No Driveway? The Planning Barrier Is Coming Down

For anyone who parks on the street, the cheapest electricity in Britain has been sitting on the wrong side of a pavement. A cable run from a front door to a car at the kerb had to be laid safely, and the standard solution, a shallow channel set into the pavement, could require planning permission on top of approval from the highway authority. On 11 September the government confirmed it is removing that planning step, in its response to the consultation on electric vehicle charging and permitted development rights.

The change is technical, and it matters because of a simple number. Around four in ten UK households have no off-street parking, which makes them reliant on public charging that can cost up to ten times more per kilowatt hour than power drawn at home.

What a permitted development right actually does

A permitted development right, or PDR, is a category of work that does not need a planning application. Proposals that fall inside it are treated as already approved, subject to conditions and limitations, which is why PDRs are the standard route for small domestic projects such as small extensions and loft conversions.

The government is creating a new PDR covering cross-pavement charging solutions and the domestic chargepoint connected to them. In practice that means the owner of a house with a pavement between the front wall and the kerb can install a proper cable channel without lodging a planning application, as electrive reported when the confirmation landed.

Local authorities keep their say. Installations remain subject to oversight under Section 178 of the Highways Act 1980, and street works permissions still apply where they are needed. Listed buildings and other excluded categories are not covered by the new right. The change applies in England only, since planning is devolved.

One detail is easy to miss and worth spelling out: the right will also allow homes that directly adjoin the highway to install a cross-pavement solution and the associated chargepoint. Terraces on narrow pavements, the housing type the rule was designed around, get covered rather than boxed out.

The change is confirmed rather than in force. The government's consultation response states that the next step is laying the secondary legislation before Parliament in Autumn 2026, subject to parliamentary time, with the amended rights commencing afterwards.

Why the housing question keeps coming back

The politics of this are about fairness between two groups of drivers. One household with a driveway and an overnight tariff pays a few pounds to fill a car. Its neighbour across the road, without that option, pays public rates for the same miles, and has fewer choices about when to charge.

Vicky Edmonds, chief executive of the EV drivers' association EVA England, put the case when the decision was confirmed: "People who park on the street should not face unnecessary extra hurdles just to access the cheaper and more convenient charging available to people with driveways. Removing the need for a separate planning application takes away one of those barriers."

The campaign behind it ran through Parliament rather than a single department. Baroness Pidgeon tabled amendments during the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, EVA England and its partners briefed on them, and the commitment to consult followed. Ben Nelmes, chief executive of New AutoMotive, made the fiscal version of the argument, describing home charging as a way to boost electric car demand without spending taxpayers' money. Michael Goulden of Kerbo Charge, one of the firms making the channels, said a number of councils had been waiting for this legislation before launching cross-pavement charging schemes at all.

The rest of the announcement

Cross-pavement charging was not the only item in the response. The government also confirmed changes to make larger public charging sites easier to build, expanding existing planning rights so that multiple units of supporting equipment can be installed at non-domestic car parks, with the overall permitted volume rising from 29m³ to 45m³. That covers the cabinets and enclosures that hubs need, which are a common sticking point when a site wants to add power.

What it costs, and what it saves

The hardware is not expensive by car standards. Kerbo Charge sells a two-metre lockable aluminium channel for £499 on its own site, with three-metre versions for wider pavements and installation quoted separately, and some council-backed schemes negotiate lower prices for residents. Households that cannot install a charger on their own driveway can also apply for the government's chargepoint grant, which covers 75% of the purchase and installation cost up to £500, and our guide to wallbox costs sets out who qualifies for it.

The running cost is where the real difference sits. Ofgem's price cap from 1 October puts the typical electricity unit rate at 26.32p per kWh, and the cap announcement also confirmed that the removal of VAT from domestic electricity bills is reflected in that figure, worth around £45 a year to a typical household. Dedicated overnight EV tariffs sit far below that rate, with Octopus Energy's Intelligent Octopus Go charging 8p per kWh during its six-hour cheap window. Zapmap's monthly price index, by contrast, puts the weighted average pay-as-you-go price on the public network at 77p per kWh on rapid and ultra-rapid chargers and 54p per kWh on slower units.

That gap is the whole point of the change. A driver charging at 8p per kilowatt hour overnight and a driver paying around 77p on a motorway rapid are doing the same journey at very different costs, and the difference has been decided by housing rather than by anything either driver chose. Our public charging price tracker follows how those network prices move through the year.

What still stands in the way

Removing the planning step does not make cross-pavement charging available everywhere, and it is worth being clear about the remaining conditions.

The legislation has to be laid and commence first, which based on the government's own timetable means the practical benefit lands late in 2026 or after. Every installation still needs the local highway authority onside, and some streets are unsuitable on safety grounds, whether because the pavement is too narrow, there is heavy footfall, or the parking sits in a bus lane or cycle route. Renters need their landlord's agreement, and flats without a frontage have no channel to dig at all. For those homes the answer remains a council-run on-street chargepoint scheme funded through the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure programme, the pattern we examined in our piece on rural charging gaps.

There is also the honest caveat that a channel solves a cable problem, not a parking problem. A resident with a channel still has no reserved bay. If someone else parks outside the house, the cable still will not reach, which is why kerbside charging for households genuinely without any frontage remains the harder half of this policy area.

The honest read

This is a small rule change with a wide reach. It takes a bureaucratic hurdle away from a group of drivers who have been paying more for their motoring simply because of where they park, and it does so without public money being spent on subsidising the hardware. The number to watch is not how many channels are installed, but how many councils, having waited for the legislation, actually open schemes once it lands. For the four in ten households without a driveway, that is the moment the cheaper route to running an electric car stops being theoretical.