Northgate Vehicle Hire is urging businesses who have not already taken advantage of the Government Workplace Charging Scheme Grant funding, to begin the application process now, or risk losing out on up to £14,000 of grants if the deadline is missed.
It is just under twelve months until the Workplace Charging Scheme grant provided by the Office of Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) ends on the 31st March 2024.
However, Northgate and group in-house charging provider ChargedEV are expecting an industry backlog to develop on charger installations in line with rapidly growing new EV sales and historically 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. Northgate and ChargedEV are on hand to assist companies with the grant application process as part of its brand agnostic Drive to Zero initiative.
The OZEV Workplace Charging Scheme offers a voucher-based incentive to businesses looking to install on-site charging infrastructure for drivers capped at £350 per socket. This is restricted to 40 sockets per applicant across multiple sites and equates to lowering 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 1st 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 said:
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 bottle neck to form as the grant deadline approaches, which is why we are encouraging companies to start applying sooner rather than later.
Northgate enables fleets to bundle electric LCV hire, charging infrastructure installation and maintenance, and even vehicle charging payment cards into one single monthly contract. From help in selecting the perfect van for a fleet’s needs through to driver training Northgate makes the transition to an electrified fleet as easy and cost effective as possible.
