The Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) has been trying to contact dealers directly to pass on all the relevant information with regards plug-in car grant orders during the transition to new grant rates.
They have been emailing out every day the number of plug-in car grant orders that have been submitted against each category limit ( you can sign up on this page to receive the daily updates).
However, a number of dealers are not getting these emails. If this is the case, check your junk folders to see if the emails are in there. You might also want to contact your IT provider and ask if they can ‘whitelist’ Mailchimp, which is the service OLEV is using to send out the emails (info on how to do this here).
The same information set out in these emails will also be updated each day on this mailing list sign-up page. So, if you cannot get the emails, you can just bookmark this page (it will be updated each day by noon at the latest).
Key points
- As set out in the guidance, no orders for demonstrator vehicles will be eligible during the transition period. However, OLEV has been receiving (and deleting) a lot of demonstrator orders over the last few days.
- Leasing companies will need to provide final customer details for any orders submitted during the transition period. OLEV has seen a number of attempts to get around these by submitting these orders in different ways, for instance not submitting them as leased orders. OLEV will be considering further action to prevent abuse of this kind.
- OLEV will not be accepting any orders where a leasing company is listed as the final customer.
UPDATE
OLEV has communicated that they have nearly used up the plug-in orders available under the caps, so it is likely that we will be switching to new grant rates soon.
A few things you should be aware of:
- OLEV will be checking orders every day, and there is a possibility that grants could be lowered over the weekend. They will keep you up to date with orders over the weekend with their normal daily updates.
- Given the rate that new orders are being put on, it is possible that they may need to take a decision to lower the grant slightly before they have actually hit the order limit. Orders are currently going on so quickly, that OLEV says they risk a significant overspend between the time that the order limit is hit in the morning, and the new grant rates coming into effect after 23.59 that night.
- They will only take this decision if it seems very likely that they will hit the order limit that day. In this situation, they will follow the procedure set out in their transition guidance, i.e. send an email out before noon letting people know that grant rates will change after 23.59 that night.
Further guidance can be found on https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/plug-in-car-grant-changes-to-grant-level-november-2018/upcoming-changes-to-the-plug-in-car-grant or contact NFDA if you need any clarifications.
If you have any questions on any of the above, please contact Oliver Chadwick Oliver.Chadwick@Olev.gsi.gov.uk at OLEV.
