Businesses that have not already taken advantage of the Government’s Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) grant funding should begin the application process now to avoid missing out on up to £14k, Northgate has warned.

Northgate is expecting an industry backlog of applications to develop charger installations

It’s less than 12 months until the grant, which is run by the Office of Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV), ends on 31 March 2024.

However, Northgate – which is exhibiting at this month’s Great British Fleet Event – and charging provider ChargedEV, both part of Northgate Redde, are expecting an industry backlog of applications to develop charger installations. That’s based on rapidly growing new EV sales, along with the previous home charger grant that ended in April 2022 being heavily oversubscribed

Typically, the grant claim process usually takes around three months to complete – and Northgate, along with ChargedEV, are on hand to assist companies with the grant application process as part of its brand-agnostic Drive to Zero initiative.

The WCS offers a voucher-based incentive to businesses looking to install on-site charging infrastructure, capped at £350 per socket and restricted to 40 sockets per applicant across multiple sites. It can lower a company’s overall EV charger installation costs by up to 75%.

The grant is available for businesses with designated off-street parking facilities and a power supply of up to 7kW available for each socket.

With Northgate and ChargedEV experiencing a 51% increase in the number of socket installations during 2022, and demand showing no signs of slowing, a backlog of installations is expected to build up in the coming months.

“When the original OZEV-funded grant scheme for home charging ended on 1 April 2022, we received a high number of installation booking requests that filled our available capacity in late 2021 and into 2022. Our installation team of over 35 nationwide installers were at full capacity due to the grant requests,” explained Mark Pymm, ChargedEV’s MD.

Neil McCrossan, Northgate’s sales and marketing director, added: “We have experienced an increase in vehicle and charger applications during 2022 as a number of our fleet customers have begun their electrification process. If it continues to increase at this pace, we expect a bottleneck to form as the grant deadline approaches, which is why we are encouraging companies to start applying sooner rather than later.”

Northgate has recently launched an EV bundle that enables fleets to combine electric LCV hire, charging infrastructure installation and maintenance, and even vehicle charging payment cards into one single monthly contract.