Up on the Hill, most Caterham cars sit on a drive. Down in Caterham Valley, the Victorian streets around the station leave many on the road, and a charging cable then has to cross a public footway that Surrey County Council maintains. The county’s answer, re-read on 19 October 2026, is a cable gully: a narrow channel set into the pavement that carries the cable from your front wall to the kerb. Our Caterham EV charger installation page covers driveways, flats and the supply; this guide is only about the street.
The short version: some Caterham terraces and semis without off-street parking can qualify, many cannot, and the conditions are about the pavement as much as the house. DVLA records 3,239 privately kept plug-in vehicles across Tandridge at the end of June 2026, up from 2,495 a year earlier, so more households in CR3 are now asking where they would plug in.
What Surrey allows on a Caterham pavement
Planning in Caterham sits with Tandridge District Council, but the footway outside your house is Surrey County Council’s, and the county sets the rule for cables. Its electric vehicle page is plain: charging cables are only permitted to cross a public footpath if they are safely enclosed in a cable gully. Trailing a loose cable is not permitted, and nor is running a cable through a protective mat. The county adds that cable mats and independent installers are not permitted on the public highway.
So the old workaround of a cable and a rubber cover is not an option on a Valley street. For a Caterham household whose car lives at the kerb, the choice is between the gully scheme, run with Kerbo Charge, and the public chargepoints the county is rolling out, covered further down.
The checks before a Caterham application
Surrey lists the conditions. Most of them are about the stretch of pavement directly outside your door, which is why two houses on the same Caterham road can get different answers.
- The footway must be public highway, maintained at public expense by Surrey County Council, not a private road or private land.
- It must be fully paved up to the kerb, with no grass or unpaved verge.
- You must be able to park safely and legally on the street in front of the property without parking on the footway, and your car must be able to park within one car length of the gully.
- While charging, no part of the gully or your car can be within 2.5 m of other charging cars.
- The pavement in front must have no utility covers, and no tree roots visibly exposed or encapsulated in the footway.
- An EV home charger must be able to be fitted to the front of your property.
- You must own the property or have written permission from the landlord, and you must use or have ordered an electric vehicle covered by cable trip liability insurance.
The Caterham Valley MSOA counts 6.2% of its homes as terraced and 21.4% as semi-detached at Census 2021. A terrace whose front door opens almost onto the pavement is the classic case for a gully; a semi with a side drive does not need one.
The four steps, and what they cost
The county sets the order for a Caterham application, and it asks you not to skip ahead.
- An initial check with Kerbo Charge. Do not go further until Kerbo Charge confirms your application is suitable.
- An online application to Surrey County Council, with your Kerbo Charge reference and approved photo. This is where you pay the £499 subsidised installation fee, which includes a £100 non-refundable deposit. If the application is rejected after the site assessment, the county says £399 would be refunded at its discretion.
- A site inspection of the Caterham footway, normally within four weeks; the county asks you to be present.
- Installation. The contractor aims to install within six weeks and gives at least a week’s notice of the date. The county provides a two-year warranty from installation, and from year 3 you pay £4.99 a month to Kerbo Charge to keep using the gully.
The government’s grants sit alongside this. Households with on-street parking only can get up to £500 towards a chargepoint installed with an approved cross-pavement solution, subject to the council’s rules, until 31 March 2027. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant sets out each route. Claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer, so tell us your situation at the quote stage. A home charger carries 20% VAT.
The charger end of the job
The gully is the county’s; the charger on your wall is a normal home installation. Because Surrey requires a charger that can be fitted to the front of the property, the position is set before the survey starts: the front elevation, close to where the gully will meet it. The charger we fit is the EnSmart SmartBee-M, rated IP65 for outdoor walls, and our home EV charger installation page sets out its specification.
Two Caterham checks come before drilling. In the Caterham Barracks and Chaldon conservation areas, or on a listed building, ask Tandridge District Council before fixing a charger to a street-facing wall. And the supply: a 7 kW charger draws 32 A continuously, household main fuses are commonly 60 A, 80 A or 100 A, and Caterham’s town centre is in UK Power Networks’ South Eastern Power Networks area. On a smaller fuse, load management turns the charger down while the house is busy, and the installer notifies UKPN of the new chargepoint.
If a gully will not work on your Caterham street
Plenty of Valley addresses will fail one of the conditions, and flats never fit the scheme at all. Purpose-built flats are 30.5% of homes in the Caterham Valley MSOA, and in a block the route is an allocated or private bay plus the freeholder’s consent to run a circuit to it. Renters, and people who own and live in a flat, can get 75% of the cost up to £500 per socket where there is private off-street or allocated parking.
For everyone else, Surrey’s page describes its on-street rollout with Connected Kerb: standard 7 kW chargepoints, slower 3 to 5 kW lamp post chargepoints where bollards are not feasible, and rapid chargers case by case. They are public points, not a private supply. If you own a Caterham house and the car can eventually come off the road, it is worth looking at the roof at the same time: our page on solar panels in Caterham covers what Hill and Valley slopes generate.
If you are unsure which side of these lines your house falls, send us a photo of the frontage and the pavement through our contact page, or call 0204 547 1892. If a home charger is not workable, we will say so.
Sources: Surrey County Council, Electric vehicles and our on-street chargepoint rollout, cable gully section (https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/roads-and-transport/sustainable/electric-vehicles), page reviewed 1 October 2026, read 19 October 2026; DfT and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by keepership and local authority, Tandridge, 2026 Q2 and 2025 Q2 (published 23 September 2026); censusdata.uk, Caterham Valley MSOA, Census 2021 TS044 accommodation type; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6; UK Power Networks Open Data Portal, licence boundaries (December 2024); Tandridge District Council, Conservation areas; EnSmart SmartBee-M published specification.