Budget puts £100m into cheaper on-street EV charging and sets up a home tariff taskforce
An independent review published alongside the Budget found public charging prices have far outpaced inflation since 2021. The government is funding lower prices at local chargers from spring 2027.
Drivers who rely on lower-powered public chargers near their homes should pay less from spring 2027, after the Budget set aside £100 million over two years to bring down prices at those chargers.
The Treasury expects the money to save the average electric car driver who has no home charger, and charges on the street, around £150 a year. The Department for Transport is due to explain how the funding will be delivered.
The Budget also announced a taskforce to look at letting drivers use their own domestic electricity tariff at certain local public chargers. The government described this as a complex proposal that will take time.
What the review found
Both measures respond to an independent review of public charging costs, chaired by Philip New and carried out between April and October for the Department for Transport, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Treasury. It drew on evidence from more than 60 organisations.
Since 2021, average prices have risen by 69% in real terms at lower-powered AC chargers and by 94% at higher-powered DC chargers, the review says. Its per-mile comparison sets out the gap:
- Charging mostly at home, including the cost of fitting a charger: 8p to 12p a mile
- Charging only at standard public chargers: 12p to 16p
- Charging at a mix of public charger speeds: 17p to 20p
- Charging only at rapid and ultra-rapid chargers: 24p
- A petrol car at September 2026 prices: 22p
The review puts much of the rise down to fixed costs rather than the price of electricity itself. Chargers are used far less than operators planned for: in 2025, average utilisation was 3% to 4% on rapid networks and 3% to 7% on standard ones, which the review equates to between 5 and 12 hours of use a week. It estimates that network standing charges paid by charge point operators are between 83% and 283% higher than in 2021.
How tariff porting would work
The review's first recommendation is what it calls tariff porting. A driver would plug in at a standard public charger near home and the electricity would be billed through their household energy supplier, at their domestic rate. They would also pay a regular access fee to cover the cost of the charger. As an illustration, the review suggests a figure comparable to the cost of a home charger spread over five years, which it gives as £1,000 over five years, or £200 a year.
The review says local councils would be best placed to pick which chargers qualify, possibly using existing residential parking permit zones. Charger software, supplier systems and industry settlement codes would all need changing, and the review suggests pilots first. Similar schemes are being tested in Germany.
Its other recommendations include time-limited subsidies for lower-powered chargers, changes to how network costs are shared, a certificate trading scheme for renewable electricity used to charge cars, and grants for battery storage at charging hubs. It also suggests operators show the cost of a full charge alongside the price per kWh.
VAT on public charging
Separately, the Budget confirmed legislation in the next Finance Bill making clear that electricity from publicly accessible and workplace charge points is subject to 20% VAT and does not count as domestic use for the Climate Change Levy. The Budget gives an effective date of 1 November 2026. HMRC has published a brief explaining the position.
