For years, charging an EV at home has really only worked well if you had a driveway. This change, confirmed by the Department for Transport on 11 September 2026, is aimed squarely at everyone else. It's great news for anyone who relies on on-street parking.

A policy shift would make home charging accessible for everyone; whoever needs it, however they park at home.

The problem: charging without a driveway

If you don't have a driveway, home charging has traditionally meant one of two options: trail a cable across the pavement and hope nobody trips over it, or rely on the public network instead. Installing a proper, safe solution - a small cable channel or gully set flush into the pavement - has needed up to three separate permissions, including full planning permission.

That process is obviously extremely prohibitive for most people. Around a third of UK households - roughly 9.6 million - don't have access to off-street parking, rising to around six in ten homes in cities and towns (Source: RAC Foundation). For all of them, home charging has never really been on the table as a realistic or affordable option.

Plus, relying solely on public chargers is expensive. The average public rapid or ultra-rapid charge cost 77p per kWh in August 2026, against as little as 6.7–10p per kWh on an off-peak home electricity tariff - meaning a public rapid top-up can cost roughly 8-10x times an overnight home charge. Without a driveway, a decent chunk of the savings that makes switching to an electric car worthwhile disappears immediately. 

What's changing

On 11 September 2026, the Department for Transport published its response to a public consultation addressing the difficulty homeowners without a driveway face. The response confirmed it will introduce a new permitted development right for “cross-pavement” charging solutions. In practice, that means no planning application will be needed to install a safe, professionally fitted cable channel from your home to a charge point at the kerb.

It doesn’t mean our pavements are going to be free to dig up with abandon. You'll still need permission from your council as the highways authority, as it's still a change to a public pavement. Plus, the usual exceptions for listed buildings and scheduled monuments also still apply. 

But the biggest hurdle - a full planning application - is being removed.

It's not law quite yet. The government still needs to lay secondary legislation before Parliament, which it expects to do in the autumn, with the change taking effect once that's done. But the direction is now confirmed.

What this means for EV drivers

If you've been holding off on switching to electric because you park on the street, this massive barrier is being removed. 

It also builds on other recent steps aimed at the same problem, including a £25 million scheme to help fund cross-pavement solutions directly, part of a wider £381 million investment in public charging that's already helped take the UK past 86,000 public chargers (Source: GOV.UK, October 2025).

For salary sacrifice drivers, this matters just as much. Home charging is where most of the running-cost saving on an EV actually comes from. Until now, that saving has been hardest to access for exactly the drivers who could benefit most: renters, leaseholders and anyone without their own driveway. This change won't fix everything overnight, but it's a government-confirmed step towards electric driving working for people regardless of where they park.

None of this requires you to do anything right now - the legislation still needs to pass through Parliament and your council will need to sign off on the highways side of any installation. But it's worth knowing it's coming, especially if a lack of a driveway has been the thing holding you back from switching.