EV charge points in the United Kingdom

Legislated access to open data

Applicable from 2023

The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 came in to force on 24^th November 2023. The regulations require operators of publicly accessible electric vehicle charge points to publish open data related to the charge points. As summarised in the supporting guidance:

All data must be accurate and charge point operators must use the Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI) to hold and open their data. Reference and availability data must be made publicly available and in a machine-readable format.

Not all the data will be of use to OpenStreetMap. The type of data of most use is what the regulation refers to as “Reference data”. This means information that does not change frequently about a charge point including but not limited to location, connector type, pricing, payment method and time restrictions. Availability data could be of use in OpenStreetMap – for example to identify and tag charge points that have been out of operation for a prolonged period of time.

Operators have one year to comply with this (i.e. by 24^th November 2024). Data must be open in line with the Open Government Licence. Specifically “a charge point operator must ensure that reference data and availability data is made available to the public free of charge and in a machine readable format without any requirement to agree to terms and conditions regarding the use of that data”.

The data requirement that charge point operators hold must align to paragraphs 8.3.1 to 8.3.3 in version 2.2.1 of the OCPI.

Earlier legislation

The Directive on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure 2014/94/EU (also known as the CPT Directive) introduced new EU rules to ensure the build-up of alternative refuelling points across Europe. It set out the need to “provide vehicle users with data regarding the geographic location of the refuelling and recharging points accessible to the public” and that this data “should be accessible on an open and non-discriminatory basis to all users”.

This Directive was transposed into UK law via the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulations 2017. The guidance document clarified that, for the context of the UK legislation, open and non-discriminatory basis “means that the data is freely available to anyone who wishes to access it (both public and business users for commercial use) without restriction”. Operators were free to choose how they provide this data and it appears most did so by adding maps to their websites and/or uploading their data to the National Chargepoint Registry (NCR). The NCR is provided by Cenex and includes an API for access.

While for EV charge points, this part of the prior legislation has effectively been superseded, the earlier legislation is still of use for non-electric refuelling, such as hydrogen vehicle refuelling points.