⚡ Your charger is legally supposed to work 99% of the time
Under the Public Charge Point Regulations 2023, every UK rapid charging network must average 99% reliability. Fewer than one in 25 do. Here is what the law requires, what you can claim back, and how to report a dead charger.
If you have ever pulled into a motorway services on a low battery and found a "rapid" charger that refused to start, you have experienced the UK's most common EV frustration. What most drivers do not know is that it is also regulated.
The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/1168) came into force on 24 November 2023, and they are among the strictest public charging rules in the world. They cover reliability, payment, pricing transparency, a helpline and open data. Enforcement sits with the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), with fines attached.
What the regulations actually require
Four obligations matter most to drivers:
1. The 99% reliability standard. From 24 November 2024 — after a one-year lead-in period — every network of rapid and ultra-rapid chargers (50kW and above) has been required to hit 99% average annual reliability. Crucially, this is measured as a network-wide average, not charger by charger, using OCPI 2.2.1 status codes. A unit only counts as reliable when its status shows as available, charging or reserved. Under the government's own measure, the average UK rapid network has plenty of room to hide failures.
2. Contactless payment. All new public chargers of 8kW and above — and existing units of 50kW and above — must accept contactless payment. A broken payment terminal counts as downtime under the same rules, which closes the loophole where a charger is "working" but nobody can actually pay for it.
3. A free 24/7 helpline. Every charge point must display a free-to-use, staffed telephone helpline number, and operators are required to answer and log faults reported through it. This is your primary evidence trail when something goes wrong.
4. Transparent pricing and open data. The price per kilowatt hour must be displayed clearly, without requiring a pre-existing contract, and operator data must be held and published via OCPI. A further requirement — enabling payment through at least one roaming provider — is due to take effect on 24 November 2026.
Penalties are not trivial. Operators can face fines of up to £10,000 per charge point for contactless failures, up to £10,000 per network for missing the 99% reliability target, and up to £250,000 for obstructing an investigation or making false statements to enforcement officers. Vandalism, severe weather and grid failures can be claimed as exemptions, but only with documented evidence reviewed by OPSS.
The compliance gap: fewer than 1 in 25 meet the bar
The regulations are only as good as their enforcement, and here the picture is uncomfortable. A survey of more than 200 UK charge point operator decision-makers carried out in 2025 by charging platform Monta found that just 3.9% of operators actually met the legal 99% threshold. Around 74% reported uptime above 95%, and just over a quarter sat in the 97% to 98.4% band — close, but still short of the standard that has been law for close to two years.
Operators pointed to slow maintenance response times as the biggest single barrier to compliance, cited by 45% of respondents. Only 17% said they could access key diagnostic data on demand when a charger failed, and 10% said they rarely or never received diagnostic updates at all.
Local council data paints a similar picture. A Freedom of Information request to 17 English county councils found 39 of Hampshire's 157 public chargers unavailable — 27 switched off deliberately because of low usage — while Lancashire, West Sussex, Nottinghamshire and Essex held no reliability or fault data at all. Northumberland, by contrast, reported 97% availability across 487 chargers, suggesting the difference is management, not hardware.
Why "uptime" is not the same as "it worked"
There is a second, subtler problem. Reported uptime measures whether a charger's status shows as technically available — not whether a driver who plugs in actually gets a charge. Analysis of more than 100,000 charging sessions by ChargerHelp found that networks claiming 98.7% to 99.9% uptime delivered a real first-time charge success rate of only 71%, and that success rates fell from around 85% on newly installed units to below 70% by their third year in service.
How to claim a refund when a charger fails
If you pay for a charge and do not receive it, you have a clear route:
Step 1 — call the helpline from the charge point itself. Every rapid charger must display one. Report the fault and, importantly, get a reference number before you leave the site.
Step 2 — ask the operator for a refund. Most networks will refund a failed transaction directly if you ask. Keep your reference number and a photo of the screen or error message if you can.
Step 3 — escalate to your card issuer. If the operator refuses, or a charge was taken without a working session being delivered, you have the same chargeback rights as for any other service that was paid for and not provided. Raise a dispute with your bank or card provider rather than relying on the operator's goodwill. Payments made on a credit card may also fall under Section 75 protection.
How to report a broken charger
Persistent faults at a specific charger, missed reliability figures, or a helpline that goes unanswered can be reported to OPSS through gov.uk — the body responsible for enforcing the regulations and issuing fines. A single complaint will not fix the network, but it adds to the evidence base OPSS uses when deciding where to focus enforcement.
Before a long trip, it also pays to check a specific operator's published reliability data — every rapid operator is legally required to publish it — rather than trusting a brand name. You can compare networks, power ratings and locations in our UK charging points directory, and work out what a failed rapid charge actually costs you with the charging cost calculator.
How the UK compares with the US and EU
Britain's 99% mandate is unusually strict. The United States' federally funded NEVI programme requires only a 97% minimum uptime, measured port by port rather than across a whole network. The EU has no single uptime mandate at all under its Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, leaving reliability to national and local tenders that typically sit between 97% and 99%. The UK is also unusual in counting payment terminal failures as downtime.
That makes the current compliance gap harder to excuse rather than easier: the UK chose to write reliability into statute with real penalties attached, and the survey data shows enforcement has not yet caught up with the ambition.
For drivers, the practical response is to use the tools the regulations already give you — published reliability data, the on-site helpline, refunds and chargebacks — rather than waiting for enforcement to close the gap. If you are new to public charging, start with our explainer on how the UK charging network is structured, or read this week's World EV Day 2026 network expansion round-up.
Sources
The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 — legislation.gov.uk (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2023/1168/contents) · Motoring Chronicle — Only 4 in 100 EV Charging Networks Meet Britain's Reliability Law (https://motoringchronicle.com/only-4-in-100-ev-charging-networks-meet-britains-reliability-law/) · VisitBritain — Latest regulatory updates summary of the Public Charge Point Regulations (https://www.visitbritain.org/business-advice/pink-book/latest-regulatory-updates) · Government guidance — The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-public-charge-point-regulations-2023-guidance) · Department for Transport / Zapmap charger statistics, July 2026, as reported by Westfield News Focus (https://westfieldnewsfocus.wordpress.com/2026/09/07/more-frustration-with-ev-car-charging-in-york/).
