Is workplace EV charging worth it for a business?

The case for: four things that stack up

1. The grant covers most of the hardware. The Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) pays up to £500 per socket — 75% of the total purchase and installation cost including VAT — for up to 40 sockets across your sites. It runs until 31 March 2027. For a bank of 7kW workplace units at £800-£1,500 each, the grant can cover the majority of the charger cost.

2. The tax relief covers the rest. EV chargepoints qualify for a 100% First-Year Allowance, so a company can write the full remaining cost off against taxable profits in year one (until 31 March 2027 for corporation tax, 5 April 2027 for income tax). Grant plus tax relief together mean the net cost of a workplace scheme is often a fraction of the sticker price.

3. The running cost is far lower than fuel. Charging on a commercial overnight tariff works out at roughly 6-8p per mile, versus about 15-19p for petrol or diesel at July 2026 pump prices. For a van fleet doing serious mileage, that gap is tens of thousands of pounds a year. Our representative 24-van depot saves an indicative ~£50,000 a year in fuel, paying back the charging infrastructure in around two years.

4. It is a genuine staff benefit — tax-free. Letting employees charge their own electric or plug-in hybrid car at work is exempt from benefit-in-kind under s237A ITEPA 2003, so there is no tax charge for them and it costs you only the electricity. Combined with a company-car BiK of just 4% in 2026/27 for a pure EV (versus up to 37% for petrol/diesel), workplace charging makes salary-sacrifice and company-car schemes markedly more attractive for recruitment and retention.

When workplace EV charging is NOT worth it (yet)

We would rather tell you to wait than sell you chargers you do not need. It is usually not worth installing workplace charging if:

• You have very few EV drivers and no near-term fleet plan. If one or two people drive EVs and there is no fleet transition coming, a couple of sockets may be all you need — a full scheme is premature. Lay cable routes now (cheap) and expand later.
• You have no dedicated off-street parking. The WCS grant requires off-street parking you control; on-street or shared parking usually rules it out, and public/kerbside charging is a different, local-authority-led route.
• Your supply is severely constrained and load management won't bridge it. If even a load-managed 7kW scheme would trigger a major DNO reinforcement, the grid cost can dwarf the benefit. In that case the honest advice is often to start with a handful of sockets within your existing capacity and revisit when you upgrade the supply for other reasons.
• You only ever need rapid charging for occasional visitors. A single expensive DC rapid for rare use rarely pays back; a paid or CPO-funded model, or simply pointing visitors at the nearby public network, may be more sensible.

Public rapid charging is also worth a caveat: at around 54p/kWh it costs far more than depot or overnight charging, so the fuel saving lives in on-site, off-peak charging — not in relying on the public network. And since 1 April 2025 EVs pay standard Vehicle Excise Duty, so the old road-tax exemption has gone. The per-mile saving is still large, but we would rather you saw the whole picture.

The honest bottom line

For a business with a fleet, a group of EV-driving staff, or a genuine plan to electrify, workplace charging in 2026 is one of the better-supported capital investments available — the grant and tax windows both close on 31 March 2027, which is a real (not manufactured) reason to act this year rather than next. For a business with none of those, the right answer might be "not yet, but lay the ducting." A free feasibility check will tell you which camp you are in.