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OZEV grants explained without making you want to lie down in a dark room

There are four OZEV-adjacent grants worth claiming in 2026. There are roughly 400 pages of guidance explaining them. We've read the lot so you don't have to.

Energy Partners · 1 June 2026 · 8 min read

If you ring three EV installers tomorrow and ask which grants you qualify for, you'll get three answers: "the WCS one," "we'll send a PDF," and one very confident person who will name a scheme that closed in 2022. The OZEV grant landscape in 2026 isn't actually complicated. There are four schemes worth knowing about. Together they'll cover between 25% and 70% of your install, depending on what you're buying and who you are. The biggest, the Depot Charging Scheme, pays up to £1,000,000 per applicant. The most-claimed, the Workplace Charging Scheme, was uplifted to £500 per socket from 1 April 2026 and now hands out up to £20,000 per site. Capital allowances on top of either give you another 25% back through corporation tax. The villain in this story is the government-grant forms apparently designed by people who hate small businesses — OZEV form 4b specifically, which we'll get to.

Here's the punchline up front, then the detail.

The four schemes that actually pay out in 2026

Most of the noise online is about schemes that closed, schemes that never opened to commercial applicants, or schemes that have been renamed twice. Ignore that. These are the four that are live and writing cheques right now.

1. Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS). Uplifted on 1 April 2026 to £500 per socket, capped at 40 sockets per applicant, with a 75% cost cap (the grant can't be more than 75% of the eligible install cost). Maximum payout: £20,000. Available to most VAT-registered businesses, charities and public-sector bodies with off-street parking. The chargepoint and installer both have to be on the OZEV-approved lists. Application is via voucher — you apply, OZEV issues a voucher, you give it to your installer, they redeem it. The process is reasonable. The form is not.

2. Depot Charging Scheme (DCS). This is the big one. 70% of eligible cost up to £1m per applicant. Aimed at fleets and depots — minimum five vehicles or an HGV operator licence. Window closes 30 June 2026 with a likely successor scheme still TBC, so don't sit on this. Eligible costs include hardware, install, civils, switchgear and a transformer if you need one. It does not cover the vehicles themselves, ongoing maintenance or your office Wi-Fi. The form is OZEV's form 4b, and we will get to OZEV's form 4b.

3. EV Infrastructure Grant for SMEs (EVIG). The smaller cousin of DCS, designed for businesses under 249 employees. Pays £350 per socket plus a £500 infrastructure contribution per site for the underlying electrical work — the bit that quietly bankrupts unsuspecting SMEs because their three-phase supply needs upgrading and nobody warned them. Up to five grants per applicant across different sites.

4. Capital allowances. Not technically an OZEV scheme but it stacks with all of the above. 100% first-year allowance on most charging infrastructure under HMRC's plant and machinery rules (capital allowances on EV chargepoints were specifically extended in successive Finance Acts, currently scheduled to run to April 2026 with widespread expectation of further extension). At 25% corporation tax, this hands you back a quarter of whatever wasn't covered by the grant.

Who qualifies for what

This is the part the gov.uk maze is genuinely bad at explaining. The short answer:

The "in addition to" rule is where most people get confused, so:

The stacking rules nobody mentions

You can stack grants with capital allowances. You cannot stack two OZEV grants on the same socket.

In practice this means:

If your installer can't recite those rules without checking, they haven't done many grant-funded installs. Find one who has.

A worked example, because that's what you actually wanted

Site: Mid-sized office in the West Midlands. Brief: 12-socket workplace install (six twin 22kW units). Hundred-vehicle staff car park, EV uptake hitting 25% and climbing.

The quote before grants:

Grants applied:

Per-socket, all-in, after grants and tax: roughly £2,150. The fuel and BIK savings on staff EVs using the chargers will recoup that on a 12-socket office in 2–3 years. The recruitment-and-retention value is hard to put a number on, but the under-30s graduate cohort now ranks workplace charging in the top ten office amenity preferences. So put a number on it anyway: a single avoided graduate-hire turnover is £15,000–£30,000 in recruitment and ramp cost. One.

OZEV form 4b: what to expect

Form 4b is the DCS application. It is genuinely intimidating on first read. It is also less work than it looks once you have the right paperwork in front of you. With a complete site survey, an installer quote with itemised eligible costs, three years of accounts, and proof of fleet size, most applications take 3 to 4 hours, not the quarter your finance team is dreading.

What it actually asks for:

  1. Applicant details, operator licence number if applicable, fleet size and composition.
  2. Site address, ownership/lease evidence, planning status.
  3. Itemised quote separating eligible vs ineligible cost lines.
  4. Project timeline (installs must complete within a defined window — get this right or you forfeit the grant).
  5. Confirmation that you're not double-claiming against another OZEV scheme on the same sockets.
  6. State Aid / Subsidy Control declaration. This is where finance directors get nervous; it's a tickbox in most cases.

The reason form 4b has a reputation is that the first version landed in 2022 and was, charitably, a draft. The 2026 version is materially better. The reputation lags the form.

What to ask before you sign

  1. "Show me which grants you're applying for, on which sockets, with which amounts."
  2. "Have you applied for this combination before? Can I see the redacted approval?"
  3. "Who handles the form 4b — you, or me, or jointly?"
  4. "What happens to the grant if the install slips past the window?"
  5. "Are your chargepoints and your business both on the current OZEV-approved lists?"
  6. "How are you separating eligible from ineligible costs on the quote?"

If the answers come back confident and specific, you're talking to an installer who's done this. If they come back as "we'll work that out later", they haven't, and they'll work it out using your money.

What to do this week

If your install window is anywhere before September 2026, you are already inside the timeline you need. DCS in particular has a hard deadline of 30 June 2026 for applications, and OZEV processing isn't instant. Get a site survey booked. Get an itemised quote. Get the grant paperwork started in parallel, not after. The most expensive grant is the one you forgot to apply for.

The short version

Four schemes worth knowing. WCS pays £500/socket up to £20k for workplaces. DCS pays 70% up to £1m for fleets, closing 30 June 2026. EVIG pays £350/socket + £500 infrastructure for SMEs. Capital allowances at 100% FYA stack with all of them and hand you back another 25% via corporation tax. You can stack with capital allowances. You can't stack two OZEV grants on the same socket. And form 4b is annoying but tractable if you have your paperwork in order.

Want us to do the maths on your site?

Run your postcode through our grant eligibility checker at /grants and we'll come back with a list of every scheme you qualify for, the realistic award value, and a transparent line-item quote in five working days. We do the form 4b. Including the State Aid declaration. Especially the State Aid declaration.

Grant Eligibility Checker

Read this article in the app at energy-partners.co.uk/insights/ozev-grants-explained-2026. Energy Partners installs and manages commercial EV charging, solar and battery storage for UK venues — talk to us.