Cross-Pavement EV Charging: Council Permission Guide

Last checked: 13 August 2026

If you don’t have a driveway, the government’s answer to “how do I charge at home” is a cross-pavement charging solution - a cable channel set into the pavement so you can run power from your house to your car parked on the street, without a trailing cable creating a trip hazard. It sounds simple. In practice, it’s the single most confusing grant in the whole EV charging category, because two different authorities have to agree, and they don’t always want the same thing.

What we actually know about your council (and what we don’t)

There’s no single, up-to-date, national list of every UK council’s cross-pavement policy - that’s the entire problem this article exists to explain, not something we can shortcut around. What we can offer instead: four real examples, checked directly against each council’s own site, showing how differently councils are handling the exact same national grant.

Checked directly against each council’s own page, 13 August 2026. If yours isn’t listed, that’s the point: this is set council-by-council, not nationally - see “how to check your own council” below.

For the national picture: of 134 councils that responded to a 2026 freedom-of-information request, seven had a live cross-pavement scheme, 21 were running a trial, and 28 were planning one for later in the year - putting roughly 42% of UK councils on track to offer some form of cross-pavement charging by the end of 2026 (RAC coverage of the Vauxhall-commissioned FOI research).

What the national grant covers (the same for every council)

Central government will fund up to £500, or 75% of the total cost - whichever is lower - for a smart charger installed alongside an approved cable channel product, via the government’s household chargepoint grant for on-street parking. The two product names you’ll see most often are Kerbo Charge and Pavecross. This part is standard nationwide - what varies entirely is whether, and how, your specific council lets you install one, because a cable channel crosses a public pavement, which makes it a highways decision, not just an electrical one.

How to check your own council

1. Search your council’s own site for “cross-pavement,” “cable channel,” “footway crossing,” or “dropped kerb EV” rather than generic “EV charging” - plenty of councils have a page about chargers that never mentions the pavement-crossing element at all.
2. If nothing turns up, contact the highways team directly, not customer services generally - highways is the department that actually owns this decision, not planning or environmental services.
3. Ask three things up front: is there a live scheme, is there a non-refundable fee just to ask, and is there a published timeline. The Hertfordshire and Northumberland examples above show real answers to all three, and they’re not the same answers.
4. Get whatever you’re told in writing. Policy varies enough between neighbouring authorities that an informal verbal answer isn’t something to plan a car delivery date around.

If your council says no, or has no scheme yet

There isn’t currently a national appeal mechanism that overrides a council’s refusal - highway authorities have discretion here. Some people have had success asking their council directly what would need to change for approval (a different product, a different route, evidence of pedestrian clearance) and reapplying with that addressed. Others have gone the local-councillor or resident-association route to push for a published policy where none exists yet - North Northamptonshire’s 2026 trial above is an example of a council moving from no policy to some policy, which is the direction most seem to be heading even where the timeline varies.

If cross-pavement charging isn’t viable for your property yet, on-street charging without a permanent installation and public charging networks remain fallback options in the meantime.

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