ISSUES WITH OLEV PAYMENTS

[Gavin John Hyde]

As most electricians know, if you are fitting ev chargers then 90% of the time you need to do it via the OLEV scheme for domestic customers and claim the £500 grant from OLEV or you just aren't competitive on pricing.
OLEV now have such a backlog that from when you submit the paperwork to them all signed (and assuming they aren't being pedantic and picky) it will be approximately 100+ days until you get paid the £500.00
I have written to my local MP about this as it needs questioning Its clear they dont have the staff to process the payments and applications. So need to take more people on.
I know of one company who are owed over £8k from OLEV from installs in DEC 19 and Jan 20.
Should the grant scheme not be wound down or reduced then with the expected uptake of EV's the delay in processing payments is only going to get worse.
Anybody else having delays in payments?

 

[hasel5]

Company I work for just got their September payment from Olev we are talking big money as well

 

[Gavin John Hyde]

Company I work for just got their September payment from Olev we are talking big money as well

I have heard of companies going close to bancruptcy with the amounts owed. At 500 a pop, if you are a company just doing these installs then that could be around 15k a month owed from OLEV...

 

[hasel5]

I do 10 a week at least ?

 

[JK-Electrical]

As most electricians know, if you are fitting ev chargers then 90% of the time you need to do it via the OLEV scheme for domestic customers and claim the £500 grant from OLEV or you just aren't competitive on pricing.
OLEV now have such a backlog that from when you submit the paperwork to them all signed (and assuming they aren't being pedantic and picky) it will be approximately 100+ days until you get paid the £500.00
I have written to my local MP about this as it needs questioning Its clear they dont have the staff to process the payments and applications. So need to take more people on.
I know of one company who are owed over £8k from OLEV from installs in DEC 19 and Jan 20.
Should the grant scheme not be wound down or reduced then with the expected uptake of EV's the delay in processing payments is only going to get worse.
Anybody else having delays in payments?

I installed three EV charging points under the Workplace Charging Scheme back in early November last year. I finally got paid the £1500.00 I was due from OLEV yesterday. I'm now seriously contemplating whether or not I want to continue doing EV installs under the grant scheme as I'm not happy about the cash-flow of my business being compromised because of OLEV's late payments.

The OLEV fiasco has been going on far too long and an overhaul of the organisation is required as it quite clearly isn't fit for the purpose.

From 2017:

The Great UK EV Charger Grant Mystery

And from 2015:

The Electric Vehicle Homecharge grant is claimed on behalf of householders by the charge point supplier and installer, with all outstanding grant claims to be submitted to the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) – part of the DfT – by May 8 2015.

OLEV then aims to pay installers within 30 working days, but terms of the scheme state: ‘Please note that 30 working days is only a guideline for payment as you are applying for a grant and both DVLA and OLEV need to be satisfied that all of the necessary terms and conditions of the scheme are fulfilled.’

However, electric car charge point installation firm EV Charging Solutions claim the scheme is in a “woeful state” with OLEV regularly failing to pay the firm within the 30-day guideline, adding that the paperwork required for the grant is a “minefield”.

On January 23, the company was still chasing payments of more than £12,000 from OLEV that were claimed in November 2014, as well as another £900 it first claimed in October. The money has since been paid, but it came more than 35 days after the 30-day guideline.

Source: Anger over late EV home charge grant payments | AirQualityNews - https://web.archive.org/web/20150222011743/https://airqualitynews.com/2015/02/18/anger-over-late-ev-home-charge-grant-payments

More trouble with the growth in EV charging lies ahead:

The UK is unprepared for the expected surge in demand for power from the electric car revolution and could face blackouts and power cuts unless action is taken now, an official report warns.

Sales of zero-emission and hybrid vehicles are expected to explode in the next two years, with more than 72,000 registrations last year, a figure predicted to break through the 100,000 mark by 2021. Ministers pledged to phase out all petrol and diesel cars by 2040, fuelling a spike in interest.

Yet a report by the government-commissioned Electric Vehicles Energy Task Force says growing demand on electricity supplies caused by this increase needs to be properly managed by ministers and industry or else the national grid will be unable to cope.

Source: As electric car use surges, the national grid is at risk of being overloaded - https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/electric-car-surge-exclusive-power-cuts-national-grid-overload-1366304

 

[Lister1987]

If a customer took this long to pay you'd take thier --- to small claims, X not a see why by people aren't approaching grandad stands/which and filling a class action claim against the scheme, or am I missing something

 

[Robson689]

Sounds like the whole scheme needs changing. It would be better if the homeowner paid the contractor and claimed the £500 back themselves rather than the contractor having to stump up the money for a seemingly indefinite period of time...