Could/should the OLEV EV charging point grant be scrapped?

I am not picking up on any vibes that encourage me to become an OLEV registered EV charger installer handling grant payments on their behalf.


It still seems something that doesn’t make sense commercially for a sole trader as it requires giving people credit without running credit checks, unless full payment of the customers payment is taken upfront before work is commenced. Can you even vaguely imagine a bank or credit card company giving credit to customers without running credit checks, then accepting that the final balance will be paid by a third party several months later, provided you submit broken down invoices and photographs?


The idea that you will turn up, do the installation then collect part payment of the customer and wait several months for the balance is madness. You wouldn’t get any other work done in your home on such terms. Even taking full payment of the customer part payment then waiting several months for the balance would also be considered madness in any other retail business.


It all just seems to much financial risk is being placed on the installer. Unless there is a big profit margin and everything is over priced to cover the additional administrative and finance costs.


It seems to me that currently installers are not even prepared to do site surveys and want potential customers to submit photos and videos to do “Desktop surveys” leading customers to think they are designing the installations themselves and telling the trained installers how to do their job. But the conversion rate for surveys to booked jobs is not high enough to make it viable to keep doing free surveys, due to so many jobs not being viable due to the state of the existing electrical installations, DNO supplies and requirements such as having to have off road parking.


It seems that something has to change to move things forward, OLEV doesn’t stop what they consider inappropriate installations, they just get done without the grant, so the grant scheme may not even keep the standards of installations up to what OLEV consider an acceptable standard.


The whole business model from not doing site surveys through to the delayed final payment just isn’t cutting it as far as I am concerned and I cannot see it making it through as a pitch on Dragons Den.



 Andy Betteridge 

I did similar on a warm front grant a few years back for some storage heaters. It took a while to get paid the grant element. Customer paid his bit promptly and I warned him upfront that I would add £50 to my normal price to cover the cost of the Warmfront £50  deduction for admin fees. Farce!

I think a photo of the DNO intake at my house is enough for an OLEV grant application to be rejected.




So as a contractor I probably would not want to do a free site survey for installing an EV charger at home until the DNO have upgraded the supply.


Ignore the display on the data logger, I have been going to start a discussion about that for the last week or so.


Andy Betteridge