The Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) has confirmed that grant schemes to support the installation of EV chargers will be continued for a further year, but at a lower rate.

The announcement covers the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme (EVHS), the Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) and the On-street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS).

From 1 April 2020 the grant for these schemes will be set at £350 towards the cost of purchase and installation of a chargepoint at home through the EVHS, and £350 towards a chargepoint socket at work through the WCS.

This is a reduction from £500 to £350. In its announcement OLEV claimed lowering the grant would enable twice as many people to benefit (up from 30,000 to 57,000 under the EVHS), and this would support the expected increase in the uptake of electric vehicles. 

In two further changes the EVHS scheme is being extended to include larger electric motorbikes (currently only electric cars and vans are eligible), and the number of sockets allowed under the workplace charging scheme is being doubled from 20 to 40.

Local authorities can apply for an ORCS grant to cover part of the capital costs of installing chargepoints for residents who lack off-street parking, but this too has been cut from £7,500 to £6,500 per charge point from 1 April.

Again it was claimed that lowering the cap would enable more chargepoints to be funded.