Half of networks fail 99% reliability rules
16 rapid charging operators complied, but 22 did not – here’s a full list
Hello, I’m Tom Riley, and welcome back to The Fast Charge, a British EV newsletter.
Top story in today’s edition... I have reviewed 38 operators of rapid chargers to determine how many complied with the Government’s mandated 99% reliability rules during 2025. This research factors in a list obtained from the Department for Transport, highlighting which operators supplied reports to the Secretary of State.
Elsewhere... EV sales are surging, and new data finds they’re now cheaper than their petrol counterparts. Lovely stuff!
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Analysis: Only 4 in 10 networks meet 99% uptime rules
Headline: Fewer than half of the UK’s charging networks are compliant with laws that came into force from November 2024, mandating transparency around the reliability of rapid charge points as well as a 99% uptime target.
Summary: According to an analysis of 38 operators of rapid chargers by The Fast Charge Newsletter, there are only 16 networks fully compliant with the legal requirements. To save you the mental maths, that means of those 38, there were 22 that did not meet the requirements.
Under the rules, an operator is compliant with the regulations when they:
1. Maintain 99% uptime across all its chargers with speeds at or above 50kW
2. List on its website its compliance with the reliability requirement, and
3. Submit annual reports to the Secretary of State for Transport and the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS).
Failure to meet the rules can land a charging network with a £10,000 fine.
For context... Before conducting this analysis, I obtained a list of all the networks that had submitted reports to the Transport Secretary after the first tranche of reliability reports were due in for the year 2025. That deadline was 14 January 2026. After a bit of back and forth with the Department for Transport, I eventually got the list.
However... Before sharing the list with me, a DfT official told me that the OPSS still needed to have discussions with operators to verify the submitted information to assess whether each network met the required standard. Officials also explained, “The Government does not intend to publish information on compliance with the reliability requirement, as the Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 make it mandatory for operators to publish this information themselves.” So, the list I obtained only showed which networks had successfully submitted a report (aka, point 3 above).
Given this rather laid-back position... I decided to undertake my own research. To do this, I first when through the list I obtained, removing duplicates as well as new networks or those with tiny deployments - for example, Connected Kerb, which only has six rapid chargers. I then also included in my research several networks that I know operate rapid chargers, though they were not on the list supplied by DfT, suggesting they failed to report.
To determine whether they were compliant… I spent a ‘thrilling’ day going through my list and checking each operator’s website to see if they listed their compliance with the reliability rules. And all my findings are included in the table below, but here’s my headline analysis…
The good... We should begin on a positive note, and that is the finding that 16 networks in the UK are meeting the high standard set by the UK government. Those 16 alone include some of the country’s biggest rapid charging networks, including InstaVolt, MFG, Gridserve, and Osprey – collectively they represent more than a third of all rapid chargers. Also, though they were a few percentage points short of 99%, making them non-compliant, it was good to see that BP Pulse, Shell Recharge, and Believ all shared their figures on their website.
