The most useful electric-car upgrade of 2026 may be a narrow slot in the pavement. No giant touchscreen, no laser-eyed concept car and no breathless promise about artificial intelligence — just somewhere safe to tuck a charging cable between a terraced house and the car outside.
From 21 October, qualifying cross-pavement charging installations in England can go ahead without a separate planning application. That sounds like the sort of administrative tweak designed to make normal people change the radio station. In reality, it tackles one of the EV market’s daftest inequalities: drivers with a driveway can enjoy cheap home electricity, while their neighbours across the road may be sent hunting for a public charger and its considerably less cuddly tariff.
The Government reckons removing the planning step can save an applicant up to £300. It also claims home charging can cost as little as 2p per mile and cut annual running costs by as much as £1,750. Those are best-case figures rather than a promise engraved on every electricity bill, but the principle is sound. Access to your own supply can transform the sums behind an electric car.
One form fewer, one excuse fewer
The new permitted-development right covers a pavement-embedded channel that carries a charging cable from a home to a vehicle parked on the street. It also broadens the rules for the associated dedicated outlet or charging post within the home’s boundary. In other words, this is a proper route through the footway, not official encouragement to sling an extension lead beneath a rubber mat and hope nobody trips over it.
That distinction matters. The legal change does not hand householders a ceremonial pickaxe and permission to attack the kerb after tea. The installation must be carried out by, for, or with the authorisation of the highway authority. Street-works permissions and the council’s safety requirements still apply. Conservation areas, the curtilage of listed buildings and scheduled monuments are excluded from the new right, while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own rules.
This is sensible. Pavements belong to everybody, including wheelchair users, parents with pushchairs and people with impaired vision. A badly installed channel would replace one barrier to EV ownership with a literal barrier across somebody else’s route. The planning application was the expendable layer; engineering standards and local oversight are not.
The council still holds the keys
Local authorities remain the real gatekeepers, and their appetite varies. Some already run channel schemes, while others are testing suppliers or have yet to open applications. Residents may face survey charges, installation costs, licence conditions, maintenance duties and insurance requirements. The Department for Transport’s guidance also makes a blunt point that deserves repeating: a channel does not reserve the parking space outside your house. Your beautifully prepared cable route is no use when somebody else’s Qashqai is sitting over it.
That patchwork is the reform’s weak spot. Removing national planning bureaucracy helps, but it cannot conjure a competent local scheme into existence. Councils need a clear process, an approved installation method and prices that do not swallow the saving before the first kilowatt-hour reaches the car.
There is support available. England’s £25 million pavement-channels fund was created for eligible local authorities, and households with council permission may be able to claim up to £350, or 75 per cent of the chargepoint installation cost. Funding is welcome, although a resident trying to combine grants, licences, contractors and parking reality may still feel as if they are assembling flat-pack furniture with instructions from four different boxes.
A modest change with a large audience
The potential audience is not some statistical rounding error. Government guidance, drawing on the English Housing Survey, estimates that about eight million households in England lack off-street parking. Nearly four million of those are thought to have adequate on-street parking close enough to make a safe home-charging arrangement plausible. That is a vast group of drivers who have watched the EV transition from the expensive seats.
Auto Express spotted the change, but its importance is bigger than the planning fee alone. Home charging shapes how easy an EV feels to own. Plug in at night, wake up with useful range and avoid turning a routine energy purchase into a detour. Take that convenience away and even an excellent electric car becomes harder to recommend.
This reform will not suit every street, solve parking wars or make every council move at the same speed. It does, however, remove a pointless hurdle while keeping the people responsible for the pavement in charge of what gets cut into it. That is unusually grown-up policy. The next job is less glamorous and more urgent: make the local schemes simple enough that millions of households can actually use the right they have just been given.
Sources
- Planning permission requirement axed for under-pavement electric car charging
- Drivers to save up to £300 when installing EV chargers at home
- The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2026
- Cross-pavement solutions for charging electric vehicles
- Apply for the electric vehicle pavement channels grant
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