Stuart Kenward thought he was “doing the right thing” by “sinking” most of his savings to buy an electric car, but now feels “punished” after being rejected twice for the £500 grant to install a home charger.

Convinced he was eligible, he told The i Paper his electric car investment was only worthwhile if he could access home charging – which is up to 10 times cheaper than public chargers.

But despite weeks of “meticulous research,” he was rejected twice, after being forced to “sink money [he] didn’t have” on “extortionate public charging”.

At his wits end, he said despite being “terrified of how global warming will impact” his children, he “regrets switching to an EV because it costs a fortune”.

‘I feel punished over £500 grant snub’

His frustrations echo wider concerns from EV drivers.

reported earlier this week that ministers fear hybrid car drivers are relying too much on petrol, with one in five having no way to charge batteries at home.

Kenward, a 44-year-old father of two, “stretched himself” by using all his disposable income to buy a 2023 Vauxhall Mokka for more than £13,000.

But after spending a week assembling “a small mountain of documents” for the £500 loan, from tenancy agreements to installers’ quotes, he was rejected because officials could not verify his residency.

“There was no number to call, and the help email just spouted copy-and-pasted instructions to start the process again,” he said.

Kenward has rented his Nottingham terraced house, complete with off-street parking, for eight years. After a second rejection, he sent repeated emails and used AI to identify the keywords needed to secure a manual review.

On Tuesday, more than a month after first applying, he was finally told he was eligible. There was no explanation and no apology.

The grant for renters and flat owners rose from £350 to £500 on 1 April. By then it had funded 24,759 sockets, including 10,648 in the previous year, although no figures have been published for the more generous scheme.

But social media teems with similar frustrations. One renter wrote: “When I got rejected, I submitted another application. Same details, no changes at all. And now I received an email that my application is successful.”

In the meantime, Kenward has been forced to navigate a “minefield of chargers” across Nottingham, which “each have a different app” and are “chewing up money I don’t have”.

“I drained my savings to do this, and now I feel that I’ve been punished,” he said. “I could have bought a 15-year-old Ford Fiesta which chugs out a ton of emissions for a fraction of the price, but here we are.”

The battle for cheaper home chargers

An estimated 9.3 million households across Britain has no driveway and therefore no access to at-home charging. Instead, they rely on public chargers that can cost up to 10 times as much.

One of those is Dr Nicholas Theobald, who lives in terraced house in Hammersmith, London. While he is “thoroughly enjoying” the experience of driving his “silent and sleek” new electric car, he is battling a “bureaucratic nightmare” over installing cheap, at-home charging.

The 68-year-old retired doctor forked out for a fully electric Peugeot 3008 around six months ago assuming he could use a pavement gully, which channels the charging cable beneath the pavement without creating a trip hazard.

“It was a significant upfront cost, but I thought I would reap it back over time – now I’m not so sure,” he said.

He applied for a pavement gully in January, but says he has yet to hear back from Hammersmith and Fulham council.

Former energy secretary Ed Miliband promised to “slash red tape” on planning rules around such chargers earlier this year. Hammersmith and Fulham council is also part of a £62,000 trial to roll out gullies.

“It’s a massive obstacle and a postcode lottery,” Theobald said. “If we were a mile away in Richmond we wouldn’t have an issue.

“Devolution is great until you realise your neighbour is getting something you’re not.”

His borough has among London’s densest public charging networks – and Theobald only needs to walk four minutes to plug his car into a lamp-post charger. The council has not responded to a request for comment.

But he must pay upwards of 60p per kWh, as opposed to the average 7.5p for those who charge at home. This is in part because public charging is subject to 20 per cent VAT, compared to 5 per cent for home electricity.

An Electric Vehicle Association (EVA) survey found that just 1 per cent of EV drivers had installed cross pavement solutions, despite four in ten applying, and 89 per cent thinking they would work.

“It’s infuriating when you try and do the right thing and it’s just endless hurdles,” Theobald added.

His struggle comes as ministers consider watering down the zero-emission vehicle mandate, which requires 33 per cent of new cars sold this year to be fully electric, rising to 80 per cent in 2030.

One option would reduce the 2030 figure to 50 per cent, meaning half of new cars could still have a petrol engine alongside a battery.

But research has found plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) emit 3.5 times more carbon dioxide in real-world driving than their official test figures suggested.

‘Public charger issues stopped me visiting friends’

Vanessa Sutton, 51, is one of 105,000 Motability customers who have gone electric – making it the largest electric fleet in Europe.

The former primary schoolteacher from Derby said the scheme has been “invaluable”. It allows disabled people to cash in £75 of personal independence payment (PIP) or disability living allowance (DLA) for a free car, for 25 years.

A wheelchair user of 13 years, Sutton’s home charger has been “just brilliant” – meaning she no longer has to beg passers-by for assistance at petrol stations.

But her “life has shrunk” because inaccessible public charging stations deter her from longer trips. She also struggles with the bulky public chargers.

Last year, whilst driving with her parents to Southampton for a cruise, her 81-year-old mother was left wrestling with a cable on an incline at Oxford services.

“She was struggling to pull it down for me and put it in,” she said. “Lots of the chargers are in silly places – and the experience has put me off going too far.”

She also skipped a friend’s barbeque in Sheffield because she didn’t feel “comfortable asking any of the guests to go down the road to help with the charger. It was just too much, just so many potential disasters.”

‘We must make it easier for residents’

Andrew Miller, chief executive of Motability Operations, said “accessibility must be built into the roll-out of public EV charging infrastructure, or we risk disabled people being left behind”.

The AA’s Edmund King added the Government must “make it easier and faster for residents to have access to cross streets and gully charging”.

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “We’re helping more households without driveways switch to electric vehicles and access home charging by reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, offering grants of up to £500 for home chargepoints, and providing additional funding for councils to install cross-pavement charging channels.

“Over 80 per cent of eligible authorities have applied for the funding, so we expect to see more local schemes and installations coming forward soon.”