A home charger is a small box, but where it goes decides most of the cost and most of the day-to-day convenience. In Crawley the answer depends heavily on how the New Town was laid out. Terraced houses are the largest housing type, 37.4% of the borough’s 45,500 households (Census 2021), and many of them park in a court, a garage block or a bay at the end of a footpath rather than on a drive. A semi in Pound Hill is a different job from a mid-terrace in Broadfield.
This post is about position: wall or post, tethered or socketed, and the cable run back to the consumer unit. For the wider picture, including fuses and grants, see our Crawley EV charger installation page.
Start at the consumer unit, not the car
A charger needs its own circuit from the consumer unit, with the right protective devices, so the first thing the survey finds is where that unit is, whether that is a hall cupboard in a Tilgate semi or a garage in Maidenbower. The charger then goes as close to where you park as is practical, and the cable between the two is what is priced, by length and by what it has to pass through.
Three routes come up most often on Crawley houses. The shortest is straight through the wall beside a drive or an attached garage. The next runs along the outside of the house to a side or rear wall. The longest goes underground, across a garden or a court, to a garage or a post. Each is itemised on the quote, and our page on EV charger installation cost explains what moves the figure.
Wall-mounted: semis and detached houses
Semis are 22.7% and detached houses 14.2% of Crawley’s households. In Three Bridges, Tilgate, Pound Hill and Maidenbower, which dates from 1987, these homes often have a drive or an attached garage, and the charger goes on the wall nearest the car. Mount it where the cable reaches the car’s charging port without stretching across a path, and where it will not be knocked by a car door or a bin.
The SmartBee-M is rated IP65 for weather, so an outside wall is fine. Its RFID cards let you control who can start a charge, which is worth having on a front wall facing a New Town street.
Courts, garage blocks and posts
The New Town’s planned neighbourhoods mean many Crawley parking spaces are not on the householder’s own land. If the space is in a shared court or a garage block owned by a housing association or a management company, that owner must agree in writing to the charger and to the route the cable takes. With 22.9% of the borough’s households renting from a social landlord (Census 2021), this is a common conversation here.
In a Crawley garage court where there is no wall beside the space, the charger needs a post, with the cable taken underground from your supply to the post. That is the longest and most disruptive kind of run, and some courts will not make sense. We would rather tell you that at the survey than after it.
If you rent in Crawley, or own and live in a flat there, and the space is allocated to you, the OZEV grant pays 75% of the cost up to £500 per socket. The claim must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer, so tell us your situation at the quote stage. Our guide to the EV chargepoint grant explains who qualifies.
Tethered or socketed in a New Town street
A tethered charger keeps its cable attached, so you park, unhook it and plug in. A socketed one needs your own cable each time, but looks tidier on the wall and suits a household that may change cars. On a front wall in Ifield or Broadfield, some owners prefer the tidier socketed unit; where the charger is in a garage, the convenience of a tethered cable usually wins. The SmartBee-M comes in both forms.
Conservation areas and listed buildings: checks, not assumptions
Crawley has 13 conservation areas, from Ifield Village to Worth, including New Town precincts such as Queens Square and The Broadway. If your house is in one, or is listed, put the question of a wall-mounted charger to Crawley Borough Council’s planners before anything is fixed. We do not make planning applications, and we would not want to guess the answer for a specific street. A side or rear wall out of the street view is usually the easier proposal. Our post on Crawley’s conservation areas, panels and batteries lists the areas.
The street side: West Sussex’s role
For a terrace with on-street parking only, the footway belongs to West Sussex County Council as highway authority. A cable trailed over the pavement is not a safe answer, and the council’s electric vehicles page describes an on-street public network with Connected Kerb rather than a cross-pavement scheme for residents. Crawley Borough Council reports more than 130 public charging sockets in the borough through the West Sussex Chargepoint network.
What the survey writes down
The survey records the consumer unit’s position, the charger position, the route and length of the cable, any consent needed and whose, and the tethered or socketed choice. Crawley is in UK Power Networks’ South Eastern Power Networks area, about 13 km from any other network, and the installer notifies UKPN of the chargepoint. If a roof is part of the plan, see our page on solar panels in Crawley.
Sources: ONS Census 2021, TS044 accommodation type and TS054 tenure (Crawley, censusdata.uk); DfT and DVLA, VEH0142, privately kept, end of June 2026 and 2025 (published 23 September 2026); EnSmart SmartBee-M specification as listed by its UK distributor; Crawley Borough Council, Reducing our emissions; Crawley Borough Council, conservation areas (as cited on our Crawley battery page); West Sussex County Council, Electric vehicles (page updated 16 October 2026, read 19 October 2026): https://www.westsussex.gov.uk/roads-and-travel/travel-and-public-transport/travelwise-sustainable-transport/electric-vehicles/; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); UK Power Networks, licence boundaries (December 2024).