RBKC rejects all Jolt advertisment panels – and the Planning Inspectorate agrees

In November 2025, the Australian-based advertisment company Jolt Charge (stylised JOLT) submitted planning and advertisment board applications to the RBKC planning department for five of their very large double-sided advertisment panels, located on pavements.

The Jolt units resemble BT’s new “Street Hub” units in size and general appearance, but while the BT panels offer telefony and wifi capability as useful public addons, the “useful” component of the Jolt panel is an EV charging station.

The Kensington Society and others objected to the applications, and in May the RBKC planning department refused four of the five applications (the fifth application, althouigh submitted together with the other four, wasn’t formally registered until mid August this year).

The applicant appealed the four refusals, hoping that the Planning Inspectorate would be more understanding, but in October all four appeals were refused. And a few days later, the RBKC planning department refused the fifth application as well. If Jolt intends to appeal that refusal as well, is not yet known.

Explaning why he dismissed the appeals, the planning inspector wrote: “The appellant states that the proposals would contribute towards improving publicly available on-street electric vehicle infrastructure in line with the Framework and the Government’s EV Infrastructure Strategy. I have considered the various other public benefits put forward by the appellant in the main issues above, including the higher utilisation rates of the JOLT as compared to other public charging facilities.

Nonetheless, given the limited scale of the proposals, these benefits would be modest and there is no indication that they could not be achieved in a less harmful manner than proposed. Therefore, the above combined benefits would not be sufficient to outweigh the harm I have identified in this case.”

Barnet

Usually, Jolt tries to sign block agreements with councils, as their units not only occupy a piece of the pavement, but also require an existing parking space, often on the street. When Jolt did its first attempt to get a foothold on the UK market, in the autumn of 2023, they did such an agreement with the Brent council in northern London for some 40 units Today those 40 have increased to some 60. Brent also have some 2,000 slow public charge points on lamp posts or pollards.

Greenwich

And in December 2025, Jolt announced a deal with Greenwich council for 30 units. However, at the end of October 2026, only eight units have been applied for. Of those, one has been refused, five have been withdrawn, one has been approved and one is still undecided. So even if you have an agreement, it is obviously not plain sailing, when the agreement says that the units can be installed “pending planning application”.

Many seem to link electric cars to home charging, either in a family garage or via lamp posts chargers, and while home charging may be here to stay, slow lamp post charging just doesn’t solve the problem for those who do not have their own driveway, because there can never be enough lamp post chargers for all car housholds in a city like London.

This is why the number of dedicated EV stations is quickly increasing all across the country, including central London. The private market, lead by the traditional petrol station companies, are replacing petrol and diesel pumps with “rapid” or “ultra-rapid” charge stations.

The Jolt units may be faster than lamp post and home charging, but they can’t compete with “rapid” or “ultra-rapid” chargers. Already today, it seems that the Jolt chargers are seldom used, and in 5-10 years’ time they are likely to only provide advertising space…