Can I install an EV charger on my driveway?

Your charging cable cannot run across a public footpath or highway. That's the line that separates a straightforward installation from a complicated one, and it's a trip hazard and highways issue rather than an electrical one.

If your car sits on your own driveway, hardstanding or in your garage, you're fine. If it sits on the road outside and the cable would cross the pavement, a standard home charger isn't the answer, see the section on on-street parking below.

Two questions decide it: where is your car's charging port, and where is the consumer unit?

• Front nearside port and a driveway alongside the house, the charger usually goes on the house wall level with the front of the car.
• Rear port, mount further back down the drive, or accept a longer lead. Worth checking before the position is fixed, particularly if you might reverse onto the drive.
• Two cars sharing a drive, think about whether either car can reach, or whether you want a longer cable or a second point later.

Mounting height is usually somewhere around waist height: high enough that the connector isn't in standing water and the cable isn't dragging on the ground, low enough to be comfortable to use in the dark with your hands full.

If there's no wall in a useful position at all, a post-mounted unit set into the driveway solves it. It costs more, because there's a foundation and a buried cable involved, but it's a common answer on wide or detached-frontage properties.

Nobody wants a length of grey cable stapled diagonally across the front of the house. Good routing follows lines the eye already accepts: under a soffit, behind a downpipe, along a mortar course, or internally through a loft or floor void and out through the wall right behind the charger.

Ask to walk the route before anything is drilled. It takes two minutes and it's the difference between an installation you stop noticing and one that annoys you every time you park.

For a wall-mounted charge point at a house, normally no. It falls under permitted development, subject to conditions on size and on not facing a highway in some circumstances.

• Listed buildings, listed building consent may be needed, particularly on a principal elevation.
• Conservation areas, position becomes more sensitive, even where consent isn't strictly required.
• Flats and shared parking, usually a freeholder or management company question rather than a planning one.

If you're in one of those categories locally, East Staffordshire Borough Council is the place to check before you order a unit.

A standard home charger isn't viable, because of the footpath rule. There are two routes people take instead.

• A cross-pavement solution, a channel or gully set into the footpath so the cable sits below the surface. These need the highway authority's agreement, and there is a Government grant aimed specifically at households in this position.
• Public and workplace charging, with occasional rapid charging. Less convenient and more expensive per mile, but it needs no installation at all.