Almost three Hitchin households in ten live in a flat or maisonette. In ONS’s Census 2021 figures for the town’s built-up area, 29.1% of households did, second only to semi-detached houses at 33.4%. If yours is one of them and you have a parking bay, a home charger is usually possible, but the order in which you ask matters more than in a house.
This guide sets out that order, step by step, for a flat with allocated or private parking. The charger itself, and the wider picture for SG4 and SG5, is on our page about EV charger installation in Hitchin.
The order things happen in
- Read your lease and ask the freeholder or managing agent.
- If you rent, get your landlord’s written agreement too.
- Agree where the charger goes and how the cable reaches it.
- Check the grant.
- Survey the supply, then quote.
For the 29.1% of Hitchin households in flats or maisonettes, doing it in this order avoids paying for a survey of a bay the freeholder will not let you use.
Step one: the lease and the freeholder
Across North Hertfordshire, 17.1% of households live in purpose-built blocks of flats and another 2.1% in converted or shared houses and other converted buildings (Census 2021; our sum of the two converted categories). In either, the outside walls, the car park and the routes between them usually belong to the building, not to the flat. So a charger fixed to the block, a post in the car park, or a cable crossing a stairwell or a strip of shared garden are all things the freeholder or managing agent has to agree to. Your lease will say what alterations need consent and what your parking right is: a bay demised to the flat, or a space allocated under the building’s rules. The grant asks for private off-street or allocated parking, so it is worth knowing which you have.
Ask in writing, and include a photo of the bay with the proposed charger position marked, the route you think the cable could take, and the unit’s details. We fit the EnSmart SmartBee-M, a 7 kW smart charger, published as IP65 and available socketed or tethered.
Step two: if you rent
At Census 2021, 19.3% of Hitchin’s households rented privately or lived without paying rent, and 15.2% rented from a social landlord. Across North Hertfordshire as a whole, 18.7% rented from a social landlord, but only 6.1% from the council itself, so most social tenants in the district rent from another social landlord, such as a housing association (our arithmetic). Whoever it is, get their written agreement before anything else.
Step three: the bay and the route
There are two common positions. Where the bay is beside the building, the charger can go on the wall. Where it is out in the car park, a post can carry it: under Part 2, Class E of the General Permitted Development Order, an upstand within the curtilage of a block of flats is permitted up to 1.6 m above the parking surface, with one per parking space, but not within the curtilage of a listed building or a scheduled monument. A wall unit, under Class D, must be no bigger than 0.2 cubic metres with its casing.
The cable is the harder part. The charger needs its own circuit from your flat’s consumer unit, so a second-floor flat in a Hitchin block with a bay at the far end of the car park means a long run through the building and out across shared ground, which can need ducting under paving. That route is usually the line that varies most on a flat’s quote; our guide to EV charger installation cost explains why.
If the block is in the Hitchin Conservation Area, check positions with North Herts Council first. Its Article 4 direction of 9 October 2012 covers hard surfacing and gates, walls and fences fronting a highway, so creating a new space in front of a converted house is its own planning question.
Step four: the grant
The OZEV scheme for flats was changed from 1 April 2026, and in Hitchin, where 19.3% of households rent privately or live without paying rent and 15.2% rent socially, both its renter and landlord routes are relevant. If you own and live in the flat, or rent it, and have private off-street or allocated parking, it pays 75% of the purchase and installation cost, up to £500 per socket. Residential landlords can claim up to £500 per socket themselves, up to 200 sockets a year, which can suit a landlord with several flats in one block. Both schemes run to 31 March 2027. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant covers each case. Grant claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage.
Step five: the supply
A 7 kW charger draws 32 A continuously, and most homes have a 60 A, 80 A or 100 A main fuse. A flat with its own meter and an 80 A fuse gives the charger 40% of the supply (our arithmetic), and load management, a sensor that turns the charger down while other big loads run, keeps the total inside it. Hitchin’s town centre sits in UK Power Networks’ Eastern Power Networks licence area, and the installer notifies UKPN of every new chargepoint. Where a block’s meters are grouped in a cupboard some distance from your flat, that location shapes the cable route too, and the survey looks at both.
If there is no bay
Without private or allocated parking, a home charger is not available at present. Hertfordshire County Council says private charging cables cannot be run across public roads, pavements and paths, and its cross-pavement channel trial covers St Albans postcodes AL1 to AL5 only. The county’s LEVI contract for North Hertfordshire, St Albans and Welwyn Hatfield has gone to Zest, and it expects public chargepoints in phases from early 2027.
Batteries and panels
In a flat the roof is usually not yours to alter without the freeholder’s consent, so for most Hitchin flat-dwellers the car charges from the grid, ideally on an off-peak tariff. If you are in a Hitchin house instead, our guide for Hitchin EV owners on where a home battery fits covers how a car, a battery and panels share one supply, and our page on battery storage in Hitchin covers the battery itself.
Sources: ONS, Towns and cities, characteristics of built-up areas, Census 2021 (tables 5c and 6c), Hitchin; ONS Census 2021 TS044 Accommodation type and TS054 Tenure, North Hertfordshire (E07000099), via the Nomis API, read 19 October 2026; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); legislation.gov.uk, Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 2 Part 2 Classes D and E, as amended to S.I. 2025/560, read 19 October 2026; North Herts Council, Hitchin Conservation Area and About conservation areas, Article 4 directions (updated 4 August 2026); Hertfordshire County Council, Electric vehicle charging in Hertfordshire and Electric vehicle cross-pavement charging cable licence, both read 19 October 2026; UK Power Networks Open Data, licence boundaries; DfT and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles, private keepers, North Hertfordshire, 2026 Q2 and 2025 Q2 (published 23 September 2026); EnSmart SmartBee-M published specification, as listed by its UK distributor.