Grants are available for multi-occupancy buildings from the Office for Zero Emissions Vehicles (OZEV) of up to £500 per pay towards infrastructure costs and £350 per charge point. There are certain restrictions and full details can be viewed here but the big picture for property managers is that you can get up to £51,000 of funding via Government grants, per building

This grant is a combination of funds towards the electric chargers and the infrastructure.

The infrastructure grant is capped at £30,000 per building.

Many property managers and installers fall into the trap of believing this grant is a “per site” grant. It isn’t and it is possible to obtain grants vastly in excess of £51,000 but you need to understand the grant application process.

Situations where you can apply for grants in excess of the figures quoted above include

  • Where a site has more than one building
  • Where a site has more than one freeholder
  • Where the right to manage has been granted on ANY part of an estate.

To give some worked examples,

Customer A is a site of 128 flats split over three blocks. Each block has been granted the right to manage so even though there is one freeholder, we are able to apply for a grant for EACH building. In the case of this client, the grants achievable are as follows:

128 EV chargers @ £350 per charger = £44,800

Building 1 has 24spaces @ £500 per space = £12,000

Building 2 has 48 spaces @ £500 per space = £24,000

Building 3 has 56 spaces @ £500 per space = £28,000

Total Grants £108,800

Customer B has 152 flats split over 2 buildings. The development is all under the auspices of a resident management company which is also the freeholder, or so we were told.

A review of the leases established that part of the land was actually leased to the resident management company through a head lease. This means that there is a separate freeholder and this allows us to apply for grants as follows:

152 EV chargers @ £350 per charger = £53,200

Building 1 has 80 spaces @ £500 per space for 60 spaces = £30,000

Building 2 has 72 spaces @ £500 per space for 60 spaces = £30,000

Total grants £113,200

In both these cases, proposals from other EV installation companies has capped available grants at £51,000 as they hadn’t understood how the legal set up of a development can work to leaseholders advantage.