Your charger obeys a law most drivers have never read. The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 have applied to every home chargepoint sold in Great Britain since 30 June 2022, and they decide what the unit on your wall does when you plug in, before you open any app. This guide reads the main provisions on legislation.gov.uk, as we did on 19 October 2026, and explains what they mean for charging at a Dorking home.
For the installation itself, from RH4 driveways to Surrey’s cable gullies for town-centre streets, see our Dorking EV charger installation page.
What “smart” means in law
Regulation 5 sets the test. A charger has smart functionality if it can send and receive information over a communications network, and can respond to signals by increasing or decreasing the rate of charging or by changing when charging happens. It must be able to use those abilities to provide demand-side response services, and it must have at least one user interface, built in or provided to the owner, through which it can be operated.
In plain terms, the charger must be connectable, controllable and controllable by you. The EnSmart SmartBee-M we fit has Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity and OCPP 1.6 protocol support, according to its published specification.
The default hours, and how to change them
Regulation 10 is the one owners notice. A charger must come with pre-set default charging hours outside peak hours, and the regulations define peak hours as 8am to 11am and 4pm to 10pm on weekdays. When you first use it, you must be offered the chance to accept those defaults, remove them or set different hours, and you can change them later.
Two further points matter. The charger must charge during the default hours, and the owner must be able to override that default mode and charge at another time. The rules exempt a charger sold with a demand-side response agreement and configured for it, but for an ordinary home purchase the defaults apply.
So a Dorking household that comes home at six on a weekday and plugs in will not, under the default settings, charge through the evening peak unless it changes or overrides them. The default steers charging outside those hours; the choice stays with you.
The randomised delay
Regulation 11 explains the small pause some drivers notice. By default, a charger applies a random delay of up to 600 seconds, set to the nearest second, each time charging would start or change rate. The owner can cancel it. It does not operate where the owner or another user has overridden it, or while the charger is providing a demand-side response service.
A random start means chargers set to the same time do not all switch on in the same second. For the driver, it means a car set to start at the beginning of an off-peak window may begin a few minutes later.
Off-peak scheduling in practice
The regulations make scheduling possible; a tariff makes it worth doing. At Ofgem’s October to December 2026 price-cap unit rate of 26.32p per kWh (Direct Debit), a 60 kWh charge works out at about £15.79 on our arithmetic. Off-peak EV tariffs price overnight units well below that capped average. Suppliers set the hours and the prices, and change them, so we do not quote supplier rates.
The practical routine is simple: choose a tariff with a cheaper overnight window, set the charger’s schedule to match it, and plug in whenever you get home. A 7 kW charger draws 32 A, so on a smaller main fuse the overnight schedule also keeps charging away from the evening hours when the oven and shower are on. Load management, a sensor on the incoming supply, handles the rest.
Where solar fits the schedule
With panels, the timetable shifts in summer. PVGIS puts a 4 kWp south-facing array in Dorking at about 495 kWh in June, roughly 16.5 kWh a day on our arithmetic, and about 140 kWh in December, roughly 4.5 kWh a day. With a compatible setup, a car plugged in on a June afternoon can take surplus the house is not using; in December there is little to spare, and the overnight schedule does the work. If you are thinking about storing daytime power for the evening instead, our page on battery storage in Dorking covers how that works.
What the rules do not do
The regulations do not choose your tariff, set your prices or decide where the charger goes. They also do not affect the grant position. A home charger installation is standard-rated for VAT at 20%. Owner-occupiers of houses get no grant, as that scheme closed in April 2022; renters and flat owner-occupiers with private off-street or allocated parking can claim 75% of the cost, up to £500 per socket. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant covers each route, and claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage.
Dorking’s numbers, for context
DVLA records 3,501 privately kept plug-in vehicles across Mole Valley at the end of June 2026, up from 2,712 a year earlier: 789 more, about 29% on our arithmetic. Each new charger behind those cars arrives with the same default hours and random delay. For the hardware choices behind the schedule, from tethered or socketed to connectivity, our home EV charger guide has the detail.
Sources: legislation.gov.uk, the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 (S.I. 2021/1467), regulations 5, 10 and 11 as made, read 19 October 2026; Ofgem, energy price cap October to December 2026 (Direct Debit unit rate); EnSmart SmartBee-M published specification, as listed by its UK distributor; European Commission JRC, PVGIS 5.3 (PVGIS-SARAH3, 2005–2023), 4 kWp, 35° tilt, due south, 14% losses, run 15 October 2026; DfT and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by local authority, private keepers (published 23 September 2026); HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026).