On 1 October, Believ announced a deal with Marston's to put chargers across the brewer's pub and hotel estate. The headline phrase was "fully funded". Believ pays for the site assessment, design, installation, operation and maintenance. Marston's spends no capital.
Six days later, Roam launched an offer that goes a step further. It will pay workplaces, hotels and other destination sites £500 per single-socket charger and £1,000 per dual-socket charger it replaces, and install new kit at no cost.
If you run a car park, you'll get one of these pitches soon, if you haven't already. Some of them are good deals. But "fully funded" describes who pays for the hardware. It tells you nothing about what you're signing away. That's in the site agreement, and almost nobody reads it properly.
Why "free" chargers exist at all
Charge point operators aren't charities. They fund the hardware because they want three things you have:
- Land with a decent grid connection
- Dwell time: people parked long enough to buy electricity
- Years: a long contract that lets them earn back the capex and then make a margin
Look at the deals on the table:
- Believ × Marston's (1 Oct 2026): fully funded, end-to-end. Marston's already has 542 chargers across 195 sites and calls Believ its second charging partner. First Believ sites go live late 2026. Contract length and revenue share weren't published.
- Roam (7 Oct 2026): £500 or £1,000 per replaced charger, new OCPP-compliant kit fully managed, "ongoing revenue" for the host. The condition: a long-term lease or other site agreement with Roam. Length not published.
- Shropshire Council (March 2026): a 15-year concession running 2027 to 2042 for 500 or more public chargers. The council gets an annual concession fee plus a share of charging revenue that rises with usage.
That last one is useful because it's public. When a council with procurement lawyers signs a 15-year term, assume the private-sector pitch on your desk is in the same range. Fifteen years is longer than most commercial leases. It's three or four generations of charging hardware.
The other way: own it
On 9 September, Lidl GB said it would spend £10 million this financial year, including around 100 new rapid chargers at existing stores. It also made a point of saying it owns its charge points outright and doesn't rely on third-party operators. At the same time it cut its Lidl Plus rapid rate from 62p to 59p per kWh.
That's the trade in one example. Lidl spends its own money and in return:
- sets its own tariff, and can use it as a loyalty tool
- keeps all the charging margin
- keeps the customer data, inside its own app
- can move, upgrade or remove chargers when it redevelops a store
A fully funded host gets none of that by default. Some of it can be negotiated back.
What you're actually giving away
Strip the marketing out and a fully funded deal is a land lease. Here's what's usually on the table.
1. Term. Expect 10 to 15 years, sometimes longer. Ask what happens if you sell the site, redevelop it, or the lease you hold from your own landlord ends first. If the agreement outlives your interest in the land, you have a problem.
2. Exclusivity. Many agreements stop you installing any other chargers on the site. That sounds harmless until your fleet goes electric in year four and you can't put in your own depot chargers.
3. Bays. The operator will want marked, EV-only bays, often the best-located ones. On a busy Saturday, 10 bays your customers can't use are 10 lost visits.
4. Grid capacity. This is the big one. The chargers take a share of your connection. If the operator's kit uses most of your headroom, your own future plans (heat pumps, a kitchen upgrade, fleet charging, a battery) may need a new connection, and you know how long those take. Ask who owns any new connection capacity, and whether it stays with you at the end of the term.
5. Tariff. You don't set the price. Ultra-rapid public charging already costs about 15% more per mile than petrol on the AA's latest index. If your customers feel ripped off at your chargers, they blame your venue, not the operator.
6. Exit. What does it cost to end early? Who removes the kit, makes good the surface and restores the bays at the end of the term? Who pays for that?
7. Uptime. A broken charger with your name above it hurts your reputation. Ask for a written uptime commitment, a response time, and what you get if they miss it.
When fully funded is the right answer
We're not against it. For plenty of sites it's the best option. It's usually right when:
- You want public rapid or ultra-rapid charging and don't want to run a charging business. Rapid hubs are expensive, the grid work is heavy, and operators know how to price and market them.
- Capital is better spent elsewhere. A pub group would rather refurbish 10 kitchens than buy 40 chargers. Fair enough.
- You're replacing dead kit that nobody supports. Roam's offer is aimed squarely at this, and £1,000 a dual unit plus new hardware beats paying to rip it out.
- Your dwell time is long and visits are frequent: hotels, holiday parks, leisure sites. Operators will compete for these, which gives you leverage.
When owning wins
Owning usually makes more sense when:
- The chargers are for your own staff or fleet. The Workplace Charging Scheme pays up to £500 per socket for up to 40 sockets (closes 31 March 2027), and it's for staff and fleet charging, not customer bays.
- Charging is part of your customer offer. If you want free charging for diners or members, a discount for loyalty-app users, or a bundled package, you need to control the tariff.
- You might redevelop in the next 10 to 15 years.
- You need the grid headroom for your own electrification later.
Ask for these before you sign
Most terms can move if you ask early. Operators want good sites, and destination charging is still thin on the ground: Zapmap's Q3 2026 numbers show destination chargers grew just 4% in a year while ultra-rapid grew 39%. If your site is good, you have leverage. Use it.
- A break clause at year 5 or 7, with a stated buy-out formula.
- A carve-out from exclusivity for your own staff and fleet charging.
- A capacity reservation: a fixed share of the connection kept back for your own use.
- Connection ownership stays with the site at the end of the term.
- Revenue share in writing: percentage, how it's calculated, when it's paid, and audit rights.
- Tariff guardrails: a cap, or a commitment to stay within a set range of the local market.
- A site-level uptime figure. The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 already require rapid networks to hit 99% reliability, but that's averaged across the whole network. Ask for a number for your site, with service credits or a right to terminate if it's repeatedly missed.
- Removal and reinstatement at the operator's cost.
- Open-protocol hardware (OCPP) so the chargers can be handed to another operator instead of ripped out.
- A get-out if they never install. No go-live within an agreed period, no agreement.
Our take
"Fully funded" isn't a scam. It's a trade: your land, your grid capacity and your flexibility for 10 to 15 years, in exchange for no capital outlay. Sometimes that's a good trade. But it should be a choice you make after comparing the numbers, not because one operator got to you first.
The national operators are moving fast. We've already seen a 22-bay hub land on a leisure park, and Believ is now working through a major pub estate. The best-placed sites are being signed up now. That's a reason to get the terms right, not to sign the first draft.
And if you're planning a bigger hub, two recent changes help either way: permitted development rules for car-park charging change on 21 October, and flexible grid connections can cut years off the wait.
Get a second opinion before you sign
Got a fully funded offer on your desk? Send it to us. We'll survey the site, work out what owning would cost against what you'd give up, check your grid headroom, and tell you straight which terms to push back on. No obligation, and no pressure to buy from us if the operator deal is the better one.
Site SurveyRead this article in the app at energy-partners.co.uk/insights/fully-funded-ev-charging-host-agreement-uk. Energy Partners installs and manages commercial EV charging, solar and battery storage for UK venues — talk to us.