Who fixes a broken EV charger on your business site?

Name a service contractor and an escalation owner before your chargers open. A warranty alone does not describe the whole repair service. In-scope public rapid networks face a 99% annual reliability duty, measured across the operator's network rather than each site [S1]. Agree separate response, attendance and restoration terms for your bays. Checked October 2026.

Last checked 17 October 2026

Who maintains the charger, and who pays when it breaks?

Ask for a responsibility schedule covering hardware, electrical installation, communications, payment equipment and the surrounding bay. Put an accountable organisation beside each item. Then ask who receives the fault first and stays responsible until charging is restored.

Under fully funded terms, request evidence of the operator’s maintenance obligations and exclusions. Under part funded terms, identify which repair costs are shared. Under self funded terms, ask for separate prices for planned servicing, call-outs, parts and software support. These are contract questions, not a reason to assume that any funding label includes every fault.

HSE says electrical work must be carried out by someone competent for that work. Name the contractor authorised to undertake electrical repairs and describe what your own staff may do safely. Check legal responsibility with your solicitor where the documents divide duties between several parties. [S3]

Who should drivers call when charging fails?

Propose a driver-facing contact on the equipment and a separate escalation route for your manager. Ask how the helpdesk finds the correct unit, recognises a payment fault and arranges attendance. Your staff should not have to negotiate between the installation team and the software team while a customer waits.

For operators subject to the public helpline duty, the regulations require free staffed telephone assistance around the clock, with the number displayed on or near the chargepoint. The duty has an operator micro-business exemption; check applicability rather than assuming every small site is exempt. [S1]

Prepare a short reception instruction card: the unit identifier, support contact, safe reporting steps and who can authorise closure of a bay. Ask the operator to explain how drivers receive refunds or updates while a fault remains unresolved. Include arrangements for evenings when your premises are closed.

Does the public reliability rule mean your charger must be fixed immediately?

No site-specific restoration time follows from the headline network percentage. The statutory annual target concerns an operator’s rapid network, and rapid means at least 50 kilowatts (kW). A kilowatt measures power. A kilowatt hour (kWh) measures energy delivered over time. [S1]

Ask for your site’s own service commitment. A network result cannot tell you how long a particular rural socket has been unusable. Request both the published network information and a report for your equipment, showing faults, detection, attendance, restoration and exclusions.

DfT guidance distinguishes internal communications or software failures from exceptional external events. Ask the operator to explain excluded incidents and retain supporting evidence, rather than accepting every offline period as unavoidable. For legal interpretation, check with your solicitor. [S2]

How fast will someone respond, attend and restore service?

Request separate contractual deadlines for the stages below. They are proposed negotiating points, not statutory repair times or published market norms.

Ask whether the clock runs outside opening hours, whether parts shortages pause it and who authorises a temporary replacement. Agree how repeated faults are treated. Restarting the same incident repeatedly should not obscure an unresolved problem in the report you receive.

Negotiate remedies alongside the deadlines. Possible subjects include service credits, an improvement plan or an exit right after defined failures. Ask your solicitor to review enforceability and the evidence needed to invoke them. The host-agreement guide helps organise that review.

Can remote monitoring tell whether a driver can actually charge?

Ask the bidder to demonstrate its monitoring with the equipment proposed for your site. Request examples of how it detects loss of communication, a failed payment terminal and a connector fault. Ask which failures require a driver report or an on-site observation.

For in-scope public equipment, DfT requires availability status changes to be reflected in the open data within 30 seconds. A reported status is useful evidence, but your handover test should also cover starting and paying for a real charging session. [S2]

Ask for a safe procedure when monitoring and visible conditions disagree. HSE advises stopping use where equipment safety is in doubt and seeking competent assessment. Keep a damaged unit unavailable until the responsible contractor has assessed it. Do not let a successful remote restart substitute for a safety check. [S4]

What costs belong in the maintenance budget?

HSE recommends checks suited to the equipment and risks. Request a written inspection plan. [S5]

Request an itemised schedule rather than estimating from the charger purchase price. Separate routine servicing from labour, travel, replacement cables, communications, software, payment support and damage exclusions. Ask whether the warranty pays for attendance as well as parts.

For income modelling, calculate unavailable trading days multiplied by your evidenced expected charging margin per day. Then add repair costs payable by your business. Use low, central and high outage scenarios as assumptions; do not present the result as predicted losses. Compare them in the income and payback tool and the revenue-share guide.

Pre-signing checklist

Put these questions to the installer or operator:

• Who owns each incident from the first report to confirmed restoration?
• Who answers drivers and your manager outside business hours?
• Which faults trigger attendance, and when does the response clock start?
• What parts, travel and damage costs are excluded?
• How are failed sessions, refunds and reopened faults recorded?
• Who inspects the electrical installation, and what records will you receive?
• What remedy applies if the agreed site service repeatedly fails?

What should you do next?

Bring your opening hours, staffing arrangements and proposed public access to the discussion. Ask to see a sample incident report and service schedule before comparing offers. Read how we work and get matched with an installer that covers your area.

Piggy Pineapple Ltd operates this referral service. We refer enquiries to installer partners and may be paid a fee. Our owner holds shares in at least one partner. Before passing on your details, we name the proposed partner and disclose any shareholding our owner holds in it.