The Frankston railway line does more than carry trains through Highett. It is also the municipal boundary: homes west of the line are in Bayside City Council, homes east of it are in the City of Kingston, and Bayside has the larger share. For EV charger installation Highett households, that line decides which planning scheme, tree rules and council forms apply, even though the electrical work on either side is identical.
Part of DUKE Electrical Group, DUKE EV works under Victorian REC 35838. Highett jobs are run from DUKE’s Beaumaris premises at 125 Charman Rd, roughly 3 km away as the crow flies. We fit chargers we supply or ones you already own, and sort out the board, the supply and any load management around them.
EV charger installation Highett: which side of the line are you on?
Roughly 58% of Highett by area sits in Bayside and 42% in Kingston, with the railway as the dividing line. Your rates notice confirms which. Three practical differences follow.
- Trees. Since 15 September 2025, Clause 52.37 of every Victorian planning scheme has required a permit to remove, destroy or lop an existing canopy tree (at least 5 metres tall with a canopy at least 4 metres across) in residential and mixed-use zones. On a lot with an existing house, that applies to boundary canopy trees, meaning those with a trunk within 6 metres of the narrowest street frontage or 4.5 metres of the rear boundary. Kingston also keeps a local law that can still apply, for example to a tree with a base circumference greater than 110 cm, and its protected trees page explains how the two now interact.
- Significant trees on the Kingston side. The Kingston Planning Scheme protects trees on its Register of Significant Trees (May 2007) through an Environmental Significance Overlay. The schedule only frees works outside a listed tree’s protection zone from its permit requirement, so a cable trench inside that zone is one to check with Council first.
- Heritage is rare here. Unlike Hampton or Sandringham, Highett has only a handful of Heritage Overlay places, among them the Highett railway station on Highett Road and “Rosa Lea” in Mary Avenue. Most Highett owners will not meet a heritage permit at all.
The distributors’ postcode locator lists Highett under United Energy, so the network paperwork is the same whichever council you are in.
Townhouses are the Highett default, so start at the switchboard
Townhouses and semi-detached houses made up 28.6% of Highett’s occupied homes at the 2021 Census, about double the Victorian rate of 13.9%, alongside 53.3% separate houses and 17.2% flats or apartments. Highett is also younger than its coastal neighbours, with a median age of 40, and it has fewer cars per household: 44.6% of households had one vehicle and only 9.8% had three or more.
That shapes the charger choice. By United Energy’s own estimate, a dedicated home charger takes eight to 12 hours to charge a modern EV, and a one-car townhouse plugging in each evening is rarely starting from empty. A 7 kW single-phase wall charger covers that comfortably, and it leaves more of a small switchboard free for everything else.
A townhouse charger is often the simplest job we do. When the switchboard is in the garage, the run from board to charger can be only a few metres. The constraint is usually space: a compact board can fill quickly once a heat pump, an induction cooktop and ducted cooling are on it. If there is no room for a new circuit with its own Type A or Type B RCD, a switchboard upgrade for your EV charger comes first.
Two things to check before you book. If your driveway is common property, the owners corporation needs to agree to any cable that crosses it. And Bayside’s planning scheme describes some Highett pockets as former industrial areas in transition to housing, where garages and car spaces are meant to sit at the rear or side of the building, so the car may be some distance from the board.
The structure plan: apartments along Bay Road and Graham Road
Planning for Highett changed significantly in 2026. Amendment GC246, gazetted on 1 July 2026, put the Cheltenham SRL East Structure Plan into both the Bayside and Kingston planning schemes. Bayside’s policy for the area encourages high housing growth along Bay Road and across a large part of the Highett Neighbourhood, a mid-rise urban neighbourhood along Graham Road, and apartments of low to middle height in the Highett and Pennydale neighbourhoods. Along Highett Road it encourages shops at street level with homes on the upper floors, the kind of mixed-use building where residents park in a shared car park. The amendment GC246 record lists the changes.
Two details matter for charging. The new Parking Overlay schedules require car parking plans to show any spaces allocated to electric vehicle charging, and their design standards ask car park layouts to allow for dedicated charging bays to be added. Separately, the National Construction Code makes new apartment car parks EV-ready: dedicated EV distribution boards and a control system to manage charging, with no obligation to fit chargers on day one. The former CSIRO site, which has its own development plan overlay aimed at integrated redevelopment and a range of housing types, will sit under the same building rules.
What EV-ready means in a new building
In practice the code asks for boards sized so 7 kW (32 A) Type 2 chargers can be added later, a charging control system that manages and schedules charging against the building’s overall consumption, and room on the DIN rail of each outgoing circuit for a future sub-meter. Apartment circuits also have to be able to put at least 12 kWh into a car between 11pm and 7am. When owners decide to fit chargers, most of the heavy lifting is already done.
Businesses are part of the plan too: the policy aims to strengthen the Bayside Business District, the Bay Road and Reserve Road employment area that takes in parts of Highett, Sandringham and Cheltenham. If you run a workshop, clinic or office there, our commercial EV charger installation service covers staff and customer charging.
Retrofitting chargers into an existing Highett block
Apartments built before the EV-ready rules need charging added after the fact. This is the order we follow with an owners corporation:
- Capacity study. Maximum demand on the building’s supply and main switchboard, so everyone knows what spare capacity exists.
- Options for the committee. A shared EV backbone with load management, or individual circuits from each lot, with the trade-offs set out plainly.
- The vote. A significant change to common property needs a special resolution, which is 75% of lot entitlements on a ballot or poll.
- Network steps. If the supply must grow, we apply to United Energy; its new and upgraded supplies page notes that premises needing 170 amps or more typically require a negotiated connection.
- Install, test and certify. A new or replacement main switchboard, or work on the parts of it that control the installation, is prescribed work, so an independent Licensed Electrical Inspector checks it before the power goes back on.
- Billing. An owners corporation can recover the electricity each car uses. The Essential Services Commission’s 2022 exemption order frees EV charging electricity sales from retail licensing, subject to a yearly report.
Our apartment and strata EV charging page covers the committee side in more depth.
Highett Station’s fast charger is a top-up, not a plan
Council’s public fast-charging program reached Highett in March 2025, when installation of a 50 kW DC fast charger was completed in one parking bay at Highett Station, 493 Highett Road, according to the council’s EV charger project page. It is handy before a long drive. Honestly, though, we would not build a weekday routine around a single shared bay.
If you rent a Highett townhouse, we only start fixed wiring once the owner has approved it in writing, so the station charger may be your fallback in the meantime. We can document the scope, the cable route and the switchboard work so your landlord has a clear proposal to consider, and our home EV charger installation page explains the charger options in plain terms.
Frequently asked questions: Highett chargers, councils and trees
Which council covers my side of Highett?
West of the Frankston railway line is Bayside City Council; east of it is the City of Kingston. Your rates notice confirms it. The electrical work is the same either way, but the planning scheme and tree rules we check are different.
Could a cable trench need a tree permit?
Possibly. Clause 52.37 can require a permit to remove or lop a big canopy tree within 6 metres of the narrowest street frontage or 4.5 metres of the rear boundary, and on the Kingston side a registered significant tree has a protection zone of its own. We plan cable routes around trees rather than through them wherever we can.
Our townhouse driveway is shared. Whose approval do we need?
If the cable stays inside your own lot, the decision is yours. If it crosses a common-property driveway or uses shared services, the owners corporation needs to approve the work first.
Will new Highett apartments come with chargers?
Not necessarily. New apartment car parks must be EV-ready, with dedicated distribution boards and a charging control system, but the chargers themselves can be added later. We fit them when owners are ready.
Is the network the same on both sides of the railway?
Yes. The distributors’ postcode locator lists Highett under United Energy. Any wall charger goes onto United Energy’s records through its myEnergy portal once a REC has installed it, and we look after that lodgement.
Wherever you are in Highett, a site visit sorts out the council, the switchboard and the cable route in one go. Phone 1300 003 853 from Monday to Saturday, 7am to 7pm, or book through our contact page, and our team will come up from Charman Road with a written quote. For more on the base our Highett electricians work from, see the Beaumaris EV charger installation page.