Wales grants EV charging bays a decade of business rates relief, to 2036

The Welsh Government announced on August 11, 2026 that electric vehicle charging point parking bays and forecourts will get 100 percent non-domestic rates relief until March 31, 2036. Cabinet Secretary for Finance Elin Jones set out the measure in a written statement to the Senedd.

Local authorities are being asked to grant the relief now under their existing discretionary powers, backdated to the start of the 2024-25 financial year where relevant. Regulations due later this year will put the relief on a statutory footing from 2027-28 through to 2035-36, subject to Senedd approval. The relief exists because charging bays became a rates question at all: the Valuation Office Agency has taken the position that some charge points and their associated bays can be assessed for non-domestic rates under the current framework, which is exactly the unbudgeted cost line a decade-long 100 percent relief now removes.

For anyone operating charging bays or a forecourt in Wales, this is a real, multi-year change to site economics, independent of which hardware or backend runs the chargers. It applies whether the site runs on a single vendor's platform or, like a Plugchoice-managed estate, on OCPP across mixed brands.

Sources: Welsh Government, "Written Statement: Non-domestic rates relief for electric vehicle charging point parking bays and forecourts", August 11, 2026. Welsh Government, "Wales plugs in to a decade of rates relief to power up EV charging", August 11, 2026.