Charging at home without a driveway: what England's new pavement-channel rules change

What changes on 21 October

The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2026 was made on 25 September and comes into force on 21 October 2026. It adds a new permitted development right for a cross-pavement solution, defined as a cable channel set into the footway so a charging cable can cross safely from a home to a parked car. The channel must be installed by, for, or with the authorisation of the highway authority.¹

The order also widens the existing right for wall-mounted chargers. A charger can now go anywhere within the curtilage of a house or block of flats, not only beside off-street parking. It must sit no higher than 1.6 m, and under the new route there can be only one per property. Where the wall faces the street, it must protrude no more than 0.2 m and leave at least 1.5 m of footway. When the charger is in use, the cable must cross the pavement in an authorised channel.¹

The new wall-charger route and the channel right both exclude conservation areas, and the channel right also excludes listed buildings and scheduled monuments. When a channel is no longer needed it must be removed and the pavement put back as it was. The rules follow a Department for Transport consultation that ran from November 2025 to January 2026, with the government response published on 11 September 2026.^1,2,6

What the order does not change

Removing planning permission takes away one application, not the council's control. Government guidance for councils, published in December 2024, says placing apparatus across a highway needs the highway authority's consent under section 178 of the Highways Act 1980. Companies that are not statutory undertakers also need a street works licence. Trade reporting of the September announcement confirms that councils keep this oversight.^3,6,7

The same guidance is blunt about parking: having a channel outside your door gives you no right to the space. Councils are told to check that a resident can usually park near the home, and to look at pavement width, junctions, buried pipes and tree roots. Liability depends on local agreements; Milton Keynes, for example, requires residents to hold public liability insurance for cable misuse.³

Councils also choose who owns the channel. Under one model the council owns and maintains it and the resident pays an approved contractor; under another a supplier owns and maintains it. The charger itself stays the resident's responsibility and must be installed by a qualified electrician.³

Who could use it

About 8 million households in England, or 32%, have no off-street parking, according to English Housing Survey figures quoted in the government guidance. Roughly half of them, almost 4 million, have adequate on-street parking and could in principle use a pavement channel. EVA England puts the share of UK households without off-street parking at around four in ten.^3,6

Demand appears to be real where councils offer schemes. The Royal Borough of Greenwich said in July 2026 that more than 160 residents applied for a trial designed for 50 households, which it planned to expand to 75. The council has not yet reported any completed installations.⁵

Paying for the kit

The government's chargepoint grant for households with on-street parking provides up to £500 towards installing a charger. To qualify you must own or rent the home, have only on-street parking and be installing a cross-pavement solution such as a charging gully. Some councils add their own help for the channel itself: Greenwich offers up to £1,200 from Office for Zero Emission Vehicles funding.^4,5

Charger prices vary. As one reference point, Octopus Energy lists supported smart chargers from £949 including standard installation. Charjin has not found an official national figure for the cost of a pavement channel; the government guidance says costs depend on the site and that installing several at once is likely to be cheaper.^3,13

The running-cost gap

The case for home charging got stronger on 1 October. HMRC has applied a temporary zero rate of VAT to qualifying domestic electricity in England, Scotland and Wales until 31 March 2027; Northern Ireland stays at 5%. Public charging still carries 20% VAT, a gap that a parliamentary petition opened in August is trying to close.^8,9,10

Under Ofgem's price cap for October to December 2026, the average electricity unit rate for Direct Debit customers is 26.32p per kWh, now without VAT. Intelligent Octopus Go offers 7.6p per kWh for smart charging overnight, if your car or charger is compatible. Zapmap's September 2026 index puts average pay-as-you-go public prices at 54p per kWh for slow and fast chargers and 79p for rapid and ultra-rapid.^11,12,13

Charjin's worked example uses the Volkswagen ID.4's official consumption of 15.8 kWh per 100 km from our car file. That gives about £1.20 per 100 km on the smart off-peak rate, £4.16 at the price-cap rate, £8.53 at an average public slow or fast charger and £12.48 at an average rapid charger. Over 10,000 km a year that is roughly £120, £416, £853 and £1,248.^11,12,13,14

Those figures leave out standing charges, charging losses and subscriptions or promotions on public networks, and real-world consumption is usually higher than the official figure. The ranking still holds: a driver who can plug in at home on a smart tariff pays roughly a tenth of the rapid-charging price for the same energy.^12,14

What to check before you start

Start with your council. Ask whether it authorises cross-pavement channels, which products or suppliers it accepts, who will own the channel and what insurance it expects. Then check the planning status of your home: conservation areas and listed buildings still need permission, and the charger must meet the height, projection and footway limits in the order.^1,3

Read the grant conditions before any work starts, and confirm that your car or charger works with the tariff you want before you sign up. Remember that the VAT zero rate is temporary and is due to end on 31 March 2027, so judge the investment on normal tariffs as well.^4,8,13

The Charjin view

The order removes a real obstacle, and it does so in the right place: the council keeps control of the pavement while the planning duplicate goes. It does not create a right to charge at home. Whether a household benefits will still depend on its council's appetite, the street layout and whether a parking space is usually free near the door.^1,3

The bigger issue is the price gap. With home electricity now free of VAT and public charging still taxed at 20%, drivers without a driveway pay far more per kilometre. Pavement channels will help some of them; the rest still depend on public prices coming down.^8,9,12