Before anyone prices a charger at a Brentwood block of flats, someone has to say who owns the parking space, the wall and the cable route. This guide is for the people who are not the sole owner of all three: leaseholders, tenants of private and social landlords, and the landlords themselves. For driveway jobs in Shenfield, Hutton and Warley, our Brentwood EV charger page covers the fitting and the fuse.
It is a large group here. At the 2021 Census, 29.4% of households in Brentwood’s built-up area lived in flats or maisonettes, the largest single housing type, and across the borough 16.0% of households rented privately and 11.3% from a social landlord (our arithmetic on 5,163 and 3,660 of 32,343 households in Nomis table TS054). Privately kept plug-in vehicles across the borough rose from 1,954 to about 2,644 in the year to June 2026 (DVLA).
First: whose is the parking space?
Three kinds of parking cover most Brentwood blocks, from the town centre out to Shenfield. An allocated bay is the easiest case, because the charger has a fixed home; your lease or tenancy will say what rights you have over the bay, and that shapes what you can ask to fix to it. A shared car park with unallocated spaces is harder: a charger on one space effectively reserves it, which is the freeholder’s decision, not yours. A garage in a block can be the simplest of all if it has, or can be given, a supply. OZEV’s grant for flats and renters needs private off-street or allocated parking, so check how your space is described before counting on it.
If you own a leasehold flat
Leaseholders need written consent from the freeholder or managing agent before anything is fixed to the building or wired from it. Send three things with the request: where the bay is, where the cable would run, and whose meter the circuit would come from. That last question is often the one that decides a block. A circuit from your own flat’s consumer unit keeps the charging on your own bill; a supply from a landlord’s or communal board needs separate arrangements and the freeholder’s agreement on how it is metered. Shared owners, 214 households in Brentwood borough at the Census, are leaseholders too and need the same consent.
If the freeholder agrees and you own and live in the flat, with private off-street or allocated parking, OZEV’s grant covers 75% of the purchase and installation cost up to £500 per socket. The claim must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage.
If you rent privately
Private renters, 16.0% of the borough’s households, need the landlord’s written agreement before a charger is fitted, and if the home is a flat, the landlord may need the freeholder’s too. The renter grant is on the same terms as the flat-owner grant: 75% of the cost up to £500 per socket, with private off-street or allocated parking. Agree in writing what happens to the charger when the tenancy ends, and clear your account and charging history from it when you leave; the smart charge point regulations require that a charger’s owner can delete personal data without undue difficulty.
If you rent from the council or a housing association
Social tenants, 11.3% of Brentwood borough’s households at the Census, ask the landlord first. For the 8.2% of households renting from the council, that means Brentwood Borough Council in its role as your landlord, which is a different conversation from any planning question. The renter grant applies on the same terms if you have private off-street or allocated parking.
If you are the landlord
Residential landlords can claim OZEV’s landlord grant of up to £500 per socket, for up to 200 sockets a year, under the schemes running to 31 March 2027. For a Brentwood landlord with a block or several lets, that can mean one survey across several bays and a single supply design, rather than a charger here and there. The charger we fit is the EnSmart SmartBee-M; its RFID cards for access control, part of its published specification, are useful where several residents share a car park. Our home EV charger installation guide sets out the rest of that specification.
The grants side by side
| Your situation in Brentwood | OZEV grant | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Private or social tenant | 75% of the cost, up to £500 per socket | Private off-street or allocated parking |
| Leaseholder who lives in the flat | 75% of the cost, up to £500 per socket | Private off-street or allocated parking |
| Residential landlord | Up to £500 per socket, up to 200 sockets a year | Residential property you let |
| Owner-occupier of a house | None | The scheme closed in April 2022 |
| On-street parking only | Up to £500 | Needs an approved cross-pavement solution, which Essex Highways does not currently permit |
Every claim must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant covers the paperwork. A home chargepoint installation carries 20% VAT.
If there is no off-street space
Some Brentwood flats, and some of the 16.9% of households in terraced houses, have no private space at all. There, Essex Highways says trailing a charging cable across the public footway is illegal and not permitted; it does not permit cable covers or matting, and cross-pavement channels are not currently permitted while it develops a trial framework, with applications due later in 2026. For now the practical route is public charging: Essex’s 2023 On-Street Residential Charging Scheme funding of £236,000 is paying for 66 public on-street charge points capable of up to 22 kW, at least two in each of the county’s twelve district, borough and city areas, Brentwood among them.
What a survey at a Brentwood block looks at
At a block, the survey answers four questions in order: whose supply the charger will use, how far the cable runs from that board to the bay, whether the supply has room for a 7.4 kW charger drawing 32 A continuously, and what the freeholder has agreed to in writing. Central Brentwood sits in UK Power Networks’ Eastern Power Networks licence area, and the installer notifies UKPN of each chargepoint. If you own a house rather than a flat, battery storage in Brentwood covers a separate decision for the same supply.
Sources: ONS, Towns and cities, characteristics of built-up areas, England and Wales: Census 2021, tables 1c and 5c, Brentwood BUA E63004713; ONS Census 2021, TS054 Tenure, Brentwood E07000068, via the Nomis API (read 19 October 2026); Department for Transport and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by keepership and local authority, Brentwood, private keepers, end of June 2025 and end of June 2026 (published 23 September 2026); OZEV, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); legislation.gov.uk, The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021, Schedule 1, read 19 October 2026; Essex Highways (Essex County Council), EV strategy, https://www.essexhighways.org/ev-strategy (read 19 October 2026); HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6; UK Power Networks, Licence Boundaries open dataset (17 December 2024); EnSmart SmartBee-M specification as listed by its UK distributor.