The full agenda — with receipts

The formal open sets the tone for two days of UK charging discourse — worth noting who Terrapinn positions on stage first, as it signals which stakeholder group (policy, OEM, CPO, fleet) the event is courting this cycle.

Opening remarks framing the event's narrative arc; the real value is in which tensions (public vs private funding, grid capacity, driver experience) get named upfront as the year's priorities.

ChargeUK is the industry's main lobbying voice, so its framing of 'economic impact' matters for how the sector argues its case to Treasury and DfT ahead of funding decisions. Anyone tracking policy support, business rates relief or ZEV mandate adjustments should watch what numbers Brennan puts on the table.

A former minister now chairing a freight decarbonisation body brings a macro-policy lens rather than operational detail — useful for gauging how Westminster thinking on infrastructure investment and industrial strategy is shifting, particularly for HGV/freight charging which lags behind passenger EV rollout.

Vestel is a hardware manufacturer, so 'electrification beyond the planet' likely reframes EV charging as a commercial/energy-resilience play rather than a sustainability one — relevant to anyone selling into fleets or utilities where ROI, not carbon, closes deals.

Local authority delivery has been the persistent bottleneck in UK charge point rollout — LEVI funding, planning delays and inconsistent local strategies mean this misalignment is costing coverage in rural and lower-income areas. With combined authorities, Cenex and EVA England represented, expect concrete friction points on funding flow and accountability, not just aspiration.

A structured networking slot hosted by a driver-advocacy body — its value is proportional to who shows up, so it's a read on whether industry and end-users are actually in the same room or talking past each other.

This is the core unresolved argument in UK charging: whether commercially-led rollout leaves gaps that only public investment can fill, especially outside high-traffic corridors. With a CPO, an OEM-adjacent manufacturer, Transport Scotland and an automotive marketplace all on stage, expect real disagreement on where subsidy should stop and enterprise should start.

V2G has been 'nearly there' for years — standards, tariff structures and vehicle warranty support remain the practical blockers. The session should be judged on whether it names specific regulatory or technical barriers rather than repeating the case for bidirectional charging in the abstract.

Arnold Clark is a major UK dealer group turned charging operator, giving this a rare vantage point from a company managing both vehicle sales and infrastructure economics. Practitioners should listen for what actually broke during scaling — permitting, grid connection lead times, or utilisation — rather than headline site counts.

Interoperability between home energy systems, smart tariffs and bidirectional charging is where consumer EV adoption stalls in practice — Octopus, Ohme and Zapmap each hold a piece of that puzzle. The test for this panel is whether it produces a shared standard or protocol view, or just parallel company pitches.

Fastned's high-power, motorway-corridor model is one of the few profitable European DC networks, making its UK expansion a useful benchmark for site economics and utilisation rates. Worth attending for hard numbers on what site format and power level actually gets used, not just built.

Regional rollout speed varies wildly across the UK, and operators need to know which local-authority/transport-body models actually reduce deployment friction rather than just look good on paper. The real question here is whether Midlands coordination mechanisms are genuinely transferable or dependent on local funding and political will that other regions lack.

Utility fleets can't take vehicles off the road for charging without risking service continuity, making this a hard infrastructure-planning problem rather than a policy one. Anyone managing depot capacity, grid connections or shift-based charging schedules for mission-critical fleets should be watching how UK Power Networks is solving for uptime versus charging windows.

Local authorities remain the bottleneck for planning permission, on-street charging and public procurement decisions that shape regional EV rollout pace. This is a chance for operators and installers to get direct access to the people controlling local deployment approvals.

V2X remains more discussed than deployed at scale, so real case studies matter more than concept slides for anyone evaluating whether to invest now or wait for standards to mature. Charging network operators need clarity on what V2X actually requires from hardware, tariffs and grid agreements before it becomes commercially viable.

Emergency fleets have zero tolerance for downtime, so their electrification experience is a stress test for what 'operational resilience' really means under EV constraints. Fleet managers in any high-demand sector should care about which failure points East Midlands Ambulance Service hit and how they were resolved.

Airports and transport hubs combine huge power demand, tight space constraints and high public visibility, making them a proving ground for grid capacity planning at scale. With Heathrow represented, expect insight into how major infrastructure owners are sequencing multi-year charging buildouts against grid connection timelines.

Charging infrastructure investment decisions increasingly hinge on regulatory signals and incentive design, not just technology readiness, so operators need to track where policy is heading before committing capital. This session should clarify what near-term regulatory or market shifts are actually on the table versus industry wishlist items.

V2G's commercial case depends on tariff structures and battery warranty terms that most drivers and installers still don't understand, and Octopus is one of the few UK players actively running consumer V2G products. Anyone assessing whether V2G is a near-term revenue opportunity or still a pilot-stage technology should pay attention to what's actually working in the field.

EVA England speaks directly for driver experience, making this a useful gauge of where consumer frustration with charging reliability, pricing and access currently sits. Expect the keynote to frame what drivers are actually asking industry to fix next.

Zapmap's usage data is one of the closest things the UK has to real-time visibility into charger reliability and driver behaviour, making this a credible read on where the confidence gap actually lies. Operators should listen for what Zapmap's data says is still driving anxiety versus what's already resolved.

With five perspectives spanning fleet, marketplace, consumer advocacy and campaign groups, this panel should surface where cost, infrastructure and trust barriers actually diverge by audience rather than treating 'consumers' as one group. The value here is in disagreement — where do these stakeholders differ on what's really blocking adoption.

AC charging decisions for home and business installs carry long-term cost and compatibility consequences, especially around OCPP interoperability and payment systems that are easy to get wrong upfront. This is a practical installer/spec-level session for anyone who needs to future-proof deployments rather than just meet today's requirements.

Autotrader sits on the largest UK used-car marketplace dataset, making its residual value and demand figures a genuine bellwether for the EV secondhand market — a segment CPOs and OEMs alike depend on for adoption momentum. The real question: has ICE-EV price parity actually arrived, or is it still being propped up by discounting and fleet churn? Anyone pricing charging infrastructure investment around future EV parc growth needs this data point.

Consumer Scotland's research function exists to flag where infrastructure rollout is failing specific consumer groups — rural, low-income, non-driveway households — before policy hardens around a one-size model. For charging professionals, this is a preview of the equity and access criteria likely to shape future public funding conditions and regulation. Expect the session to test whether current CPO deployment patterns actually match need, or just convenience.

Misalignment between national EV targets and local authority planning, grid capacity and permitting is one of the most cited causes of rollout delay in the UK. Highland Council's perspective matters because rural and dispersed authorities face fundamentally different economics and timelines than urban ones — a gap national policy rarely accounts for. The session should clarify what's actually blocking delivery: funding, resourcing, or genuine strategic disagreement.

Payment fragmentation remains one of the most persistent consumer complaints in UK charging, and roaming/interoperability failures directly undermine the government's own payment regulations intent. Paua's roaming infrastructure role puts them at the center of whether the industry can deliver a single seamless transaction experience or keeps patching networks together app by app. Worth watching for concrete progress versus continued aspiration.

eHGV adoption faces a harder infrastructure problem than passenger EVs — depot power capacity, charging duration versus duty cycles, and grid connection timelines are frequently the binding constraint, not vehicle availability. A fleet operator's live experience (The Swain Group) is more valuable here than modeling, since haulage economics don't forgive downtime. Anyone planning depot or corridor charging for freight should be listening for what actually broke and what fixed it.

Innovate UK funding decisions shape which charging and EV technologies get commercialized versus stall at pilot stage, making this a useful room for spotting what's coming through the innovation pipeline. Relevant for CPOs, hardware vendors and fleet technologists scouting partnerships or early signals on funded R&D directions.

This panel brings together the trade bodies (REA, BEAMA), consumer advocacy (EVA England), and a major CPO (Pod) — a lineup built to expose where policy ambition and delivery reality diverge. The stakes are concrete: planning reform, procurement standardisation and investment certainty all hinge on whether these frameworks get simpler or stay fragmented. Should surface where industry consensus exists versus where it's just talking past government.

Charging speed, reliability and next-gen hardware (Zaptec, Circontrol) remain the practical differentiators between charging networks as the market matures past pure coverage expansion. Including a fleet operator (East Midlands Ambulance Service) and an OEM engineer (Nissan) grounds the innovation talk in operational reality rather than vendor roadmap slides. Watch for how much of "future innovation" is near-term deployable versus still lab-stage.

On-street and kerbside charging is the unsolved problem for the roughly third of UK drivers without off-street parking — and it's where local authority procurement, kerb space politics and CPO economics collide hardest. Motability Foundation's presence signals accessibility is explicitly on the table, not an afterthought. The session should clarify who actually pays for scaling kerbside infrastructure and how councils are prioritising streets.

Sets the frame for day two — likely signaling which themes (freight, policy, consumer trust) the organisers see as most pressing right now.

FairCharge has been a vocal consumer-facing pressure group on charging reliability and pricing transparency, so this keynote likely pushes the industry toward accountability metrics rather than self-reported uptime stats. Relevant for CPOs and regulators alike given ongoing scrutiny over inconsistent reliability standards across networks. Expect a challenge on what "fair" actually means in enforceable terms, not just messaging.

Freight electrification is where infrastructure economics get hardest — depot power upgrades, charging windows against delivery schedules, and total cost of ownership are all still unproven at scale in the UK. This panel is notable for combining an operator (Tomsetts), an OEM (DAF) and infrastructure builders (Voltloader, Aegis Energy), so the discussion should move past pilot announcements to what's actually running today. Key question: what operational compromises were needed to make it work now, versus waiting for ideal grid and vehicle conditions.

HGV charging is the sector's next capital-intensive frontier: megawatt-scale bays and grid connections dwarf anything built for cars, and freight corridors have almost none. With GRIDSERVE, Milence and First Bus in the room, the real question is who pays for underused ultra-high-power hubs before fleet volumes justify them — CPOs, fleet operators, or grid operators taking the risk first.

Local authority partnerships remain the bottleneck for on-street charging in the UK, where most residents lack driveways. Believ's experience should clarify what actually slows procurement and permitting down — and whether recent LEVI-funded rollouts are changing the calculus for councils still stuck in pilot mode.

Public charging still costs multiples of home charging per mile, entrenching a two-tier EV market that penalises drivers without off-street parking. Energy Saving Trust should address whether pricing reform, VAT parity, or tariff innovation is the actual lever — because without one of these, affordability stays a policy talking point, not a fix.

Networked chargers and fleet telematics are now attack surfaces with real operational and safety consequences, as seen in incidents affecting emergency and public fleets. With Yorkshire Ambulance Service on the panel, this session should move past generic threat awareness into what resilience actually costs and who's liable when a charging network goes down.

Charging equity is where EV policy meets real exclusion risk — disabled drivers, rural communities and low-income households face physical and pricing barriers that pure market growth won't solve. Expect this panel to test whether accessible design and equitable pricing are being built in now, or retrofitted later at greater cost.

Zero-emission HGVs face the steepest cost and infrastructure gap in the entire EV transition, and the 2035 phase-out clock is already running. With the Road Haulage Association speaking for operators footing the bill, the session should clarify what funding and regulatory certainty hauliers actually need to commit capital now rather than wait.

Freight decarbonisation depends on operators, charge point providers and policymakers aligning on infrastructure standards before volumes scale — this is a working session for that alignment, not a briefing. Useful for anyone needing direct access to the freight-side stakeholders shaping route and depot charging decisions.

Cross-pavement gullies are a small technical fix with outsized policy friction — liability, accessibility law and inconsistent council rules have stalled what should be a straightforward solution for driveway-less residents. Coventry's experience matters because standardisation here could unlock a large share of stranded on-street charging demand nationally.

Truck charging isn't scaled-up car charging — power levels, dwell times and depot footprints are fundamentally different, and most current infrastructure planning still defaults to light-vehicle assumptions. GRIDSERVE's perspective should show whether purpose-built eHGV networks are actually being designed now or still competing for space and grid capacity with car charging.

Fleet operators are caught between depot charging economics and the operational need for on-route fast charging, with grid connection costs often the deciding constraint. First Bus's experience should offer a rare operator-side view of what infrastructure planning actually looks like once theory meets a real depot upgrade.

EV charging demand is now a grid planning problem as much as a transport one, and Energy UK sits at the center of how generation, network capacity and tariff design respond to it. The stakes here are whether the energy sector moves ahead of EV adoption curves or continues reacting to them, with knock-on effects for connection timelines across the whole charging industry.

National EV targets are only as fast as local grid capacity and council delivery allow, and this panel — spanning National Grid, local government and devolved transport bodies — sits exactly at that friction point. Expect the real subject to be where funding, planning permission and DNO connection timelines are actually breaking down, not just where they should improve.