EV charging for business premises

More employees are asking to charge an electric car at work, and more businesses run their own EV fleets. This guide covers the grant that’s currently open to help with the cost, the ones that have closed, and the tax and connection rules that apply once you install chargepoints.

What grant is available for workplace EV charging?

The Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS), run by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV), gives eligible employers up to £500 per socket towards buying and installing chargepoints. As of April 2026:

Detail	Current rule
Maximum grant per socket	£500 (up from £350 before 1 April 2026)
Share of cost covered	Up to 75% of the total cost, including VAT
Maximum sockets per applicant	40, across all of your sites
Who can apply	Businesses, charities, public sector organisations and small accommodation businesses
Scheme closing date	31 March 2027, 11:59pm

A separate, higher-value version of the scheme applies to state-funded education institutions, offering up to £2,000 per socket. For an ordinary business, the standard rate and 40-socket cap apply.

You must apply for a voucher before installation begins. The grant can’t be claimed after the work is done, so build the application into your project timeline rather than treating it as a formality.

Worked example: what the grant is worth

This is an illustration using the current published rates, not a quote. Your own installer costs will differ.

Input	Value
Sockets installed	6
Cost per socket, including VAT	£1,200
Total cost, including VAT	£7,200
Grant cap per socket	£500
Grant share of cost	Up to 75%

Per socket, 75% of £1,200 is £900, but the grant is capped at £500, so £500 per socket is what you’d actually get: £3,000 across the 6 sockets, leaving your business to fund the remaining £4,200. If your cost per socket is lower, say £600 including VAT, 75% of that is £450, which is below the cap, so you’d get £450 per socket rather than the full £500. The grant is whichever is lower: 75% of your actual cost, or the £500 cap.

Which OZEV grants have closed?

Several related grants closed to new applications on 31 March 2026, so don’t plan around them. These are separate schemes from the Workplace Charging Scheme, which remains open:

• The EV chargepoint grant for staff and fleets, which supported chargepoints for businesses’ own vehicles and staff parking.
• The commercial landlord chargepoint grant, which supported landlords installing chargepoints for commercial tenants.
• The residential landlord infrastructure grant, a related scheme for residential landlords’ groundworks.

Installers had until 26 May 2026 to submit claims for work already agreed under these schemes, with a final deadline of 13 July 2026 for supporting evidence. If your business previously relied on the staff and fleets grant, or you’re a commercial landlord who used to have a dedicated scheme, check GOV.UK for what, if anything, has replaced it, since none of these three schemes accept new applications now.

The home-focused grants (for flats and renters, residential landlords, and households with on-street parking) also increased to £500 per socket from 1 April 2026 and continue to 31 March 2027, but these are aimed at individuals and residential landlords rather than businesses.

This pattern, of a scheme’s grant amount rising while the range of schemes on offer narrows, is worth bearing in mind generally: OZEV funding for EV charging has changed several times since it started, so treat any older article or quote referencing a since-closed grant with caution.

Is it a taxable benefit to let employees charge for free at work?

No, provided you meet HMRC’s conditions. Since 6 April 2018, HMRC’s guidance confirms that no taxable benefit arises where an employer provides electric vehicle charging facilities, as long as:

• The charging point is at or near the employee’s workplace, not at their home.
• It’s available either to employees generally, or to all employees at that particular workplace, rather than singled out for specific individuals.
• It isn’t provided through an optional remuneration arrangement, such as a salary sacrifice scheme, which can change the tax treatment.
• It’s used to charge a vehicle in which the employee is the driver or a passenger.

This covers both the cost of the electricity used and the cost to you of providing the charging facilities. It doesn’t cover reimbursing an employee for charging away from your premises, for example at a motorway service station, or, for an employee’s own car, reimbursing their home electricity bill, which HMRC treats differently. If your business provides company cars, a separate HMRC exemption under section 239 ITEPA 2003 covers the employer’s cost of charging a company-provided electric car or van, including reimbursing home charging costs for that specific vehicle.

What tax relief is there for installing EV chargepoints?

A 100% first-year allowance lets a business deduct the full cost of qualifying chargepoint equipment from its taxable profits in the year it’s bought. This has run for several years and has been extended more than once; following the Autumn Budget 2025, the government confirmed a further one-year extension, to 31 March 2027 for Corporation Tax and 5 April 2027 for Income Tax. Because this relief has an end date that keeps being extended close to expiry, check GOV.UK for the position at the time you’re planning to buy, rather than assuming today’s date still applies.

Alongside this, the Annual Investment Allowance lets a business deduct the cost of most qualifying plant and machinery, including EV chargepoints, from taxable profits up to £1 million a year, which can apply where the 100% chargepoint-specific allowance doesn’t.

Business rates

In England, eligible plant and machinery used for on-site renewable generation and storage is exempt from business rates until 31 March 2035, and government confirmed at the Autumn Budget 2025 that it intends to extend business rates relief specifically for eligible EV chargepoints and EV-only forecourts over the following decade. Check the detail of how this applies to your own chargepoints with your local authority or the Valuation Office Agency, since rating rules for equipment can be technical.

Do you need permission to install business chargepoints?

Yes, in the same way as for solar panels or battery storage. Your local distribution network operator (DNO) needs to be told about the new load, and larger installations, or several chargepoints together, may need approval before you connect, particularly if the combined power draw is significant. Ask your installer to check your incoming electricity supply capacity before you commit to a number of sockets, since a site with many simultaneous fast chargers can draw a lot more power than its existing connection allows.

If you’re installing a large number of chargepoints, or planning to add solar or a battery to support them, our battery storage guide explains how storage can help manage that extra demand, and our commercial solar panels guide covers the equivalent connection process for generation.

How does your electricity contract interact with EV charging?

Adding chargepoints increases your overall demand, which can affect both your agreed supply capacity and how your tariff suits you. A few things worth checking alongside the grant and tax position:

• Your agreed supply capacity. A cluster of fast or rapid chargers used at the same time can draw a lot of power. Confirm your connection can cope, or budget for an upgrade, before you commit to a number of sockets.
• When charging happens. If most vehicles charge overnight or during quiet periods, a time-of-use tariff may suit you better than a flat rate. See our time-of-use tariffs guide.
• Managing multiple chargers. Load management systems can share available power across several chargepoints so they don’t all draw at full power simultaneously, which can reduce the size of connection upgrade you need.

None of this changes the Workplace Charging Scheme grant itself, but it affects the running cost of the chargepoints once they’re in, which is usually the bigger number over the equipment’s lifetime.

What about charging for customers or your own fleet?

Chargepoints for visitors, customers or your own fleet vehicles are treated separately from the Workplace Charging Scheme’s employee-facing focus, and the funding position has recently changed. With the staff and fleets grant closed, a business wanting to electrify its own fleet or offer public charging needs to check current funding directly with OZEV or fund the installation itself, while still being able to claim the capital allowances described above on qualifying equipment. If you charge customers or the public for using your chargepoints, that income and its VAT treatment is a separate matter from the exemptions covering free staff charging, so check this with your accountant.

A hotel, pub, retail park or similar site offering charging to visiting members of the public is, in effect, running a small retail energy service alongside its main business. That brings its own considerations around pricing, payment systems and consumer protection that go beyond the scope of this guide, so treat it as a separate project from simply adding chargepoints for staff.

What should you check before installing workplace EV charging?

1. Work out how many sockets you actually need now and in the next few years, since the Workplace Charging Scheme caps support at 40 sockets across all your sites.
2. Apply for your WCS voucher before any work starts. The grant can’t be claimed retrospectively.
3. Check your electrical supply capacity with your installer and, if needed, your DNO before committing to a number of chargepoints.
4. Set out your policy for employee charging so it meets HMRC’s conditions for the tax exemption, for example making sure access isn’t restricted to particular employees in a way that could look like additional pay.
5. Confirm the capital allowances position with your accountant, since the 100% first-year allowance for chargepoints has a fixed end date that keeps being extended, and you’ll want to know it still applies when you buy.
6. Ask your local authority about business rates if you’re relying on relief for the chargepoints themselves.

Installing chargepoints is often just one part of a wider move towards lower-carbon operations. See our guides to commercial solar panels and net zero for small businesses for how EV charging fits alongside other changes, and once you know your electricity needs, compare business energy quotes to make sure the extra demand is priced fairly.

Frequently asked questions