The same instrument
A charge point occupies land the installer does not control and stays there. That is the test, and it puts EV charging in exactly the same category as a fibre cable: an access agreement between whoever controls the land and whoever is installing. The document is recognisably the same animal. Parties, a grant, an apparatus description, areas and access, a term, insurance, reinstatement, assignment, fees. A solicitor reading one after the other would not be surprised by the shape of the second.What a wayleave agreement contains
The eight clauses, and what each of them is for.
What differs
Seven things, and only the first is a difference of degree.
Six of those seven are things a telecoms agreement does not address at all, which is why an EV installation is not well served by a telecoms template with the words changed.
Term lengths above are drawn from experience of this market rather than from any published standard, and individual agreements vary widely.
Why the term is longer
A charge point is capital that has to earn out. Fibre is installed once and carries service for decades at negligible marginal cost. A charge point is hardware with a commercial life, installed against a forecast of how much energy it will sell, and the operator needs enough years to recover the installation before the economics work. Ten to fifteen years is what that recovery period tends to look like. The consequence for a building owner is that an EV agreement is a longer commitment on a faster-moving technology, and the clauses that matter most are the ones about what happens if the equipment becomes obsolete before the term ends.Revenue sharing
The clause telecoms has no equivalent for. A telecoms wayleave moves money once, or at a few defined moments. An EV agreement frequently carries an ongoing share of energy sales to the landowner, which makes it closer to a commercial arrangement than to a grant of access with a fee attached. That changes what the agreement has to say. A revenue share needs a definition of the revenue, a mechanism for reporting it, and something covering what happens when the charge points are used less than anyone forecast. None of those clauses exist in a telecoms document.Electrical capacity and the network operator
The constraint that most often decides whether an installation happens at all, and it is decided before the agreement is. A building has a supply with a capacity, and charge points draw a great deal of it. Where the existing supply is insufficient, an upgrade has to be agreed with the Distribution Network Operator for the area, which is a separate party, a separate process and frequently a separate timescale to everything else. This matters for a building owner in one specific way. A charge point operator asking for a wayleave is asking for something that may be conditional on a third party’s decision they do not control. An agreement that does not address what happens if the capacity upgrade is refused, or costs more than expected, has left the largest risk in the project unallocated.Parking is a property question
Charge points need bays, and bays are usually already allocated to somebody. Where parking is demised to individual leaseholders or tenants, designating bays for charging is a question about those leases rather than about electricity. Where parking is shared, it is a question about how the shared right is being changed and for whose benefit. This is the clause most likely to look simple and turn out not to be, because the electrical work can be perfectly straightforward while the right to use the space it serves is genuinely contested.Who wants the installation
The structural difference, and the one that most changes how a request arrives. In telecoms the operator wants access and the building owner is being asked. In EV charging the building owner is frequently the party who wants the installation, because charge points make a car park more valuable and tenants increasingly expect them. That does not remove the need for an agreement. Where the parking is demised or shared, the building owner still needs the right to put charge points in space that other people have rights over, and where a third party operates and maintains them, the building owner is granting access as well as receiving a service. The negotiation runs differently when both parties want the same outcome, but the instrument does not change.Do you need a wayleave?
The test, and when a licence or a lease is the right instrument instead.
Wayleave, licence, lease and easement
The four instruments compared, and what separates them.