It must be a slow news week in Northern Ireland – staff and politicians at the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont have been banned from using EV chargers at Parliament Buildings because it turned out they were dishing out electricity for free. 

Freedom of information requests by the BBC in Northern Ireland brought the situation to light, and MLAs (members of the legislative assembly) were criticised because they are able to claim travel expenses to get to Stormont and could still have been claiming mileage for an electric vehicle despite getting free charge on site. 

There’s not necessarily any indication that this has actually happened, and the six charge points have been available for any member of staff on site to book, though sources told the BBC that cars belonging to MLAs have been spotted charging on the plugs. 

The situation has become unusually controversial within the Assembly, with party spokespeople scrambling to clarify who within their parties drives electric vehicles and who doesn’t. The SDLP said that none of its MLAs run EVs, while the UUP’s Steve Aiken told a finance committee meeting that he has an electric car but can never book a space to charge. 

Assembly speaker Edwin Poots has called for MLAs and civil servants alike to pay for any electricity they might have got from the charge points, although the Assembly Commission that runs the site from day to day doesn’t maintain historical records of who has used the plugs. 

The firsts charging points were installed at Stormont in 2015, and a spokesperson for the Assembly said that the points were originally intended to be free to use in order to promote uptake of electric cars, but that a new system would be introduced. 

Free EV charging is often promoted by the UK government as a way to incentivise the take-up of electric vehicles – you don’t have to pay any benefit in kind on free electricity you’ve used for charging your car at work. 

Employers also have access to the government’s workplace charging scheme, which offers up to £500 per charge point to fund up to 75% of the cost of installation. 

Another thing the MLAs will have to watch out for is whether their electric vehicles have been bought on salary sacrifice schemes, which would then see them fall into the company car expenses bracket. 

Otherwise they can claim up to 10,000 miles tax free at 55p per mile according to HMRC rules, and the money isn’t just to cover fuel expenses, but other costs such as wear and tear and insurance, etc. 

Check out what mileage rates an EV driver can claim from work.