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.