If your car spends the night at the kerb outside a Wembley Hill or Wembley Central terrace, Brent’s position on home charging is short. The council’s electric vehicle charging page, read on 19 October 2026, says it does not approve the running of cables across footways for the purpose of charging vehicles. That rules out the extension lead through the letterbox, and it also rules out a home charger unless Brent approves a way across the pavement.
Brent is testing one. This guide covers the council’s pavement-channel trial, the public charging Brent points residents to, and what changes for a Wembley home that has, or could have, its own parking. For a house with a drive, the job itself is on our guide to getting an EV charger fitted in Wembley.
What Brent says about cables
Brent’s page cites the Highways Act 1980, which it says prohibits trailing cables across pavements without the consent of the highway authority. For a Wembley street, Brent’s answer under that Act is no. A cable cover or mat does not change that position, because the page makes no exception for one. In Brent, 14.9% of households live in terraced houses (Census 2021), and across Wembley Central and Wembley Hill wards, on our sum of the two, 14.8% do. Those are the homes most likely to be parked on the street.
The pavement channel trial
On 29 July 2026, Brent announced that its Cabinet had approved a trial of cross-pavement charging, funded by a £169,000 government grant. The news release says the trial will focus particularly on blue-badge holders, though other residents may register interest. The council page describes a channel installed in the pavement outside eligible properties, which lets a charging cable run safely between a home charge point and a car parked on the street.
The page also sets out the limits. The trial may suit residents who own an electric vehicle, park on the street and have, or plan to install, a home charge point. Not all properties will be suitable. Any installation would be subject to assessment, and the page says installing a home charge point would require planning approval from the council. Registrations are currently paused because of high demand, and the council says it will contact people who have already registered about selection. For a Wembley Central terrace, then, a place on the trial is not yet something to plan around.
Where the £500 on-street grant fits
The government’s on-street route gives up to £500 towards a chargepoint installed with an approved cross-pavement solution, subject to the council’s rules, until 31 March 2027. In Wembley that means the grant follows the trial: a property accepted onto it could use the grant towards the charger, and one that is not has no route. Brent’s page still quotes an older grant cap for flat owners and renters; the current figures are in the GOV.UK notice updated on 7 July 2026, which our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant sets out. Claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage.
Lamp columns and public points
For most Wembley drivers without parking, public charging close to home is the realistic option today. Brent says it has over 300 lamp column charge points in operation across the borough, aimed at residents without off-street parking, with charge speeds of up to 7.7 kW, which it describes as ideally suited to overnight charging. It also lists 67 Source London charge points at 33 locations, which members can use, and rapid charge points at five locations managed by ESB, mainly installed for high-mileage commercial fleets.
Who in Wembley this affects
Plug-in cars are growing among Brent households: DVLA records 6,842 privately kept plug-in vehicles across the borough at the end of June 2026, up from 5,559 a year earlier. About 48% of all Brent plug-ins are company-registered, so the private figure is the one that reflects households. The on-street question touches the terraces most, but it also reaches flats: in Wembley Park ward, 98.2% of households lived in purpose-built flats at the 2021 Census, where the question is an allocated bay and the building’s agreement rather than the pavement.
If you have, or can make, off-street space
Across Wembley Central and Wembley Hill, 28.1% of households live in semis and 6.7% in detached houses (our sums of the Census counts), and on those homes a charger normally goes on the wall beside the drive. EnSmart’s SmartBee-M, the charger we fit, is IP65-rated for outdoor mounting and comes tethered or socketed. Our home EV charger guide covers speeds, smart charging and what the survey checks. If the house is yours and you are thinking about the roof too, see our page on solar panels in Wembley.
Creating a new drive across a front garden is a separate question involving the pavement crossing, and it is one to raise with Brent before any charger is planned around it.
Sources: London Borough of Brent, Electric vehicle charging (read 19 October 2026); London Borough of Brent, news release “Brent rolls out trial to make EV charging cheaper and easier”, 29 July 2026 (read 19 October 2026); GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); ONS Census 2021, TS044, Brent (E09000005) and Wembley Central (E05013514), Wembley Hill (E05013515) and Wembley Park (E05013516) wards, via Nomis; DfT and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by local authority, 2026 Q2 and 2025 Q2 (published 23 September 2026); EnSmart SmartBee-M specification as listed by its UK distributor. Two-ward percentages are our sums.