The Two Regulatory Clocks Ticking on Guest EV Charging

If a guest charges their car at your property and you bill them for it, you are reselling electricity. While that sounds like a technicality, it is the reason two separate pieces of regulation are about to matter to you. And the timing on both has just shifted.

Most of the rental sector treats “EV charging rules” as one thing, usually filed under worth a look at some point, but in actuality, they are two things, on two different clocks, and lately they have started ticking at different speeds.

One is about the price you are allowed to charge. The other is about the meter you measure it with. They are easy to confuse and they are not the same problem.

Clock one: The Price

The rule here is Ofgem’s Maximum Resale Price direction.

It says, in plain terms, that you cannot resell electricity for more than you paid for it. It has been around for over twenty years with barely any change, and for most of that time, nobody pointed it at holiday lets, because guests charging cars at rental properties was not really a thing.

That is changing.

In October 2025 Ofgem opened a Call for Input on the Maximum Resale Price, the first proper review of these rules in two decades, and it closed on 4 December. EV charging was named specifically as one of the things under review, along with billing transparency and how the rules actually get enforced. A decision is expected at some point in 2026.

So what does this mean? Right now, the technical position is that EV charging sits outside the strict resale cap, and plenty of operators have taken that as a green light to charge a flat “EV fee” or put a margin on the electricity. That is precisely the behaviour the review is looking at. If Ofgem pulls guest charging properly inside the resale rules, the people most exposed are the ones charging above their own unit rate, or charging a flat fee that has nothing to do with what the guest actually used.

There is a position that holds up whatever Ofgem decides, and it is not complicated. Bill for the electricity the guest actually used. Keep the rate at or below what your supplier charges you. Recover your admin and maintenance through a separate, clearly disclosed service fee, not a markup on the energy itself. Do that and a 2026 decision changes nothing for you. Don’t, and this is the year to stop guessing.

Clock two: The Meter

The second clock is about measurement, and this is the one almost nobody in the STR world is tracking.

To bill a guest fairly for what they used, you need a meter that is legally accepted for billing. In the UK that means one approved under the Measuring Instruments Regulations 2016, our version of the EU’s Measuring Instruments Directive. A meter that is not approved is worthless in an argument. If a guest disputes a bill that came off a non-approved meter, they can refuse to pay it, and they would be right to.

What changed this year: in February 2026 the EU Council signed off a new directive, Directive (EU) 2026/706, which for the first time brings all electric vehicle charging equipment explicitly inside the measuring-instruments framework. It came into force in early April 2026. EU member states have to adopt it by April 2028, with the rules biting from October 2028 and some transition periods running on past that.

The UK is not in the EU, but it has not looked away either. The government has said it intends to lay a Statutory Instrument in 2026 to update domestic metering rules, coming into force in 2027, and the Department for Business and Trade is expected to run a Call for Evidence on whether to take on the rest of the new directive. There is also a separate hardware deadline ticking in the background. From January 2027, new and renovated chargers are expected to support the latest smart-charging communication standard (EN ISO 15118-20), which has a bearing on which equipment counts as current.

In practice, the most common chargers being installed at UK holiday lets today (Easee One, MyEnergi Zappi, Wallbox Pulsar Plus, Pod Point Solo 3) do not include built-in MID-certified billing meters. That is not a comment on the quality of any of those chargers, most are excellent. It is a comment on the gap between what an operator buys for charging and what they would need for billing. Right now those are still two different specifications.

You do not need to tear anything out tomorrow. But the definition of a “compliant” setup is on the move, the direction of travel is not in doubt, and anything you buy in 2026 should be chosen with the 2027 to 2028 picture in view rather than the 2016 one. Buying for today’s bare minimum is how people end up with hardware that is obsolete before it has paid for itself.

For details on what makes a meter approved, the markings to look for, and how the standards are changing, we put together a longer reference on MID-meter compliance for UK holiday let EV chargers that goes further than there is space for here.

How much this matters depends on how many properties you run

The rules are identical whether you own one cottage or manage four hundred, but the exposure is not. The obligation does not scale with portfolio size; the cost of getting it wrong does, and so does the effort of getting ready.

If you are an owner-operator with one or a few properties, this is a small job you do once. One supply, a charger or two, one decision. Your real risk is a single guest dispute, or a bad review from someone who felt fleeced, and both are easy to avoid. Set your rate at or below your supplier’s unit rate, make sure you are billing off an approved meter, and spell out the charging policy in your listing and welcome pack. That is most of it, and it stays done once it is done.

If you run an agency or manage other people’s places, it is a different animal.

The same rule across dozens of properties means dozens of chargers, suppliers and meter setups that don’t match each other, and the uncomfortable questions stack up quickly. Which of your chargers can actually prove kWh accurately enough to bill from? How many are on hardware that will be behind the standard by 2027? And the one people forget: do your management agreements make clear who the reseller is, you or the owner, and therefore who carries the compliance duty?

An Ofgem decision in 2026 lands on every property at once. A portfolio you have not audited is a portfolio you cannot answer questions about.

A 90-day starting point

You do not have to solve all of this by summer, but you do need to know where you stand. Ninety days is enough.

Month one is finding out what you are actually doing. List every property that offers charging, the charger model at each, and how you bill (if you bill at all). For an agency, that audit is the whole exercise and it usually turns up more than people expect.

Month two is checking that list against two questions. Is the rate you charge at or below your own unit cost? Is the meter you bill from approved for billing? Every “no” is a priority.

Month three is fixing the cheap stuff and planning the rest. Rewriting a listing or moving off a flat fee onto per-kWh billing costs nothing and takes most of your dispute risk off the table straight away. Hardware is a budget decision, so get quotes and a rough timeline rather than leaving it hanging. Then write your position down in a paragraph, the rate, the meter, the policy, so that when a guest or an owner or eventually a regulator asks, the answer already exists.

But will any of this actually be enforced?

The honest question is enforcement. Ofgem has historically used the Maximum Resale Price as a complaints-driven regime rather than an active inspection one, and there is no reason to expect that to change overnight.

But complaints don’t need many to land. One unhappy guest, one social-media post, one consumer-affairs story, and a property’s billing practice becomes a story it didn’t want to be in. The metering rules sit with Trading Standards, who do enforce, just selectively. The realistic risk isn’t a regulator at your door. It’s a guest with a grievance who knows their rights.

Regulation usually gets attention only once it is being enforced, which is the most expensive possible moment to start. Both of these clocks are still in the cheap window, where readiness is mostly admin.

But a pricing decision is due this year and a metering shift is forming up for 2027 and beyond. Both warrant some time spent working out where you stand, while where you stand is still easy to change.

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Billy Karidis is co-founder of GuestCharge, a UK-built EV charging billing platform for short-term rental and holiday let operators. He works with hosts and agencies on the commercial and regulatory side of guest EV charging, with a focus on keeping billing fair, compliant, and simple to run.