A Dutch VvE board member called his installer in June 2026 with an unexpected question: is our car park still compliant? The trigger was the European EPBD IV directive, which became part of Dutch building law on 29 May 2026 and requires existing car parks with more than twenty spaces to have at least one charging point per ten bays. At the same time, a resident had asked to install her own charger without a member vote, because a new notification scheme is about to make that possible. Both changes have immediate consequences for a residential car park.
Revtek · 7 July 2026
The EU's Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD IV) was incorporated into Dutch building regulations on 29 May 2026 via the Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving (Bbl). For car parks, the rules are specific: existing buildings with more than twenty spaces must now have at least one operational charging point per ten bays, plus cable conduits for fifty percent of the remaining spaces. For new builds and major renovations the threshold is lower: one charging point is required from three spaces upwards, with pre-wiring for half the bays and conduits for every individual space.
A residential complex with forty parking spaces now needs at least four charging points. A complex with two has to add more, whatever individual residents want to install themselves.
Municipalities check compliance through the environmental permit process for new construction and renovation. For existing buildings with no recent works the picture is less clear, but it is far better to map your current situation now than to act only when a permit application or inspection forces the question. RVO provides guidance on the Bbl requirements for those who want the detail.
Running in parallel is a legislative proposal specifically for Dutch homeowner associations (VvE's). Under the planned notification scheme, expected to come into force at the end of 2026 or on 1 January 2027, a resident who wants to install a charging point on their own parking space no longer needs a resolution from the members' general meeting (ALV). They notify the board, the board checks whether the installation meets the technical conditions, and provided it does, the work can proceed.
For residents this is welcome news. For boards it creates more administrative work, not less. Every notification must be assessed, any work plan evaluated, and all other owners informed. In a complex with thirty apartments where a dozen residents drive an EV, requests can arrive in quick succession. Managing that by email thread tends to break down fast.
Once a car park has several charging points, through EPBD compliance, resident notification requests or a shared project, the board has to decide who may charge where. There are fewer chargers than there is demand. A forty-unit complex might have eight or ten EV drivers today; that figure climbs year on year.
Without any system in place, things tend to go like this: resident A has a charger on bay 14. Resident B, also an EV driver but without their own charger, parks on bay 14 when resident A is away. Resident A complains to the board. The board has no record of who has charging access to which bay, and no way to enforce anything without physically going to the garage themselves.
This sounds manageable at small scale. At a complex with ten chargers and twenty EV drivers it becomes a weekly issue that fills the board's inbox.
An ANPR camera at the entrance to the charging zone resolves this without any human presence required. The system maintains a separate plate list for charging access. Only vehicles on that list are admitted to the charging zone; a petrol car, or an EV-driving resident who has not been assigned charging access, is directed by a barrier or bollard to a regular parking bay.
The board manages the list and the system enforces it. When a new resident registers an EV at move-in, the plate goes on the charging zone whitelist. When a resident moves out, the plate is removed automatically. For a long-stay guest you set an expiry date and access lapses on its own.
Every access event is logged with a timestamp. If there is a dispute about who occupied which bay and when, the dashboard shows the full record. No conflicting accounts, no manual patrols of the garage.
The technical setup, including integration with charging operators such as Zaptec and Alfen and time limits for EVs that finished charging hours ago, is covered in our separate article on combining ANPR with EV charging.
The notification scheme gives residents the right to request a charger on their own bay, but only where the building's electrical installation has the capacity to support it. If it does not, the board can lawfully defer or decline the request. That makes capacity planning something to settle before requests arrive.
Work out now how many amperes the building's connection allows, how many chargers it can run at once without an upgrade, and how you will prioritise if demand exceeds capacity, for example by request date or floor level. Put that policy in writing before the first notification arrives.
A grid operator or specialist installer can advise on the technical limits. This is not legal advice; for the governance rules specific to your VvE's articles of association it is worth consulting a VvE specialist.
An AC charging point with cabling costs indicatively €1,500 to €3,500 per unit, depending on the distance from the meter cupboard and the state of existing wiring. Grid upgrades, which older buildings often need, add further cost. A complex moving from two to eight chargers to meet EPBD IV requirements can quickly be looking at tens of thousands of euros in installation work alone.
Adding ANPR management costs little by comparison. The Revtek platform starts at €175 per month per location. Charging zone management is included in the standard platform, with plate lists, time-limit enforcement and WhatsApp notifications to residents.
The return on the management system is hard to quantify precisely, but the logic is straightforward: if you invest tens of thousands in charging infrastructure, you want it available to the people it was built for. For €175 a month, such a system prevents disputes over charging bays and spares the board a weekly stream of complaints.
For VvE boards thinking through their approach now: start with policy. Decide who gets charging access, under what conditions, and how you register it. The technology follows from those decisions. If you would rather have chargers, cabling, charging-zone management and per-resident billing delivered as one project, see our page on EV charging for apartment buildings. See also our residential complexes page for an overview of what Revtek does for apartment buildings.
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