Tuesday February 10th 2026
Home owner argues area outside his Pathhead home is used for parking and should have an EV charger.
Scottish Ministers have stepped into a row over a Midlothian homeowner wanting to charge his electric car on private land in front of his home.
The householder was given the go ahead by councillors to install an EV charger on the side of his house on Pathhead Main Street despite Transport Scotland insisting the land was part of the public footpath.
Now Scottish Ministers have written to Midlothian Council confirming they are now considering whether to call in the application and take the decision out of the elected members’ hands.
In a letter to the council on behalf of the Ministers, they have been told that a decision will be made within the next month over whether they require the planning application to be referred to them.
Earlier this month councillors overturned a decision by their planning officers to refuse permission for the charger as making ‘no sense’.
They were told that the land in front of the house was once the front garden of it and other homes on the street but was covered in tarmac and adopted as part of the public highway a number of years ago.
Ownership still remains with the householders who have used the area to park their cars without any objections raised yet when one applied to put an EV charger on their property to charge their parked car Transport Scotland intervened.
They told the council they were concerned it would lead to the charger cable being stretched over the pavement creating a hazard for pedestrians.
During a meeting of the council’s Local Review Body Councillor Willie McEwan said he had never come across a situation where the owner of a house, who was trying to meet government standards with an electric car, was being blocked by Transport Scotland.
He said: “We can quite clearly see there is no way this owner is encroaching on the footpath, it doesn’t make sense to me that we are here contemplating perhaps a refusal of planning.
“He is doing his best to conform to our policy, government and national policy yet we are minded to question his integrity and what he is doing on his own land.”
Councillor Dianne Alexander raised concerns that there was no clarity over whether parking outside the house was legal or not and what would happen if the charger cable was tripped over by a pedestrian using the land as part of the footpath.
And Councillor Peter Smaill added: “Transport Scotland have been allowing cars to park on this land for many years.”
The council’s planning chief Peter Arnsdorf warned members warned members a decision to allow the charger to be installed would need to be referred back to Transport Scotland.
He said: “Whether we think it is right, wrong or common sense, the land is part of the public highway. The ownership of it is a secondary issue to that.”
Tweet Share on Facebook
