Older Cars and Vans Now Cost Drivers £780 Annually in Clean Air Zone Charges

• Van drivers now pay an average of £780 a year, or £65 a month, to drive into the UK’s expanding network of Clean Air Zones and Low Emission Zones, according to a Freedom of Information analysis.
• London and Tyneside charge the most, at up to £12.50 a day, pushing the annual bill for a non-compliant vehicle in London to almost £1,200.
• The 13 zones that responded to the Freedom of Information request have collected close to £1.5 billion in fees and penalty charges from launch to March 2026, with London’s ULEZ and LEZ alone raising £1.2 billion.

The Fourteen Zones Turning Postcodes Into Bills

Drivers of older, non-compliant vans now pay an average of £780 a year, or £65 a month, to enter the UK’s Clean Air Zones and Low Emission Zones, according to research commissioned by Peugeot using Freedom of Information requests sent to the councils that run them. In many of the same zones, private cars that fail to meet the emissions standard pay an identical daily rate, meaning the bill lands just as hard on a driver of an older petrol or diesel car doing the school run or the commute as it does on a tradesperson’s van.

Fourteen Zones and Counting

There are now 14 separate Low Emission Zones, Clean Air Zones or Zero Emission Zones operating across the UK, including London’s ULEZ and LEZ, seven English Clean Air Zones in Birmingham, Bath, Bristol, Bradford, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Tyneside, and four Scottish Low Emission Zones in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. Nine of these charge non-compliant vehicles a daily entry fee and issue penalty charge notices to drivers who fail to pay. London and Tyneside charge the most, at £12.50 a day, compared with £8 to £10 a day in most of the English regional zones.

The gap in cost between zones is stark. A non-compliant vehicle entering London daily faces close to £1,200 a year, while the same vehicle entering the Tyneside zone covering Newcastle and Gateshead pays £984 a year. Wales operates no Clean Air Zones at all, and Scotland’s four Low Emission Zones do not charge a daily fee, instead banning non-compliant vehicles outright and fining those that enter regardless, which keeps the average monthly cost for Scottish drivers lower at £39, well below the £65 UK average.

Where the Money Actually Goes

The Freedom of Information request that produced these figures covered 13 of the UK’s Clean Air Zones and Low Emission Zones, and found they have generated close to £1.5 billion in revenue between launch and March 2026. London’s ULEZ and LEZ account for the overwhelming majority of that figure, having raised about £1.2 billion between them after the ULEZ boundary was expanded across all London boroughs in 2023. Councils running Clean Air Zones must reinvest the surplus revenue in local transport and air quality measures rather than treat it as general income, though the scale of the money involved, and the pace at which it has grown as more zones have opened, has made Clean Air Zone income one of the largest and fastest growing sources of local authority transport revenue anywhere in the country.

A Bigger Bill Than Parking or Servicing

For van drivers, Clean Air Zone charges now cost more each year than parking, which averages £632 annually, and more than servicing and maintenance combined, which averages £715 a year. Only fuel costs more, at an average of £2,112 a year. Steve Wass, managing director of Peugeot UK, which commissioned the research, said the figures reflect the pressure facing anyone driving an older vehicle regularly into a covered city centre. “With rising fuel and living costs, our research highlights how much commercial van drivers face in terms of annual expenditure,” he said. “For those regularly driving into Clean Air Zones, the cost of running a non-compliant van can add up.”

The comparison counts for private car drivers too. A driver commuting daily into Birmingham, Bristol or Portsmouth in a car that fails the local emissions standard faces the same £8 to £9 a day whether they are driving a van for work or a family car for the school run, and five days a week of that charge adds up to a bill that rivals a typical annual servicing cost within a few months.

What Counts as Compliant

Petrol cars generally need to meet the Euro 4 emissions standard to avoid a charge, which in practice means most petrol cars registered from 2006 onward are exempt. Diesel cars face a tougher bar, needing to meet Euro 6, which generally means a registration date from September 2015 onward, so a driver with a diesel car from the early 2010s can be caught by a charge that an equivalent petrol car of the same age would avoid entirely. Vans and minibuses follow broadly the same Euro 6 diesel and Euro 4 petrol thresholds as cars in most zones, which is why van drivers running older diesel fleets have borne so much of the cost highlighted in the Freedom of Information figures. Motorcycles and mopeds are charged in London’s ULEZ but exempt from most of the regional English Clean Air Zones, and it is worth checking the specific rules for each zone individually rather than assuming the same standard applies everywhere. A vehicle bought as compliant in one city is not guaranteed to remain compliant everywhere else. Boundaries, exemption lists and standards are set locally rather than nationally, and a driver who relies on memory from one zone can be caught out the first time they drive into another.

How to Check If You’re Paying, and How to Avoid It

Drivers can check whether their specific vehicle is compliant, and which zones charge it, using the free postcode and registration checker on the gov.uk Clean Air Zones page, which covers every English zone, or the individual council websites for London’s ULEZ and the four Scottish Low Emission Zones. Non-payment carries its own separate cost on top of the daily charge. In London, a missed ULEZ or LEZ payment triggers a £180 penalty charge notice, reduced to £90 if paid within 14 days, issued automatically by camera enforcement rather than a warning letter. In Scotland’s Low Emission Zones, a camera-detected breach triggers a £60 penalty, halved to £30 for quick payment, and repeat breaches within the same zone increase the fine on each subsequent occasion.

The most reliable way to avoid the charges entirely is checking compliance before travelling into any of the 14 zones. Penalty notices are issued automatically and are not waived on the grounds that a driver was unaware their vehicle fell short of the standard.

Help That’s Available, and Where It’s Running Out

Boundary changes add another layer that drivers often miss. Several zones have expanded their coverage in the years after first launching, most visibly London’s ULEZ, which grew from a small central area to cover all 32 boroughs in 2023, catching drivers who had never previously needed to check compliance at all. A driver based well outside a boundary at launch can find themselves inside it entirely, without ever moving house or changing their commute. A driver whose regular route sat safely outside a zone boundary two or three years ago cannot assume that remains the case today, and the free postcode checkers on council and gov.uk websites take only a minute to confirm.

Councils running Clean Air Zones, including London and several of the English regional schemes, have historically offered scrappage or upgrade grants to help drivers of non-compliant cars, vans and motorcycles switch to a compliant vehicle rather than pay repeatedly. Eligibility and grant amounts vary considerably by scheme and household income, and several schemes have closed to new applicants as funding has run out, so drivers thinking about an upgrade should check current availability directly with their local authority rather than assume a scrappage payment is still on offer.

More zones are likely to appear rather than fewer. Several councils not currently covered by a Clean Air Zone are consulting on new schemes as air quality targets tighten, meaning a route that carries no charge today could carry one within a year or two. Drivers who regularly travel into cities without a zone at the moment are advised to check local authority transport pages every few months, especially if they are considering buying an older petrol or diesel vehicle for regular use in or near a city centre.

Sources:

• Motoring Research
• GOV.UK, Clean Air Zones
• Transport for London, Ultra Low Emission Zone