RELATED: How often should an EV charger be inspected?
Expectation, not regulation
This is worth being precise about, because a lot of writing on the subject is not.
There is no UK statute that sets an annual inspection interval for EV chargepoints on a private commercial site or in a communal car park. Anyone telling you the law requires an annual EV charger inspection is overstating it.
What exists is a duty to maintain electrical systems so they do not become dangerous, under the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, with no frequency named. Insurers work in the gap that leaves.
What insurers actually publish
Allianz is the clearest published example. Its engineering services guidance includes an inspection periodicity table for engineering assets, and it puts EV charging points at twelve months under those same regulations. Allianz also launched its own inspection service for EV chargers back in 2022, which tells you how the market sees the risk.
We have not found equivalent published policy wording from Aviva, Zurich, AXA or RSA making EV charger inspection an explicit condition of cover. That does not mean it never comes up with them. It means the requirement usually arrives through a broker, a risk survey or a renewal questionnaire rather than through published terms.
Where it actually bites
In practice the question rarely arrives as a formal condition. It arrives as a request.
A renewal questionnaire asks what electrical inspection regime is in place. A risk surveyor visits and asks when the charging equipment was last tested. A broker asks for evidence before placing cover on a building that has added charging since the last survey.
At that point the answer is either a document or a scramble. The awkward cases are not the sites that have never been inspected. They are the sites that have been maintained perfectly well by somebody who never wrote anything down.
What they want to see
When it is asked for, the request is usually some combination of the following.
Evidence of periodic inspection and testing of the charging equipment, with dates.
The fixed wiring position, normally an EICR at the interval appropriate to the premises.
Evidence that faults are recorded and remedied, rather than a clean report on a site where nothing is ever logged.
Who holds the duty, which for a communal installation means naming the freeholder, management company or managing agent, and whoever they have contracted to do the work.
RELATED: Does an EV charger need an EICR?
One rule that does not apply to you
The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 introduced a 99% reliability standard with annual reporting. It is real, but it binds operators of public chargepoints rated at 50 kW and above.
A resident only charger in a private car park, or a staff charger behind a barrier, is not in scope. If a broker or a contractor has quoted 99% at you as a legal obligation for a private site, they are describing a different regime.
The practical position
Treat it as a document you should be able to produce on request rather than a box the law makes you tick. That framing gets you to the right behaviour without overstating the obligation, and it is the one that survives contact with somebody who actually reads the regulations.
