Electric vehicle charging in new residential development

Electric vehicle charging is now mainly a building regulations requirement rather than a planning one. Approved Document S sets the baseline for new homes with parking, and the planning question on most schemes is whether the local plan asks for more than that, and whether the layout you have drawn can physically deliver it.

The two regimes are read by different officers and discharged at different times, which is why schemes still arrive on site with a parking court, no ducting and a distribution board with no spare ways.

What the regulations require

For new residential buildings, each dwelling with an associated parking space is required to have a charge point. Where there are fewer spaces than dwellings, charge points are provided for as many spaces as there are, and cable routes are installed for the remainder.

Residential buildings undergoing major renovation with more than ten parking spaces attract a similar requirement, at a lower level, and new non-residential buildings with more than ten spaces need at least one charge point plus cable routes for a proportion of the remaining spaces.

Two details shape the design. The minimum charge point rating is 7 kW, which is a 32 amp single phase supply per point, and there is a cost cap: where the cost of the connection upgrade exceeds the stated figure per dwelling, the requirement reduces to cable routes rather than live points. The cap is set in the Approved Document and is the reason a large flatted scheme may lawfully be built with ducts and no chargers.

Houses with their own parking

This is the straightforward case. A driveway or garage serving one dwelling gets a point, and the only real design questions are position and cable management.

Put the unit where a car parked in the space can reach the socket without the lead crossing a footway or the front door approach. On a narrow frontage plot, that usually means the wall nearest the road rather than the wall nearest the meter, and the run back to the consumer unit has to be allowed for in the first fix.

Tandem parking is the arrangement that fails in use. Two spaces one behind the other with a single point means the rear car cannot charge without moving the front one, and a second point or a longer tethered lead should be designed in rather than retrofitted.

Where the drive is steep or awkward, the charging position interacts with turning and gradient, which is covered in private drive geometry: gradients, widths and turning.

Communal parking courts and flats

Flats are where the difficulty sits, because the parking is unallocated, the electrical supply is communal and somebody has to bill for the electricity.

Three models are used. Allocated spaces with points wired to individual flats, which is simple to bill and inflexible. Communal points on the landlord supply with a billing platform, which is flexible and needs a management company. And a hybrid, with a handful of live communal points and ducting to every other space.

Whichever is chosen, the decisions that have to be made before the slab is poured are the same: duct routes with draw cords to every space, a distribution position with spare ways, and space in the plant or substation area for future capacity. Retrofitting a parking court means digging it up.

Ownership and maintenance belong in the management arrangements rather than in a note on a drawing. Who owns the point, who maintains it, who sets the tariff and what happens when a unit fails are all questions the first management company will ask.

Passive provision and what it actually means

Passive provision is a cable route and capacity, not a socket. Local plan policies commonly ask for a percentage of spaces with active charging and passive provision for the rest, and the London Plan is the most widely quoted example of that split.

The trap is that passive provision done badly is worthless. A duct with no draw cord, a route that crosses a structural element, or a board with no spare ways all mean the future installation involves the same excavation the duct was meant to avoid. Specify the duct diameter, the draw cord, the chamber positions and the spare capacity, and show them on a drawing rather than in a sentence.

State the assumed future load. A parking court with twenty passive spaces and a supply sized for four is passive provision in name only, and the network operator's answer in five years will be a new connection.

Capacity, the network operator and smart charging

Apply to the distribution network operator early. The connection offer determines whether the scheme can support live points at all, and on constrained networks the offer can take months and come back with a reinforcement cost.

Load management is the usual answer. Smart charge points are required to have functionality that allows charging to be shifted away from peak periods by default, and a managed charging system across a parking court lets a modest supply serve many points by spreading the load overnight.

Say so in the application. A transport officer reading a scheme with forty spaces and a small supply wants to know how it works, and a paragraph on load management in the Transport Statement answers the question before it is asked. Where a Travel Plan is required, the charging strategy and any car club provision sit naturally alongside it.

Accessible bays

Accessible charging has its own specification, and it is not the same as putting a point next to a blue badge bay. The published specification covers the space around the bay, the height and force needed to operate the unit, kerb upstands, the weight of the cable, surface finishes and lighting.

Design at least one accessible charging bay into any communal court and more where the scheme includes wheelchair user dwellings. The interaction with the rest of the parking allocation is covered in accessible and motorcycle parking in a new scheme.

Cable management matters more here than anywhere else. A lead lying across a bay is a trip hazard for everyone and an obstacle for a wheelchair user, so overhead or bollard-mounted retraction earns its cost.

Conditions and discharge

Planning should not duplicate the building regulations, and many councils have stopped conditioning charge point numbers for that reason. Plenty still do, either because the local plan policy predates the regulations or because the policy asks for more than the baseline.

Where a condition is imposed, the discharge submission needs a layout plan showing each point and each passive space, the specification including output rating and socket type, the duct and cable route drawing, the electrical capacity and load management strategy, and the management arrangements for communal points.

Submit it with the other pre-commencement discharges rather than separately. And check whether the condition duplicates the regulations, because a condition requiring what Part S already requires can usually be resisted at the drafting stage, which is easier than varying it later.

Design the ducts before the levels are fixed, apply to the network operator before the planning decision, and write the management arrangements before the first flat is sold. Those three steps remove almost every problem this subject generates. Where the scheme is large enough to need one, PlanScope drafts the transport documents in minutes, structured to UK planning policy, with the survey data flagged. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.