EV charger installation in Hillingdon

A borough name and a place name

Worth saying up front, because it confuses people: Hillingdon is both the borough and an actual place. This page is about the place — Hillingdon village, Hillingdon Heath, the streets running off Hillingdon Hill and Royal Lane, and the roads around Hillingdon Circus.

It is not the same job as Ickenham or Eastcote, even though all three sit in the same borough.

Terraces, and what they mean for the job

In the Hillingdon North East area, the 2021 census found just over half of all homes are terraced. Compare that with Ickenham at under six per cent and Eastcote at three per cent, and you can see why this page reads differently.

A terrace changes three things:

The frontage is narrow. There is often room to park, but only just, and often only at an angle.

The board is usually inside. Hall cupboard, under the stairs, or above the front door. That is actually good news — it means a short run to the front of the house.

There may be no side access. Which rules out routing the cable round the outside and means going through the wall at the front, where it will be seen. We will show you exactly where before we drill anything.

The dropped kerb rule most people get wrong

This is the single most useful thing on this page.

Plenty of Hillingdon residents assume their front garden is too shallow for a legal crossover, so they never apply. The council’s standard requirement is a hardstanding at least 4.8 metres deep, set square to the road — and a lot of Hillingdon front gardens are not.

But there is a short frontage allowance. Hillingdon’s vehicle crossover policy permits an absolute minimum depth of 3.8 metres, and 3.2 metres for a shared access where the frontage is at least 9 metres wide. The crossover itself is between 2.4 and 5 metres wide.

The council’s own policy document says in writing that it was written partly to help residents charge electric vehicles at their own properties. So this is not a loophole — it is the intended route.

If you are in a terrace and you have measured your front garden at four metres and given up, measure it again and read the short frontage section. It may well be worth an application.

No cable across the pavement. At all.

Hillingdon is blunt about this. The council does not permit any cable to be placed across the public highway, even if covered or inserted into a gully, and it points to the Highways Act 1980 and its power to remove cables it considers unsafe.

So the gully products you may have seen advertised are not an option here, whatever the manufacturer’s website implies. If someone quotes you for one in Hillingdon, ask them to put the council’s written permission in the quote.

Our honest take on the alternatives is on our charging without a driveway page.

Where the charger goes on a Hillingdon terrace

Usually front elevation, low, to one side of the door or beside the bay, with the cable dropping straight out from the board behind it. Short run, tidy job, and the car sits directly under it.

The awkward ones are the 1930s semis around Hillingdon Heath where the board is at the back of the house, and the properties inside the Hillingdon Village conservation area, where we take more care over how the front of the house looks when we have finished.

Load management, in plain terms

Your house has one main fuse. Run the oven, the shower and a car charger at once and something has to give. Load management is a sensor that watches what the house is drawing and quietly turns the car charging down when it needs to, then puts it back up again.

Worth having on most terraces, where supplies tend to be smaller.

What it costs in Hillingdon

A standard 7kW install starts at £850. If the consumer unit needs replacing first the total is higher, and we tell you by how much from the photos — before you commit to anything. A long or awkward cable run costs a bit more, and that is in the quote before we start, not added afterwards.

Short runs are common here, which tends to keep Hillingdon jobs at the tidier end of the range.

What about the government grant?

If you own or rent a flat with private off-street parking, you can claim up to £500. If you are a landlord, up to £500 per socket.

If you own a house with a driveway, there is no grant — those schemes closed to standard households some years ago.

Around Hillingdon

We cover Hillingdon, Hillingdon Heath, Cowley and the roads off Royal Lane, and we are a short run from Uxbridge, Ickenham and Ruislip.

Thinking about the fuse board as well? See consumer unit replacement.