“You cannot trail a cable from your house to your car, either across or above the pavement.” That is Croydon Council’s own wording, read on its Installing a chargepoint page on 19 October 2026, and it adds that doing so is not permitted by law. For the terraces of South Norwood and Thornton Heath, where the car lives at the kerb, that sentence decides almost everything about charging at home.
So the honest starting point is that the home-charger route on our Croydon EV charger page is for homes with somewhere to park off the street. If yours has none, this guide sets out what the council does offer, what it does not yet, and what is left.
What the council says, and what it does not offer
The council’s page makes three points. First, the cable rule above. Second, it knows some local authorities are running trials that let residents lay charging cables across the pavement or in a gulley, and it says it will monitor those trials before deciding its own approach. Third, if you have a driveway or somewhere to park off-street, you can install a chargepoint.
Put together, Croydon offers no cross-pavement channel, gully or cable-cover scheme at the moment. That is a different position from Richmond’s footway channels or Surrey’s cable gullies, so advice written for those areas does not carry over.
National rules point the same way. An amendment to the planning rules for wall-mounted charging outlets, S.I. 2026/1056, in force from 21 October 2026, says that where a footway lies between the outlet and the vehicle, the charging cable must cross it by an authorised cross-pavement solution, which the Order defines as a pavement-embedded cable channel. Without a channel the council has approved, that condition cannot be met.
The lamp-column request
What the council does offer is a way to ask for an on-street charger. Its online form takes your name, email address, home address with postcode and any detail about where you would like the charger. The council says it will first try to install a standard-speed charger on a streetlamp column, which it describes as the quickest and most cost-effective option. It also says requests are reviewed but cannot always be responded to individually, so treat the form as registering demand on your street rather than booking a charger.
It is worth filling in even so: for a home with no off-street space, it is the only route the council currently offers.
Where the on-street grant stands
The government runs a grant for exactly this kind of home: up to £500 towards a chargepoint installed with an approved cross-pavement solution, subject to the council’s rules. In Croydon that grant has no route yet, because there is no approved solution to install. If the council’s position changes after its monitoring, the grant would be the next thing to look at. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant explains each route in full.
Check the back of the house
Before accepting that a terrace cannot have a home charger, check what is behind it. Some Croydon terraces have a rear garage, a hardstanding off a back lane or a space in a shared court that belongs to the house. If the car can park there on land that is yours, the pavement rule never comes into it. The questions become practical: how far the space is from the consumer unit, whether the cable can be run along or under your own ground, and whether the supply has headroom. Our guide to EV charger installation cost covers how cable runs and groundworks show up on a quote.
The supply check is the same as for any house. A 7 kW charger draws 32 A continuously and main fuses are commonly 60 A, 80 A or 100 A, with load management usually avoiding an upgrade. Central Croydon is on UK Power Networks’ network, and the installer notifies it of the new chargepoint.
Flats with an allocated bay
Flats were home to 37.5% of Croydon households at the 2021 Census, counting purpose-built and converted. A flat with an allocated bay in a private car park is not an on-street case at all. The freeholder or managing agent has to agree to the fixing and the cable route, and renters also need the landlord’s consent. With that in place, renters and people who own and live in a flat can claim the OZEV grant of 75% of the cost, up to £500 per socket. Grant claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage.
The numbers behind the question
DVLA records 9,010 privately kept plug-in vehicles across Croydon at the end of June 2026, up from 7,049 a year earlier: 1,961 more, about 28% on our arithmetic. That counts vehicles at their keepers’ addresses, not chargers. At the same time, 23.3% of households lived in a terrace at the 2021 Census and 33.6% had no car or van. On-street charging is therefore a question for a large share of the borough’s drivers, which is why the council’s next decision on channels matters.
Before you choose an EV on a terraced street
Three checks are worth making first. Read the council’s Installing a chargepoint page again, since its position on trials may change. Send the lamp-column request for your street. And look hard at whether any off-street space at the back belongs to the house. If you have one, or have panels and want to know how a charger could use them, our page on solar panels in Croydon covers the roof side.
Sources: Croydon Council, Installing a chargepoint (croydon.gov.uk/streets-roads-and-transport/travel/electric-vehicle-ev-charging-points/installing-chargepoint, read 19 October 2026); legislation.gov.uk, S.I. 2026/1056, the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2026, article 4 and explanatory note, 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 Accommodation type and TS045 Car or van availability, via Nomis (read 19 October 2026); DfT and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by local authority, private keepers (published 23 September 2026); UK Power Networks licence boundaries (December 2024).