Osprey Charging

Challenge

Backed by London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, Osprey Charging planned the deployment of Transport for London’s (TfL) first EV rapid charging hub. The installation, consisting of six 50kW rapid chargers at Stratford International Station car park, was designed with connectors compatible with every EV on the market. Charging is initiated with a smart app or contactless payment and is truly open access. The project opened up the realm of legislative issues facing us as a society as we ramp up our EV infrastructure.

BCLP Partner Mark Richards, EMEA Head of Energy, Environment & Infrastructure says the challenge is complex: “It’s a bundle of electricity regulatory issues and planning and property issues. It’s about value, protecting land-holders’ rights and the electricity regulation – it’s complex and ultimately if you don’t get it right you can face liability.”

The site is owned by HS1 (High Speed 1) and TfL contributed to the funding of the project. This presented two issues to the legal team - one of estates management and the other of dealing with a public-private financial deal.

From an estates management perspective, the charging infrastructure had to be delivered in a live and operational customer environment. It was also a physically complex and sensitive site, by the nature of it being a major UK transport terminal. This required legal contracts between three different parties (Osprey, HS1 and TfL).

Rebecca Moore, BCLP Senior Associate who handled the real estate side of the deal, said the very nature of the location threw up some interesting challenges. “HS1 and TfL as station operators have additional considerations when negotiating property transactions associated with their land ownership. They are operating the land as a railway station - their priority is the safety of passengers and the network. We also needed provision for more serious uncertainties and situations such as terrorist attacks that could result in lack of access to the charging hub or even bringing the agreement to an end. That’s quite difficult for a tenant who is spending money to install the rapid chargers and whose business model assumes it’s operating as normal during the term.”

Adding to the challenge, the charging infrastructure had to be delivered before the strict end-of-year deadline to meet the Mayor’s pledge of opening London’s first rapid EV charging hub by year-end.

Ian Johnston, CEO of Osprey, said: “Managing this uniquely complex public-private sector infrastructure project was a huge undertaking for BCLP. However, our experience with them was excellent. Their knowledge of the sector and unrivalled expertise gave us confidence that they could deliver this challenging brief in a timely and professional manner, allowing us to focus on delivering the world-class charging infrastructure demanded by the project.”

Result

BCLP acted for Osprey Charging not just as lawyers but as partners.

Kenneth explains that “What we’re trying to do is become partners for the long-term, understand the client’s business and act as if we’re on the journey with them, rather than doing each individual transaction. The energy landscape now offers lawyers far more opportunity to get involved in very interesting projects that have a multiplicity of skill sets. That’s really exciting”.

Mark concludes that BCLP’s size and breadth of knowledge can make the difference to both the speed and efficiency of roll out. “Our aim is to streamline that process so if clients are looking to negotiate ten sites, they’ll be fine doing that but they’ll start to struggle a little bit and ask their external law firms to help. Ideally if you’re looking to get multiple sites negotiated at the same time and streamlined, document efficiency and 21^st century lawyering is really important for future growth for our clients. We can help clients achieve rapid site acquisition and roll out, that’s critical in such a competitive industry where double-digit growth is standing still! Having this 21^st century legal solution provides a competitive advantage to our electric charging infrastructure clients, where rapid charge deployment is about efficiently documenting land, electricity supply and easement rights”.

Ian Johnston, CEO of Osprey, said: “The team at BCLP have been an extension of our own, able to adapt to numerous challenges and deliver outstanding results in very tight timescales. In such a rapidly moving industry where we are working on countless projects simultaneously, this type of relationship is critical. We’re excited to continue working with BCLP as we deliver on our commitment to install over 2,000 rapid EV chargers across the UK over the next four years, in response to burgeoning EV demand.”

Osprey’s Stratford hub opened ahead of schedule, in December 2019, and was TfL’s first rapid charging hub in London. Each charger delivers 100 miles driving range in just 35 minutes, providing a critical service to allow the Capital’s vehicle fleets to make the transition to electrification.

The project once again demonstrated that Osprey has the credentials to deliver innovative EV infrastructure projects for retail, corporate and public body partners, in environments that are complicated and sensitive, and that have no impact on the live, operational day-to-day business of the host – ensuring that the business can focus on their core services whilst Osprey open the doors to the many benefits of offering EV charging.