming last year’s rules still apply.

If you manage or live in a block that needed the closed residential landlord infrastructure grant, ask your managing agent or freeholder whether an application was submitted before the 31 March 2026 deadline. If it was, installers have until 6 July to resolve any outstanding paperwork, and it is worth chasing that directly rather than assuming the closure means the claim has automatically lapsed.

Use an OZEV-approved installer who is familiar with the new applications platform and its photo requirements. An installer who has already handled a claim on the new system is far less likely to have a claim rejected for missing evidence than one applying for the first time.

If a landlord refuses consent without giving one of the limited legitimate grounds set out in the reform, or takes longer than 42 days to respond, put the refusal in writing back to them and seek advice from Citizens Advice or a solicitor specialising in landlord and tenant law before assuming the request has failed. A defective refusal does not end your right to ask again.

Keep every piece of correspondence with your landlord, freeholder or managing agent from the first request onward, including dates. If the grant funding position changes again before your installation goes ahead, a clear paper trail showing when you first asked will matter if you later need to show a delay sat with the landlord rather than with you, especially if grant rates or eligibility rules shift again before the work is finished.

For more on the wider cost of running an EV in 2026, see our coverage of the new electric car mileage tax confirmed by the Treasury this month.

Sources:

• Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, “Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026” (GOV.UK): https://www.gov.uk/guidance/changes-to-electric-vehicle-chargepoint-grant-schemes-from-1-april-2026