Open Bay Open bidding for land and car parks

We work for landowners, not operators

Your land, surveyed.

Car park, yard or empty plot. Answer a short set of questions and get a viability assessment, a read on the charging already around you, and your network operator's details. Then open the bay to the market and let operators bid against each other for it.

Takes 5 minutes Free to publish We're paid by the winning operator
Site plan · previewAwaiting survey
Standard bay Charging bay Supply route

The survey

Tell us about the land

Estimates are fine. Where you don't know something, say so — an honest unknown is more useful than a guess, and we'll flag it as something to resolve before you go to market.

Where is the site?

A postcode lets us find your network operator and scan the charging already installed nearby. Both change what your site is worth.

The outward part is enough — EH12 or CF10 1AA both work.

Enter a UK postcode, or switch to picking a network area.

Your distribution network operator

We'll fill this in automatically from the postcode where we can. Adjust it if you know better — you can check on Open Charge Map.

What are we looking at?

This sets the baseline demand assumption an operator will use.

Enter the approximate number of bays on site.

Bays you'd accept losing to EV-only use.

Enter how many bays you'd release.

How do you hold the land?

Operators funding the kit want certainty they can keep it there for the life of the asset.

How long does a typical visitor stay?

Dwell time is the single biggest factor in what kind of charger belongs here.

When can drivers get in?

Chargers earn overnight. Barriers and gates cut utilisation hard.

Do you know how much spare electrical capacity the site has?

Check your incoming supply rating, or ask your network operator for a budget estimate. Some operators now charge a small fee for this — it is still the cheapest thing you will do on this project.

Apply here
Does anything below apply to the site?

Tick everything that's true. These don't usually stop a scheme, but they change who carries the cost and the delay.

Is there anything charging on the site already?
Section 1 of 5

Assessment

Viability score / 100

Indicative layout
Standard bay Charging bay Supply route

Indicative only. Bay positions, unit siting and cable routes need a physical survey.

What to resolve

Findings

Each of these changes what a deal looks like. Work through the red and amber items before you publish — they are much harder to fix afterwards.

Three routes

How the deal can be structured

Every bid you receive will be a version of one of these. The differences are who funds the kit, who owns it, and who takes the risk that it doesn't get used.

Best fit for this site

Fully funded concession

An operator pays for everything and runs the site. You grant rights over the bays and take a share of what the chargers earn.

Capital cost
Operator
Owns the kit
Operator
Your income
Revenue share
Your risk
Low
Your control
Limited
Typical term
15–20 years

Indicative: 5–12% of net charging revenue, sometimes with a small minimum guarantee per bay.

Best fit for this site

Land lease

You lease the bays to an operator for a fixed rent. They keep the charging revenue and carry the utilisation risk entirely.

Capital cost
Operator
Owns the kit
Operator
Your income
Fixed rent
Your risk
Very low
Your control
Limited
Typical term
15–25 years

Indicative: £500–£2,000 per AC bay per year, £2,000–£6,000 per rapid bay, index linked.

Best fit for this site

Own and operate

You fund the installation and appoint an operator to run the back office and maintenance for a fee. You keep the revenue.

Capital cost
You
Owns the kit
You
Your income
All of it, less fees
Your risk
High
Your control
Full
Typical term
3–5 year service deal

Indicative capex: £2k–£8k per AC socket, £25k–£60k per rapid, plus connection works.

Figures are broad UK market ranges for orientation, not quotes. What you actually get turns on traffic, connection cost and how many operators you run in competition with each other.

What operators do with sites like yours

Three scheme sizes, three very different deals

Charge point operators price by scheme size, not by how much they like your site. These are the three bands most sites fall into, and what a landowner typically ends up with in each.

Composite examples drawn from typical UK schemes, anonymised. Deal terms vary widely between operators on identical sites — which is the whole reason to run a competition.

The contract

Twelve terms that decide whether this was a good deal

Every bid on our portal has to answer these. Heads of terms look short and friendly; this is where the value actually sits.

Leaving an incumbent

Moving off an existing arrangement

Why use a broker

You'll do this once. They do it every week.

An operator's development manager has negotiated a hundred of these agreements. You are negotiating your first. That asymmetry is the product they're selling, and it is the whole reason we exist.

01

You'd see one offer. We run all of them.

Sites approached by a single operator take that operator's terms. We put the same brief to a panel and make them compete. The spread on identical sites is routinely wide enough to pay for itself many times over.

02

Bids arrive in one format

Operators bid against a fixed schedule of terms — share, floor, term, exclusivity scope, uptime, rates, reinstatement. No more comparing three PDFs that answer three different questions.

03

We handle the exit from your incumbent

Legacy contracts, unclear asset ownership and grant clawback conditions are where most site owners get stuck. Untangling that before you go to market is what makes your site sellable.

04

We speak network operator

Capacity applications, budget estimates, reinforcement costs and connection queues. We know how to frame the application so the answer that comes back is useful rather than a flat refusal.

05

We hold them to heads of terms

The gap between what's agreed in a meeting and what appears in the draft agreement is where value quietly disappears. We read the redlines and we keep a list.

06

If it doesn't stack up, we say so

Some sites shouldn't have chargers on them yet. We'd rather tell you that on a consult than take you through six months of process to arrive at the same place.

How we're paid, in full

The survey, the consult and publishing a listing are free to you. There is no fee to a landowner at any stage, and no charge if you decide not to proceed or take a bid off-platform.

We're paid a success fee by the operator whose bid you accept. That is the honest tension in this model, and you should know about it: a broker paid on completion has some incentive for a deal to happen. Two things hold that in check — we publish the fee we charge operators, and it is the same percentage from every operator on the panel, so we have nothing to gain from steering you towards one bidder over another.

If a consult concludes your site isn't ready, we'll tell you what would need to change and you owe us nothing. That happens often enough that it's worth saying plainly.

Next step

Two ways to take this forward

Both are free. If your site is straightforward, publishing directly is quicker. If there's an incumbent to untangle or the assessment threw up blockers, a consult first will save you time.

Book a consult

Tell us when suits and what you'd most like to get out of it. We'll come back within one working day with a time.

We need a name to put in the diary.

Enter an email address we can reply to.

Optional, but it makes the call more useful. The survey results come through automatically.

Consult requested

Your reference is

Publish to the bid portal

This is exactly what operators will see. Your name, address and contact details are not included — they stay private until you choose to release them to a bidder.

Listing preview · what operators seeReference pending

Withheld until you release it: exact address, your name, contact details, and anything you write in the notes field below.

We need a name for the listing record.

Enter an email address so we can send you the bids.

Who should be able to bid?
How long should bidding stay open?

Shorter windows create urgency. Longer ones get more bids, particularly from operators who need internal sign-off.

Sent

Listing published

Your reference is

What happens next

Day 0

We check it over

A human reads every listing before it goes live. If something looks wrong or thin, we come back to you rather than publishing it.

Day 1–2

Operators are notified

Panel members matching your region and scheme size get alerted. They can register interest or pass.

To close

Bids come in

Each bid answers the same schedule of terms. You see them as they arrive, side by side.

After close

You choose, or don't

We talk the bids through with you. Accept one, negotiate, or walk away — all three are fine and none of them cost you anything.

How bids come back

Illustrative example. Every operator answers the same questions, so the comparison is genuinely like for like — which is where most of the value in running a process actually comes from.

TermOperator AOperator BOperator C
StructureConcessionConcessionLand lease
Headline8% of net11% of net£3,200 per bay p.a.
Minimum guarantee£500 per bay p.a.Nonen/a — fixed rent
Term15 years25 years20 years, RPI-linked
ExclusivityBays in use onlyWhole siteBays plus first refusal
Connection overrunOperator bearsShared above £40kOperator bears
Uptime commitment98%, credits applyReasonable endeavours97%, credits apply
Business ratesOperatorLandownerOperator
ReinstatementFull, at operator costUnits removed onlyFull, at operator cost

Operator B has the biggest headline number and by some distance the worst deal. That gap is the reason this exists.

Your brief

Or do it entirely yourself

No obligation to use us at all. Below is your site written up the way an operator's development team reads it. Send the same brief to three of them and ask each to price against it.

Copied

Ask every operator the same five questions

Compare the answers side by side rather than reading each proposal on its own terms.

  1. What revenue share or rent, and on gross or net revenue?
  2. Who pays if the connection quote comes back higher than expected?
  3. What happens if the site underperforms — can I get the bays back?
  4. What uptime do you commit to, and what's the remedy if you miss it?
  5. Who carries the business rates on the chargepoints?

Get all of it in writing at heads of terms stage. Anything agreed verbally and left out of the document did not happen.