Roam Charging Pays UK Businesses to Rip Out Their Old EV Chargers

UK charging operator Roam Charging is putting money on the table for businesses willing to scrap their old, non-compliant hardware. New customers signing a long-term lease or site agreement can claim up to £1,000 per qualifying charger — £500 for a single-socket unit and £1,000 for a dual-socket one.

The deal covers more than the cash. Roam removes the outgoing equipment, supplies its own OCPP-compliant chargers and carries out standard installation work at no charge. The old hardware doesn’t disappear into a skip either; it goes for recycling under waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) rules.

The offer in short: £500 per single-socket charger · £1,000 per dual-socket charger · replacement hardware and standard install at no cost · old units recycled under WEEE

Why an incentive, not just a sales pitch

Plenty of UK sites are running chargers that were state of the art a few years ago and now look their age. Faulty connectors, patchy uptime and software that no longer talks to modern back-end systems are common complaints. Ripping out a bank of posts and starting again is expensive — which is exactly the gap Roam is trying to close.

The company bundles monitoring, maintenance and support into a fully managed package, so site owners aren’t left troubleshooting their own infrastructure once the new units go in.

James Randall, Roam’s CEO, framed the problem in blunt terms: charging technology has moved fast, and a fair number of businesses, developments and destinations around the UK are now stuck with infrastructure that is non-compliant, aging or simply failing to deliver what drivers and operators expect.

What operators actually get out of it

• Cash back: up to £1,000 per qualifying dual-socket replacement
• New hardware: OCPP-compliant Roam chargers, supplied and installed at no cost
• Less admin: monitoring, maintenance and support handled by Roam
• Clean disposal: old units sent for WEEE-compliant recycling

The pitch is less about selling boxes and more about reliability. Aging hardware drags down uptime, and every failed charging session is a driver who may not come back. For a destination site — a hotel, retail park or workplace car park — that reputational hit can cost far more than the equipment itself.

Roam hasn’t disclosed how large the pot for the scheme is, or how long the offer will run. For operators already weighing a refresh, though, the incentive at least takes some of the sting out of the capital outlay.