Two decisions come before any cable is cut: what the charger is fixed to, and how far it sits from your consumer unit. Get those right and a home charger is a tidy, one-day job. Get them wrong and you have a unit on the wrong wall, a cable across a path, or a planning question you did not expect. Hatfield’s mix of homes, from New Town terraces and blocks of flats to the older houses of Old Hatfield, means the answers change from street to street.
This guide walks through those choices for homes in AL9 and AL10. For the rest of the job, including your main fuse, UK Power Networks and grants, see our page on EV charger installation in Hatfield.
Start where the car is parked
The charger goes where the car can reach it without a cable crossing anything it should not. Hertfordshire County Council, the highway authority, says you cannot run private charging cables across public roads, pavements and paths. Its cross-pavement channel trial covers St Albans postcodes AL1 to AL5 only, so in AL9 and AL10 the car needs a space on your own property or one allocated to you.
That makes Hatfield’s housing the first filter. On our sum of the 2021 Census ward figures for Hatfield Central, East, South West and Villages, 25.1% of households live in semis and 11.8% in detached houses, where a drive or garage is common. Another 33.4% live in terraces and 27.5% in purpose-built flats, where parking varies street by street and block by block.
Wall or post
Most home chargers go on a wall. Under Part 2, Class D of the General Permitted Development Order, a wall-mounted outlet for charging electric vehicles, within an area lawfully used for off-street parking, is permitted development if the outlet and its casing are no bigger than 0.2 cubic metres and it is not within a scheduled monument or the curtilage of a listed building. Check the unit’s published dimensions against that figure; we confirm them at the survey. For the 25.1% of Hatfield households in semis, the wall is usually the side or front wall nearest the drive.
Where there is no wall beside the space, a post can carry the charger. Class E covers an upstand with an outlet in an area lawfully used for off-street parking: within the curtilage of a house or block of flats it must not exceed 1.6 m above the parking surface, and there can be no more than one upstand per parking space. The listed-building and scheduled-monument exclusions apply here too. A post suits a space at the end of a garden, or an allocated bay outside one of the purpose-built blocks that house 27.5% of Hatfield households.
Hertfordshire County Council’s own summary is more cautious. It says permission might be needed if the chargepoint will be near a road or a listed building, a wall-mounted unit bigger than 0.2 cubic metres, or a ground-mounted unit over 1.6 m tall. Treat any of those as a question for Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council before work starts. We do not make planning applications for customers.
Tethered or socketed
The SmartBee-M is published with a Type 2 connection in socketed or tethered form. A tethered unit has the cable attached, so you park, unhook it and plug in. A socketed unit takes your own cable, keeps the wall tidier and copes with a change of car or connector more easily. The position often settles the choice: on a garage wall or by a side drive, tethered is the convenient option; on the street-facing front of a Hatfield terrace with its own parking space, a socketed unit with the cable put away leaves less on show. Both are rated IP65, sealed for outdoor wall mounting.
The cable run from the consumer unit
The charger needs its own circuit, with its own protective devices, running from your consumer unit to the wall or post. The length and route of that run is the item that most often separates two quotes for the same charger. A consumer unit in a hallway on the same side as the drive means a short run. One at the back of the house with parking at the front, or a garage some way off, means a longer run through walls or along the outside. Whether your Hatfield home is one of the 33.4% in terraces or the 11.8% that are detached, the run is measured at the survey. A detached garage or carport can need trenching and ducting for the cable, which turns a wall-mounting job into a small groundworks job. Our guide to EV charger installation cost sets out how that shows up in a quote.
Old Hatfield and listed houses
Old Hatfield, the town’s historic core, is one of Welwyn Hatfield’s ten conservation areas and was designated in 1968. Class D and Class E do not exclude conservation areas on their face, but they do exclude the curtilage of a listed building, so a charger anywhere on a listed house’s plot falls outside those classes, and works affecting a listed building’s character need listed building consent. Inside the conservation area, a garage interior or a side wall near the parking space changes less that anyone sees than a unit on a street-facing front.
Hatfield’s town-wide Article 4 directions cover converting homes into houses in multiple occupation and adding storeys to blocks of flats; the council notes older, historic directions too. Neither is about chargers, but if your street has an older direction of its own, ask the council what it covers.
Flats with allocated bays
For the 27.5% of Hatfield households in purpose-built flats, the bay and the route both belong to someone else. The freeholder or managing agent has to agree to a wall unit or a post, and to the cable crossing shared ground. If you own and live in the flat, or rent it, with private off-street or allocated parking, the OZEV grant can pay 75% of the purchase and installation cost, up to £500 per socket; our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant explains it. Grant claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage.
Bring the position to the survey
Mark where you park and where you would like the unit on a photo, and we will check the wall, the consumer unit, the earthing and the route. If you are planning panels too, our page on battery storage in Hatfield explains how a battery’s position and the charger’s can be planned together.
Sources: 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; Hertfordshire County Council, Electric vehicle charging in Hertfordshire (https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/highways-roads-and-pavements/news-and-campaigns/electric-vehicles.aspx) and Electric vehicle cross-pavement charging cable licence (https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/highways-roads-and-pavements/changes-to-your-road/cross-pavement-channel/cross-pavement-channel.aspx), both read 19 October 2026; ONS Census 2021, TS044 categories, May 2022 wards Hatfield Central, East, South West and Villages, via the ONS Census API (our sums); Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council, Conservation areas, Article 4 Directions and Contaminated land strategy (section 4, description of the area) pages; planning.data.gov.uk conservation-area record, Old Hatfield; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); EnSmart SmartBee-M published specification, as listed by its UK distributor.