How to Sell to UK EV Charge Point Operators as a Supplier

To sell to EV charging companies in the UK, sell to the charge point operator (CPO), the company that owns or runs public chargers. Treat it like any other business buyer with a short list of needs: new sites built, live sites kept working, and a set of legal duties met every day.

Find the people who own deployment, operations and maintenance, and procurement at the operators active in your region. Then ask for a short conversation about one site, one area or one problem.

Most EV charging sales advice is written for someone selling a charger to a hotel, an office park or an apartment block. That buyer is the operator's customer. This article is for the companies selling to the operator: installers, groundworks and civils contractors, electrical contractors, maintenance teams, and payment or monitoring providers.

How big is the UK public charging market right now?

The UK had 121,171 public EV chargers on 1 July 2026, according to the Department for Transport's July 2026 public charging statistics. Of those, 28,887 were rated rapid or above, meaning 50kW and up.

That is roughly one charger in four. The rapid share is where the heavier supplier work sits: more civils per site, more electrical work, and a reliability rule that applies only to rapid points.

The same release splits chargers by location type. 52% were classed as destination chargers, 33% as on-street, 11% as en-route and 4% as other. On-street matters for the LEVI section below, because that fund is aimed at residents without off-street parking.

DfT builds these counts from figures the operators themselves provide, collated by Zapmap, and releases them as official statistics in development. Treat them as a strong guide, not a census.

For list building, count operators, not chargers. The 121,171 chargers sound like a huge database, but they are reported by a much smaller group of companies, and inside each one a few people make the decisions.

A CPO-only list will be short, and that is fine. In a small market, go deep instead of wide: several decision-makers per operator, a longer sequence and more patience. Start from your own past customers and look for operators that resemble them, the same order as in how to choose a market before writing any outbound.

So write down the operators working in your region. If they fit on one page, plan for depth per account.

Who buys inside a charge point operator?

A CPO buys through a handful of people, and the titles shift with size. A small regional operator may have one person covering deployment and operations. A national operator splits the same work across several teams.

I never pick these titles from a lead tool because they sound senior. When my team builds a list for a client, I go through the client's past projects and find out who actually signed off the work. Then I target the titles that the niche really uses, never a bare "manager".

This is the buyer map to start from:

The person who replies first is usually the one who feels the problem. Deployment feels late sites. Operations feels broken chargers and a reliability figure that keeps slipping. Procurement arrives once somebody inside has already decided they want you.

In my campaigns, I always remove assistant, associate and generic manager titles. For this market, also leave out energy buying, grid connection, marketing, customer service and finance roles. Those people buy other things, and every message sent to them is a message not sent to a buyer.

Keep one buying role per offer. Civils and installation go to deployment first. Maintenance and monitoring go to operations first. Add delivery and procurement as second contacts at the same operator.

What does LEVI change for CPO suppliers?

LEVI is the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund. According to OZEV's LEVI funding page, it funds English councils to plan and build charging for people who cannot park off the street. It pays out as capital funding for delivery and capability funding for council staff, with capability funding levels listed for financial years 2022 to 2029.

The money goes to councils, which is why suppliers often misread the fund. In the government's June 2025 announcement, the government said English councils would sign contracts with charge point operators, backed by the £381 million LEVI Fund. Government and industry expect over 100,000 local chargepoints to follow.

The council secures the funding and picks an operator, and the operator then builds and runs chargers across that council's area. Three things follow for a supplier.

1. One council contract means many sites over several years, so the first job can open the door to a long run of work.
2. The winning operator needs installers, groundworks crews and electricians in that specific area, and then maintenance and payment support once sites go live.
3. The council stays the operator's partner in that area, so the operator has a real reason to care how its suppliers perform there.

The grant figures show how early this still is. As of 1 July 2026, LEVI had funded 1,268 EV charger installations, according to DfT's grant scheme statistics. Every public charging grant scheme together had funded 24,945 installations since 2017, a provisional estimate. Set the LEVI figure against the 100,000-plus local chargepoints expected, and most of the work has not been built yet.

So when a council in your area names its operator, that operator goes to the top of your list. Many of these pipelines are only now getting started: expect a conversation now and work later.

What do Public Charge Point Regulations force CPOs to buy?

The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 took effect on 24 November 2023. According to the official guidance on regulations for public charge points, the duties fall on the charge point operator, whether it owns the charge point or runs it for someone else. This is not legal advice.

Each duty below comes from that guidance and the detailed DfT guidance on the 2023 regulations, and each one creates something an operator has to buy or staff.

• Reliability. Rapid charge points (50kW and above) must be available 99% of the time, measured as an average across the operator's rapid network over the calendar year. A few broken rapid units drag the whole average down, which turns maintenance, remote monitoring, spare parts and fast field repairs into things an operator has to keep buying.
• Helpline. A free phone line with real people on it, every hour of every day of the year. Somebody answers the call, and somebody has to go and fix what the caller reports.
• Contactless payment. Every public charger rated 50kW or more, plus new installs from 8kW up, must take contactless cards, which means terminals and retrofits.
• Roaming. Every public charger must accept payment via an outside roaming provider, at minimum one, which means back-office software and integration work.
• Open data. Data shared through the Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI), a common data standard.
• Pricing. The total rate shown clearly in pence per kilowatt hour, which can mean display and software changes.
• Reporting. Regular reports to OPSS, the product safety regulator, and to OZEV, which means monitoring data the operator can stand behind.

The regulations also set out enforcement through information notices, compliance notices and civil penalties.

The commercial point is timing. These duties apply every day a charger is live, so demand does not stop when the build stops.

If you sell service, monitoring or payment hardware, open with the duty the operator is measured against, usually the 99% rapid figure. Name it in one line and move on. They know the law better than you do.

What do CPOs buy from suppliers in practice?

The table separates the work an operator buys from outside suppliers from the work that belongs to someone else or should never be your opening.

Your first offer is one row of this table, sent to the one role that owns it. Pitch seven rows at once and you become the "full EV services" menu in the last line.

How do you sell a meeting to a CPO without sounding generic?

My rule for every first message is the same: ask for a conversation and keep the service description for later. Pitching the full service in message one is the fastest way I have found to get ignored.

If a client is regional, I build the list around its own area, because people open up more easily to someone they know works nearby. For an installer or civils firm, location is the first thing to lead with. An operator rolling out sites under a council contract needs crews close to those streets.

Build the message around one trigger: a council area the operator just won, a new hub, a run of live sites near your depot, or the reliability duty. One line of context is enough. Write it short and human, the way you would write to someone you might meet on a site, never in a template voice.

A made-up example from an electrical contractor in Leeds to a head of deployment:

Subject: New sites around Leeds

Hi Sarah,

I saw your team is taking on more on-street sites in West Yorkshire. We are an electrical contractor based in Leeds, and our commissioning crews are within 30 minutes of most of that area.

If you are lining up local contractors for the next phase, would a 15-minute call next week help? I can show you two similar sites we finished nearby.

Tom

That message names a place, names a trigger, offers one piece of proof and makes one small ask. There is no service list, no company history and no explanation of the regulations.

If your first message would make sense sent to any operator in the country, rewrite it until it only makes sense for this one.

How should outbound sequence and timing work for this market?

In a small market, the first touch matters more than usual, because you cannot replace a burned contact with a fresh one. Start on LinkedIn and send email after, so the email comes from a name the person has already seen.

One or two messages will not do it. Plan at least 5 to 6 touchpoints across both channels. A shape that fits an operator contact:

1. LinkedIn connection request with a one-line local reason.
2. LinkedIn message after acceptance: the trigger and one question.
3. Email: the short message from the section above.
4. Email follow-up with a different piece of proof, such as your fault response time or a retrofit on a live site.
5. LinkedIn message asking about their next phase or their live-site coverage.
6. A final email that offers an easy yes or an easy "not now".

Leave real time between messages, and give each follow-up a fresh reason to exist, a new area or a new proof point, never "just checking in". The full sequence, touch by touch, is in follow-up touches that earn replies. Give every email an easy opt-out, and keep anyone who uses it on a permanent exclusion list.

For the first 30 days, count conversations started, not calls booked. Conversations with operators can begin inside that first month. Contracts follow the council and rollout calendar, which is why the LEVI section said to expect work later.

Do not judge a CPO sequence until every touch has gone out.

How do you qualify a CPO lead before you put it on the calendar?

A call goes on the calendar only after the conversation has shown a project, a region and a timeline. More on that in why a booked call means nothing until someone closes it.

Before you book, check that at least one of the first three is true, and that the last two are true as well:

• Active rollout: the operator has a council contract, a new hub or a site program in your area.
• Active operations: it already runs live sites near you that need service, repairs or retrofits.
• Active compliance pressure: it runs enough rapid points that the 99% average is a live concern for the operations team.
• Right person: your contact owns the budget for your category or can introduce you to the person who does.
• A window: a next phase, an expansion or a contract renewal is coming up.

Know when to stop chasing. A national operator with no sites within reach of your crews is not a lead yet. A procurement contact who only wants a catalogue for the file is not a meeting. An operator with nothing planned in your region for a year goes into the CRM with a reminder, not onto this month's calendar.

Trying to start conversations with charge point operators from a regional base? If you want to talk it through, book a call and I will look at your patch with you.