From tomorrow, charging without a driveway gets a planning route

Tomorrow the planning application comes out of home charging for a lot of households, and the paperwork that does it is a statutory instrument most drivers will never read. The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2026 was made on 25 September, laid before Parliament on 30 September, and comes into force on 21 October. It amends the General Permitted Development Order for England so that a home without a driveway can install a charger, and a channel across the pavement to reach the car, without a planning application.

The change is real and narrower than the headlines suggest. We set out what ministers confirmed in September when the consultation response landed; this is the statutory version, with the limits attached. It is a planning change, not a grant and not a subsidy, and the highway authority stays exactly where it was.

What the order actually changes

The existing rights were tied to parking. Class D of Part 2 of Schedule 2 allowed a wall-mounted charging outlet within an area lawfully used for off-street parking, and Class E did the same for an upstand with an outlet on it. A terraced house with a front wall and a kerbside space had neither, because the wall is not an area used for parking.

From tomorrow both classes also cover installation, alteration or replacement "within any other area within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse or block of flats". That single phrase is the reform. It brings the front wall of a house with no drive inside the permitted development right.

Class F is new, inserted into Part 9 of Schedule 2. It permits the installation, alteration or replacement of a cross-pavement solution, defined in the order as a pavement-embedded cable channel allowing a cable to cross a footway from domestic premises to a parked vehicle. It applies to works carried out by, on behalf of, or with the authorisation of a highway authority.

What still needs permission

The highway authority does not leave the process. Laying a cable across the pavement still needs its permission under section 178 of the Highways Act 1980, and the explanatory memorandum that accompanies the order is explicit that separate permissions are still required. Class F is not a right for a householder to cut into the pavement. It is a right for works done by the authority, on its behalf, or with its authorisation.

In a two-tier area the highway authority may be the county council while the planning authority is the district or borough, which is the practical trap here. Planning Geek's analysis of the order notes that street works arrangements can add a section 50 licence or a permit depending on who is installing the channel, and recommends confirming who will maintain the channel and reinstate the pavement before work is commissioned.

None of it reserves a parking space either. The government's cross-pavement guidance is blunt about that: an installation "does not give the resident ownership or priority to the parking space outside their home".

The measurements that decide it

The order comes with limits, and they are the sort that decide whether a specific installation is inside the right or outside it.

A wall-mounted outlet cannot be installed more than 1.6 metres above ground level. On the new curtilage route there can be no more than one outlet within the curtilage of the house or block of flats. Where the wall immediately adjoins a highway, the outlet cannot protrude more than 0.2 metres from the external wall, and at least 1.5 metres of footway must remain between its outermost projection and the edge of the carriageway. Planning Geek notes that the existing 0.2 cubic metre volume cap for the outlet and its casing is retained.

For upstands, the height allowance stays at 2.7 metres in non-domestic areas lawfully used for off-street parking and drops to 1.6 metres elsewhere. The limit of one upstand per parking space survives.

There is also a condition attached to the charger itself. Where a footway sits between the outlet and the car, the charging cable must cross it by means of an authorised cross-pavement solution while the outlet is in use. A loose cable laid over the pavement, or a rubber cable cover, is not that. The order defines "authorised" as installed by, on behalf of, or with the authorisation of the relevant highway authority.

Who is still left out

Conservation areas are the exclusion that will affect the most people, and the detail matters. The bar applies to the new curtilage route only. A house in a conservation area with lawful off-street parking still has the original Class D right, because that route is unchanged. What a conservation area loses is the new ability to mount a charger on a wall that is not part of a parking area.

Class F is excluded from conservation areas outright, along with scheduled monument sites and the curtilage of a listed building. Where a channel is installed, the order requires it to be removed when it is no longer needed and the pavement reinstated to its previous condition as soon as reasonably practicable.

That leaves a substantial group outside the system. A household in a conservation area with no drive gets nothing from the new route. Neither does a wall that needs the charger above 1.6 metres, or a pavement that cannot spare 1.5 metres of clear width. The government's own guidance puts the size of the wider problem at approximately 8 million households in England, 32%, without access to off-street parking, of which almost 4 million, 16%, have what the English Housing Survey calls adequate on-street parking.

The part that helps charging hubs

Buried in the same order is a change with nothing to do with driveways. In qualifying non-domestic off-street parking areas, the restriction to a single unit of charging equipment housing is removed, and the 29 cubic metre limit is replaced by a cumulative maximum of 45 cubic metres across the area rather than per enclosure. The existing height and separation limits on that housing are untouched by the order.

Above 29 cubic metres the housing cannot sit on a site of special scientific interest or a European site, or be used to display advertising, and on article 2(3) land the developer has to apply for a determination on whether prior approval is needed for siting and appearance. That is the sort of provision that decides how many chargers a supermarket car park can hold, and it will never appear in a press release about helping drivers.

What to do with it

The sequence for a household from tomorrow is not complicated, and the planning step is only one part of it. Start with the highway authority, and ask whether a channel is acceptable at that address and who is allowed to install it, then establish who will own and maintain it afterwards. The installer has to be able to work to the authorisation the authority gives, because the charger and the channel are separate permissions even when they are one job.

There is one further wrinkle worth knowing. A saving in article 10 of the amended order allows installations that were permitted immediately before 21 October, but fall outside the new limits, to be carried out until the end of 20 October 2027. It is a transition for projects already in design, not an extension of the old rules.

The reform is genuine: for a terraced street, the planning application disappears and the cost and delay with it. The phone call to the highway authority does not, and neither does the question of whether the kerb outside the house is ever free. Where a channel is not an option at all, the council-run alternative is the route, and we set out how those schemes work.