On a long KT22 drive, the fuse board and the car can be a surprisingly long way apart. That distance, not the charger, is usually the biggest variable in a Leatherhead installation. Add a second car, a detached garage or a gravel drive, and the question of where the charger goes becomes a small piece of planning in its own right.
The wider picture, from load management on two-car supplies to why a 22 kW unit rarely fits, is on our Leatherhead EV charger page. This guide walks the route from the consumer unit to the car.
Measure from the consumer unit, not the front door
Start indoors. Find the consumer unit, wherever it lives, whether a hallway cupboard, a utility room or an attached garage, and note which wall it is on. The charger needs its own circuit from that board, so the cable’s route runs from there to the charger, through or round the house. Then go to where the cars actually park, and measure between the two.
Around 39.7% of properties in the KT22 district are detached, on Census-derived figures. Where a detached house in Fetcham or Givons Grove is set back from the road and the drive runs past it to a garage at the side or back, the cars may park nowhere near the board. A charger on the house wall nearest the board keeps the cable short; a charger at the far end of the drive does not. Both can be right, depending on where the cars sleep.
The detached garage question
A garage joined to the house is usually simple: the cable passes through a shared wall, and the charger goes inside or on the outside face. A detached garage or carport is different. The cable has to cross open ground, and that can mean trenching and ducting, which turns one job into two. The trench crosses lawn, paving or gravel, each with its own reinstatement. Our guide to EV charger installation cost lists the items that move the price, and groundworks sit near the top.
A post where there is no wall
Some Leatherhead drives end in open hardstanding with no wall near the cars. There, a charger on a post puts the connector where the car is rather than where the house is. Class E of the national permitted-development rules covers it, under the name “upstand”: at a house it can stand up to 1.6 m above the parking surface, there can be one per parking space, it must be within off-street parking, and the class does not reach the curtilage of a listed building (GPDO 2015, Schedule 2, Part 2, current revised text). Expect the post to need its own buried cable from the house, so it is a placement choice rather than a saving.
The SmartBee-M we fit is IP65-rated, so either position is outdoors-ready.
Two cars: one charger or two
At the 2021 Census, 33.3% of Mole Valley households had two cars or vans and 16.0% had three or more. With two cars on one drive, the placement question doubles. If both spaces are within reach of one unit, a single charger can serve each car in turn overnight. The tethered SmartBee-M has a 5 m cable; a socketed version takes your own lead, which can be longer. Park both cars as you normally would and measure from the proposed wall position to each charge port.
If one charger means dragging a lead across the drive every night, a second charger is usually the tidier answer. Each 7 kW charger draws 32 A continuously and main fuses are commonly 60 A, 80 A or 100 A, so two chargers on one supply need load management: a sensor on the incoming supply that shares the spare headroom between the chargers and the house. Leatherhead is in UK Power Networks’ South Eastern Power Networks area, and UK Power Networks says it can upgrade a 30 or 60 A fuse to 80 or 100 A where that is needed. Our guide to whether your fuse will take a 7 kW EV charger goes further.
Town-centre homes
Not every Leatherhead home has a drive. In the older streets of the historic core, cars often sit at the kerb. Trailing a cable across the pavement is not allowed in Surrey, but Surrey County Council’s cable gullies, installed with Kerbo Charge for a £499 subsidised fee including a £100 non-refundable deposit, can carry it, provided the footway is paved to the kerb and you can park legally within one car length. The charger then has to fit on the front of the house, which brings in the next check.
Front walls and the conservation area
Leatherhead’s town-centre conservation area is one of three in Mole Valley with an Article 4 Direction over parts of it. The current national rules exclude a wall outlet or a post within the curtilage of a listed building, and an amending order, S.I. 2026/1056, changes the rules for wall outlets and posts from 21 October 2026, with new limits that include conservation areas and walls next to a footway. None of that is ours to decide. For a front elevation in the town centre, or any listed building, the answer comes from Mole Valley District Council, and that conversation should happen before a charger is ordered.
Before the survey
Have three things ready: where each car parks and which side its charge port is on, where the consumer unit is, and whether a detached garage or a long drive sits between them. If you also want panels, mention it so the cable routes are planned together; our page on solar panels in Leatherhead covers the roof side. Renters and flat owner-occupiers with private off-street or allocated parking can claim 75% of a chargepoint’s cost, up to £500 per socket; our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant explains the routes, and claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage.
Sources: ONS Census 2021, TS045 Car or van availability, via Nomis (read 19 October 2026), and Census-derived KT22 property-type figures; legislation.gov.uk, Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 2, Part 2, Classes D and E (latest revised text), and S.I. 2026/1056, both read 19 October 2026; EnSmart SmartBee-M published specification, as listed by its UK distributor; UK Power Networks, fuse upgrades and looped supplies, and licence boundaries (December 2024); Surrey County Council, Electric vehicles and our on-street chargepoint rollout, Cable Gully Installations (read 19 October 2026); Mole Valley District Council, Conservation Areas and Listed Buildings; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026).