Guilty as charged? Driveway-less homeowners find novel way to charge EVs but fall foul of planning regulations

Meath County Council is currently looking for a solution to provide electric vehicle charging to homes in the Spire View estate in Johnstown.

The houses in the estate don't have driveways and a number of residents had run charging wires under the footpaths to a charging point on the roadside.

However the council says these are contrary to planning regulations, but they are looking for a solution for householders in the estate with electric vehicles.

Cllr Eddie Fennessy explains that chargers are usually installed on the outer wall of the house.

This allows the property owner to charge their car in their driveway.

"Houses on the Spire View estate don’t have driveways. They have a very small front lawn. Instead of having to drag charging wires from the outer wall of the house to the car, creating a trip hazard on the public footpath, a trench was dug beneath the front lawn, through the public footpath and a charging point was installed along the roadside."

As Meath County Council were inspecting the estate as part of the ‘Taking in Charge’ process, six properties were identified with EV charging points.

"When the council take an estate into their charge, they assume responsibility for public lighting, surface water, roads and footpaths.

The presence of electrical services beneath the footpaths in front of the houses prevented the council from taking those sections of footpath into their charge.

To do so would leave them liable for the maintenance and upkeep of the charging services," said Cllr Fennessy.

"I engaged with an affected family and I liaised with the council who in fairness, were actively trying to find a solution.

"There are communal EV charging points on the Swanbrook estate on the Trim Road.

I suggested the roll out of a similar scheme at Spire View."

At a recent meeting of Navan Municipal Council, Cllr Fennessy called on the Executive to assess the estate for the installation of communal EV Charging Points in Spire View.

The council said an assessment found communal charging points weren't a viable solution.

Director of Services, Martin Murray told the meeting that a solution may have been found in Nottingham.

The council is liaising with the Nottingham council to figure out how it can roll it out in Meath.

The taking in charge process will proceed but the affected footpaths will not be taken into the council’s charge until the proposed solution has been implemented.

Cllr Fennessy said the residents had installed the charging points with the very best of intentions and were shocked when informed that they didn not comply with planning regulations.

“The EV Charging points were noticed when the council inspected the estate as part of the taking in charge process. To their credit, the council were pro-active in trying to find a solution.

“It appears that a similar issue was resolved in Nottingham, England and the council are actively engaged with that council to try and map a roadway out of this impasse. This situation highlights the difficulties in applying modern infrastructure to older residential developments. It will be interesting to see how the council work around the problem because it has the potential to affect tens of thousands of families. I can’t but commend their effort, particularly the Planning Enforcement and Transportation sections.

If they can develop a fix for Spire View, it will be used by councils right across the state.”