Councils take EV charging to the next phase. Is your fleet policy keeping up?

Two council announcements this week suggest the next phase of EV infrastructure will be less about building more rapid chargers and more about helping drivers charge where fleets want them to: at home.

Hampshire County Council has approved a rollout of more than 17,000 public chargers through a £90 million partnership with Believ, while Surrey has expanded its Kerbo Charge pavement gully scheme, giving more residents without driveways the ability to safely run charging cables from their homes to vehicles parked on the street.

For fleets, that's significant because home charging remains the lowest-cost way to keep EVs on the road.

As Charlie Cook, Founder and CEO of Rightcharge, told Fleet1000 earlier this year, many businesses are still missing the biggest opportunity. Home charging can save around £1,000 per vehicle annually, yet many fleets are held back by outdated reimbursement processes and drivers remaining on standard electricity tariffs instead of lower-cost EV tariffs.

As more employees gain access to home charging, the focus shifts from infrastructure to policy. Fleets need reimbursement systems that accurately reflect where drivers charge and remove the administration that often discourages home charging in the first place.

FleetWise explored this in detail in Better Fleet: A Practical Playbook for Fixing EV Reimbursement, which recommends starting by understanding where drivers actually charge, automating home charging reimbursement where possible and using charge cards to bring public charging under the same management platform.

The result is lower charging costs, simpler administration and a smoother experience for drivers, ensuring investments in charging infrastructure translate into genuine fleet savings rather than simply more places to plug in.

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