Starting Wednesday, EV drivers in England who lack off-street parking no longer need planning permission to install a cross-pavement cable gully — a flush steel channel that lets a charging cable reach a parked car without creating a trip hazard. The reform strips out a step that cost £300-£500 and could take up to 15 months for approval. The logic is simple: home charging costs roughly 8p per kWh versus 54p at public chargers, a gap that widened further this month when domestic electricity VAT dropped from 5% to 0% while public charging remains taxed at 20%. The numbers are stark. Gregg Francis in Carmarthenshire charges his Vauxhall Vivaro Life fully for £6 via a council-funded gully — the same charge at a public point would cost £30 to £63. EVA England estimates driveway owners save an average of £1,400 a year compared with petrol or diesel. Some of its members without off-street parking report paying more for their EVs than they did for fossil-fuel cars. The policy question is not whether home charging is cheaper — it is whether access to that saving is distributed fairly. It is not. More than 20 local authorities, including Kent, Leicester, Worcestershire, and London boroughs like Ealing, Waltham Forest, and Hackney, still refuse to allow gully installations. Their objections centre on pavement safety, accessibility for disabled and elderly residents, maintenance liability, and earthing standards. Ealing declined even to trial the gullies. Waltham Forest cited 'significant concerns including safety and accessibility of footways.' These are not frivolous objections — pavement accessibility for wheelchair users and visually impaired pedestrians is a genuine tension — but the effect is a hard block on the cheapest path to EV ownership for millions. Even where gullies are permitted, costs vary wildly. The average installation runs about £1,200 before any grant. The government has allocated £25m to councils for subsidies, but distribution is inconsistent: Surrey charges £499 after subsidy, South Gloucestershire £250, and some councils offer free installations while funds last. Redbridge in London covers up to £1,200 in installation costs but then charges £815 in fees and bonds plus a £185 annual licence fee. Enfield charges £107 a year. The annual fees are particularly notable — they convert a one-time infrastructure investment into a recurring cost stream for councils, layering extraction onto what should be a straightforward public good. The structural problem is that EV charging economics in England now track property wealth almost perfectly. If you have a driveway, you charge at 8p/kWh with zero VAT, save £1,400 a year, and face no council gatekeeping. If you are among the 9.3 million households without off-street parking — disproportionately urban renters and terraced-house owners — you either navigate a postcode lottery of council rules and fees or pay 54p/kWh at a public charger taxed at 20%. The planning permission barrier was one layer of friction; removing it helps, but the council-by-council refusal regime and fee extraction remain. Alison Williams in Ealing captures the bind precisely. She insulated her home, installed solar panels, bought an electric VW ID.3 — and now pays a premium to charge it because her council blocks gullies. 'You either have to have enough money to have a house with a driveway, or you have to be able to afford the additional cost of charging at a public charger,' she says. The green transition, as currently structured, rewards those who already own assets and charges those who don't. The £25m government fund is a start, but it is a fraction of what universal coverage would cost for 9.3 million households. The policy leaves the hardest distributional question unanswered: whether EV charging infrastructure is a public utility — like water or electricity access — or a privilege contingent on housing type, council politics, and willingness to pay recurring fees for the right to use your own pavement.
