Why the UK’s EV charging market is entering its consolidation phase

The UK’s public EV charging market is still growing, with new chargers being added almost every day. That’s good news for consumers who rely on public charging to get around, but while the number of chargers continues to grow – the actual number of charging operators has been shrinking. 

In recent months, we’ve seen high profile exits from the public EV charging market. Whether it was Mer’s decision to exit the UK to focus on the Nordics and other European markets, or the collapse of Trojan Energy and subsequent acquisition by Connected Kerb, there’s been a growing trend of consolidation. That’s not to mention what’s going on in the wider EV charging space. 

So, what’s behind this growing consolidation? Well, we’ll examine exactly that in this article, as well as shine a spotlight on some of the more high profile changes as they happen. 

The land-grab phase is ending

For several years, the UK charge point operator market had the feel of a race for position. The logic was simple enough: secure sites, install assets, build a network, and wait for EV adoption to pull utilisation upwards.

That was not irrational. Public charging demand is still rising, and the UK network is materially larger than it was even two years ago. As of April 1, 2026, the Department for Transport recorded 119,080 public EV chargers in the UK, including 27,372 rated rapid or above. By the end of May, Zapmap counted 121,262 EV chargers across 46,664 locations.

But infrastructure markets have a habit of moving from enthusiasm to arithmetic. A charger only earns when it is used. A site only works if the lease, grid capacity, civil works, tariff structure, maintenance regime and customer experience line up. And a network only becomes investable if the operator can show that those moving parts can be repeated, measured and controlled.

That is what is now driving consolidation among UK CPOs. Not one single trigger, but a squeeze from several directions at once.

Growth is real, but it is not evenly useful

Headline charger growth can hide a more awkward point: not all chargers solve the same problem, and not all chargers create the same commercial profile.

The public network contains a mix of on-street, destination and en-route charging. DfT’s April 2026 statistics show 50% of public EV chargers were standard, 27% standard plus, 12% rapid and 11% ultra-rapid. That matters because the economics of a kerbside socket are very different from an ultra-rapid hub with grid reinforcement, multiple bays, canopies, payment terminals and a much heavier maintenance burden.

Rapid and ultra-rapid charging is where the market looks especially strategic. Zapmap’s May 2026 data shows 28,374 rapid or ultra-rapid EV chargers in the UK, with six networks accounting for 50% of that segment. MFG EV Power, Osprey and BP Pulse were the three largest by rapid and ultra-rapid market share at that point.

That concentration tells us something. High-power public charging increasingly rewards scale: better procurement terms, stronger grid and landlord negotiations, more sophisticated asset monitoring, and the ability to spread operations teams across a larger base.

For site owners, that changes the conversation. A CPO pitch is no longer just about who will fund the charger. It is about who can keep it working, keep pricing transparent, manage upgrades, report performance, handle customer support and remain solvent through the payback period.

EV demand is rising, but not neatly enough for every business plan

The UK is still moving towards electrification, but the demand curve has not been smooth. In 2025, SMMT recorded 473,348 new battery electric vehicle registrations, giving BEVs a 23.4% market share. That was growth, but still below the 28% ZEV mandate target for the year.

The early 2026 picture continued the same tension. SMMT reported that BEVs made up 23.1% of the new car market year to date by April 2026, against a 33% ZEV mandate requirement, and revised its 2026 BEV share forecast down from 28.5% to 26.8%.

For CPOs, this matters because many installations are built ahead of demand. That is the uncomfortable bit. If utilisation comes six, 12 or 24 months later than expected, the asset still has to be financed, maintained, connected, insured and supported. The grid bill does not wait for adoption curves to behave themselves.

That pressure is sharper for operators with a dispersed estate, weak sites, short leases, legacy hardware or limited access to capital. It is also why predictable demand – fleet depots, high-dwell retail, motorway-adjacent hubs, taxi corridors, logistics routes – is now more valuable than a large but patchy footprint.

Capital has become less patient

The public charging market was built partly on the assumption that infrastructure investors would tolerate years of low utilisation in exchange for long-term network value. Some still will. But capital is now more selective.

That selectivity is visible in recent deal activity. EDF completed the acquisition of the remaining shares in Pod Point in August 2025, taking the business private after already holding a 53% stake. In February 2026, Connected Kerb took over Trojan Energy’s charging assets after Trojan entered administration, including 1,500 live charge points and its Flat & Flush technology. Be.EV also acquired Mer’s UK public charging network, adding more than 1,600 charging bays across more than 450 sites.

Those deals are not identical. One is an energy major consolidating control. One is a distressed asset sale. One is a network expansion play. But together they show the same direction of travel: ownership is moving towards operators or backers with deeper balance sheets, clearer operational platforms and stronger appetite for integration.

The Guardian reported in February 2026 that UK charging companies were seeking buyers amid rising costs, intense competition and delayed government funding, with industry figures expecting the number of CPOs to shrink significantly. That is not a formal forecast, but it does capture the mood: this is now a market where scale is becoming a survival tool, not just a growth strategy.

Regulation is turning uptime into a hard operating discipline

The Public Charge Point Regulations are another consolidation driver, because they make poor operation harder to hide.

The regulations require rapid public charge points of 50 kW and above to be 99% reliable, measured as an average across each operator’s rapid network over the calendar year. They also require pricing transparency, contactless payment on relevant chargers, 24/7 staffed helplines, open data and roaming obligations.

This is where the market becomes very practical.

A small CPO can install good hardware and still struggle with 24/7 support, roaming integration, OCPI data quality, parts availability, field engineering response and accurate reporting. Larger operators are not automatically better – anyone who has stood in front of a dead rapid charger knows that scale is not magic – but they are more likely to have the systems, spares, telemetry and process discipline needed to treat reliability as an operational metric rather than a customer complaint.

For procurement teams, this changes the due diligence. Asking for uptime claims is not enough. The better question is: how is uptime measured, what is excluded, how are faults detected, what is the response time by fault type, and who sees the evidence?

Grid connections are separating serious sites from speculative ones

Consolidation is also being pushed by the grid interface.

The National Audit Office has warned that public chargepoint rollout is being hindered by the cost and time needed for planning permissions and electricity grid connections. It also noted that while the overall rollout was broadly on track, the Government still had to address location, accessibility and connection barriers.

The Public Accounts Committee made a similar point in March 2025. It said the rollout was gathering pace but remained uneven, with 43% of public charge points in London and the South East at the start of 2025, and warned that the Rapid Charging Fund had not issued any of its £950 million five years after launch.

For CPOs, the grid is not a background issue. It defines whether a site can support the intended charger mix, whether phased deployment makes sense, whether batteries or load management are needed, and whether the business case survives reinforcement costs.

This favours operators that can do more than install kit. The winners will be those that can assess capacity early, negotiate connection options, design for phased load growth, manage constraints, and avoid creating stranded assets because the electrical design was built around a spreadsheet rather than a real connection offer.

Where this goes wrong

The most common failure mode is treating consolidation as reassurance.

A larger CPO may bring financial strength, better systems and a national maintenance footprint. But for an estate owner, landlord or fleet operator, a bigger logo does not remove delivery risk. It just changes where the risk sits.

Projects still go wrong when the site host signs away too much control over layout, access, upgrade rights or data. They go wrong when the lease term does not match the asset life. They go wrong when the CPO owns the customer relationship but the site owner carries the reputational damage from broken chargers. They go wrong when commissioning evidence is thin, O&M responsibilities are vague, or the handover pack does not explain who is responsible for what after energisation.

The other failure mode is overbuilding ahead of demand without a credible utilisation plan. Public charging is not “build it and they will come” in every location. A retail park, depot-adjacent hub or motorway service area may have a clear demand case. A poorly visible car park with a weak connection and no dwell-time logic may simply become an expensive monument to optimism.

What good looks like

Good CPO consolidation should improve delivery, not just ownership charts.

For site hosts, that means fewer fragmented contracts, clearer service levels, better reporting and a stronger upgrade pathway. For specifiers and delivery teams, it should mean more standardised designs, more predictable commissioning evidence and fewer bespoke integrations that become a maintenance headache later.

For grid-facing teams, it should mean earlier capacity strategy. The best operators will not simply ask for the maximum connection and hope. They will model utilisation, phase deployment, consider load management, and design around real site constraints.

For users, the outcome should be boring in the best possible way: visible pricing, working payment, live availability data, chargers that initiate reliably, and support that answers when something fails.

That is the bar. Not a glossy network map. Working infrastructure.

Procurement checklist: questions to ask a consolidating CPO

Before signing a new or renewed CPO agreement, site owners and procurement teams should ask:

• What happens to existing chargers, tariffs, apps, roaming arrangements and maintenance contracts after acquisition?
• Who owns the grid connection, and who pays for reinforcement if utilisation grows?
• What reliability evidence is provided at charger, site and network level?
• Is 99% uptime reported using the regulatory method, or a separate internal definition?
• What is the field response model, including spares, technician coverage and escalation?
• Who controls pricing, bay management, signage, accessibility and customer support?
• What data does the site host receive, and in what format?
• What are the upgrade rights if charger power, payment systems or software need replacing?
• What happens if the CPO sells the asset, changes backend platform or exits the UK market?
• How is the site handed back at the end of the agreement?

What to watch next

The next phase of consolidation will probably not look like one dramatic wave. It is more likely to arrive in pieces: distressed sales, regional network acquisitions, energy-company takeovers, local authority contract transfers, and selective exits from weaker locations.

The key indicator will not be the number of CPO brands on a map. It will be whether fewer operators can deliver better reliability, better grid planning and better commercial discipline.

But remember, consolidation only matters if it changes delivery. If it produces better-funded, better-operated, more accountable charging infrastructure, it is a useful market correction. If it simply concentrates ownership while leaving poor commissioning, weak maintenance and opaque performance untouched, then the same problems will reappear under fewer logos.

The hard part of EV charging was never just putting equipment in the ground. It was making the whole chain work: grid connection, site design, procurement, commissioning, payment, data, maintenance and operational ownership.

That is why consolidation is happening. The market is discovering that CPOs are not software companies with some electrical kit attached. They are infrastructure operators. And infrastructure, eventually, demands discipline.