If your business runs vans, fields a sales fleet, or just has staff asking where they can plug in, there is a government grant that pays a meaningful share of the answer — and a date after which it will not. The Workplace Charging Scheme covers up to 75% of the cost of buying and installing charge points, capped at £500 per socket, and it closes on 31 March 2027, currently stated as its final year. This guide covers who qualifies, what the money actually amounts to, how the voucher process runs, and the part of the project the grant does not touch.
The figures below are the government’s, current as at July 2026. Check them on gov.uk before you budget around them, because grant terms change — this scheme’s own per-socket rate did, in April.
The scheme in one paragraph
The Workplace Charging Scheme gives eligible organisations a voucher worth up to 75% of the cost of buying and installing workplace charge points, inclusive of VAT, capped at £500 per socket for installations completed from 1 April 2026 — the rate rose from £350 on that date, and applies regardless of when the application went in. Each applicant can claim for up to 40 sockets across all their sites. Do the multiplication and the scheme is worth up to £20,000 to a business using its full allocation; a more typical ten-bay depot install is up to £5,000 off.
Who qualifies — the four tests
The organisation. Registered businesses, charities, public-sector organisations and small accommodation businesses are eligible. Sole traders and companies alike need to be able to evidence their registration.
The parking. You need dedicated off-street parking, clearly associated with your premises, used by staff or fleet vehicles. This is the test that catches most applicants: customer-facing parking does not qualify, and gov.uk asks for evidence of staff or fleet use. If what you actually want is visitor charging, that is still a job we can wire — it is just not one this grant pays toward.
The tenure. If you do not own the site, you need your landlord’s consent before applying.
The installer and the kit. The grant is claimed through an OZEV-authorised installer fitting approved charge point models — it is not a cash rebate you claim yourself after the fact. Tell us about your site and we will give you a straight read on whether it qualifies and how the process would run for you.
One better-funded exception worth knowing: state-funded education institutions have their own version of the scheme at up to £2,000 per socket for new applications from April 2026 — if you are a school business manager reading this, your numbers are four times better than everyone else’s.
How the voucher process runs
The mechanics are straightforward and mostly sequential. You apply online and, if eligible, receive a voucher. The voucher is valid for 180 days, and the installation — by an authorised installer, using approved equipment — happens inside that window, with the grant applied through the installer rather than paid to you afterwards.
The practical consequence of the 180-day window: the voucher is not the thing to get first. Get the site assessment first, so that when the voucher lands, the design, the supply question and the installation slot are already answered and the clock starts on a project that is ready to run — not on one that spends four of its six months discovering the distribution board is full. It also keeps the design honest in the other direction: a site assessed first tells you how many sockets are actually worth applying for, rather than letting the voucher decide the engineering.
The deadline maths
The scheme closes to applications at 11:59pm on 31 March 2027, and gov.uk currently describes the extension to that date as its final one. That sounds comfortably far away; for some sites it is not. An installation that needs supply works — a board upgrade, a capacity increase agreed with the network operator — carries lead times the grant clock does not pause for. If your building is older, or your plans run to more than a handful of sockets, the safe assumption is that the useful window closes months before the official one does. Leave months, not weeks.
The part the grant does not touch
The £500 cap attaches to the socket, but the project’s hard costs often sit behind the wall. A single 7 kW charger draws on the order of a domestic electric shower, for hours at a time, and nobody installs just one — so the real questions on an older commercial building are what the incoming supply can take, whether the distribution board has the ways and the capacity, and whether dynamic load management can share the available headroom before anyone pays for a bigger supply. That assessment is electrical contracting, not charger retail, and it is the reason our EV work starts with a load assessment rather than a brochure. The full electrical picture — including BS 7671’s specific requirements for vehicle charging circuits — is on our commercial EV charging page.
Charge the fleet on your own roof
A last thought that changes the ten-year economics more than the grant does. Workplace charging and rooftop solar suit each other unusually well: staff and fleet vehicles sit parked through exactly the hours a commercial solar array generates, so the building can put surplus generation into driven miles instead of low-value export. With new petrol and diesel car sales ending in 2030 and all new cars and vans zero-emission by 2035, every fleet is on a countdown that ends at a plug — the grant decides part of what the sockets cost, but the roof decides what the electricity through them costs for the next 25 years.
Thinking about sockets before the scheme closes? Tell us the building, how many vehicles need to charge and how long they sit. You will get a straight read on eligibility, on what your supply can take, and on what we would do in your position — including whether the grant window is realistic for your site. Get a charging quote or call 01388 662659.