Have any of your RMC’s/RTM’s made enquiries about installing an electric vehicle charging system?
Grants of up to £51,000 per building are available but not forever.
The grant scheme ends on 31 March 2025 and failure to secure a grant for your client may leave you liable for the shortfall.
It’s a potential perfect storm for already busy property managers.
Qualifying and investigating retrofitting of EV chargers into your client sites is time consuming and filled with legal and practical pitfalls.
The failure to secure a grant will make interesting case law if it happens and there is precedent where funds were available outside of the service charge regime but weren’t obtained.
In Continental Property Ventures Inc v White 2006, the landlord was ordered to make a payment of £38,060.52 to the leaseholders following failure to enact a guarantee.
HHJ Rich QC rejected the landlord’s submissions on (LLTA 1985 s.19(1)(a) in connection with the reasonableness of incurring costs where a guarantee could be called upon at no charge: “The LVT held as a matter of fact that the landlord could have had the guarantee works carried out under the guarantee at no charge. It concluded therefore that to carry out those works at a cost was to incur the cost other than reasonably. Unless there was evidence of some disadvantage or good reason to reject the availability of the works without cost in favour of incurring a cost, this seems to me to be incontrovertible”