Barnet’s four town wards house people in very different ways, and that decides where a charger can physically go before anyone looks at the fuse. A High Barnet detached house might have a drive long enough to need a post; an East Barnet semi usually has a side wall; a Barnet Vale flat has a bay in a shared car park; an Underhill terrace may have nothing but the kerb. This guide takes each in turn, then the conservation areas and the boundary questions. For the charger itself and the grant rules, see our Barnet EV charger installation page.
Across the London Borough of Barnet, DVLA records 12,097 privately kept plug-in vehicles at the end of June 2026, up from 10,089 a year earlier; that is borough-wide, not the town alone. If your question is whether a Barnet roof can charge the car, our earlier guide on whether solar panels can charge a car in Barnet covers that; this one is only about position.
High Barnet houses: wall or post
High Barnet is the house-heavy end of town: 23.7% of households live in detached houses, 24.7% in semis and 20.2% in terraces at Census 2021, and 67.6% own their home, against 52.7% across the borough. Owners decide for themselves where the charger goes, and on a detached plot there are often two choices.
A wall-mounted charger on the side or front of the house is the simplest, with the shortest cable run from the consumer unit. Where the car sits at the far end of a drive, or in front of a detached garage, a post is the usual answer: a standalone unit at the parking space, fed by a dedicated circuit run underground or in containment from the house. That groundwork is a separate line on the quote, and the survey measures it rather than guessing.
East Barnet semis: the side wall
East Barnet is led by semi-detached houses, at 36.4% of households. On a semi, the side wall next to the drive is usually the natural spot, close to where the car stops and often close to the consumer unit if it sits in the hall or under the stairs.
This is also where the tethered or socketed choice comes in. The EnSmart SmartBee-M we fit is published in both forms, with a Type 2 connection and an IP65 weatherproof rating. A tethered unit keeps the cable attached, which is quicker on a busy morning; a socketed one, where you bring your own cable, is neater on a side wall that faces the street. Our home EV charger installation page sets out the full specification.
Barnet Vale flats: the allocated bay
Barnet Vale is 37.2% purpose-built flats. Here the charger goes at the bay, not at the flat, and usually on a post or a car-park wall. Three things decide whether it can happen:
- an allocated or private bay, not a first-come space;
- the freeholder’s or managing agent’s written consent, and the landlord’s if you rent;
- a cable route from your own flat’s consumer unit to the bay that the freeholder accepts.
The route can be the longest part of a Barnet Vale job, because the consumer unit may be floors above the car park. People who own and live in a flat, and renters, can get 75% of the cost up to £500 per socket where there is private off-street or allocated parking. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant covers each route; claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer, so tell us your situation at the quote stage.
Underhill terraces: the front wall question
Underhill has the most terraces of the four town wards, 22.6% of households, and 24.0% of its households rent socially, so the landlord’s written permission comes first for about a quarter of homes. Where a terrace has a front garden deep enough to park on, the charger goes on the front wall beside it.
Where the car is on the road, the position depends on what Barnet Council, as highway authority, allows on the pavement in front. The government’s on-street grant of up to £500 applies only to a chargepoint installed with an approved cross-pavement solution, subject to the council’s rules. Ask the council what it permits on your street before choosing a position; if a home charger is not workable, we will say so.
Wood Street, Monken Hadley and the street view
Wood Street and Monken Hadley are two of Barnet’s 16 conservation areas, and both carry Article 4 directions, which remove some permitted development rights on the streets they cover. We make no planning call on chargers there. In either area, or on a listed building, ask Barnet Council’s planning team before fixing a charger to a street-facing wall, and plan a side or rear position by the drive where the parking allows. A post placed close to the street raises the same question.
The Hertsmere side of EN5
Postcodes do not follow the borough line. The EN5 district is split between the London Borough of Barnet and Hertsmere in Hertfordshire, and EN4 also reaches into Enfield and Hertsmere. For an address on the Hertfordshire side, Hertfordshire’s councils, not Barnet, set the rules for planning and for the pavement. The electricity network does not change with the council: Barnet’s town centre is in UK Power Networks’ Eastern Power Networks area, and the installer notifies UKPN of the new chargepoint.
Wherever it goes, the supply is the same
A 7 kW charger draws 32 A continuously, and household main fuses are commonly 60 A, 80 A or 100 A. A longer cable run to a post or a car-park bay does not change that, but it can affect the cable size the survey specifies. Load management, a sensor on the incoming supply that turns the charger down while the house is busy, usually avoids an upgrade. If panels or storage are also on your list, our page on battery storage in Barnet covers how a battery shares the same supply. A home charger carries 20% VAT. Send photos of your parking and consumer unit through our contact page, or call 0204 547 1892.
Sources: ONS Census 2021, TS044 accommodation type and TS054 tenure, High Barnet (E05013644), Barnet Vale, East Barnet and Underhill wards and Barnet (E09000003), via the Nomis API; DfT and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by keepership and local authority, Barnet, 2026 Q2 and 2025 Q2 (published 23 September 2026); planning.data.gov.uk, conservation-area and article-4-direction-area datasets, London Borough of Barnet; postcodes.io outcode lookups for EN4 and EN5 (ONS Postcode Directory data); UK Power Networks Open Data Portal, licence boundaries (December 2024); GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6; EnSmart SmartBee-M published specification.