Clean Air Zones Will Charge Drivers Until 2031, Four Years Later Than Promised

Drivers of older, higher-polluting cars were told the daily charges levied by Britain’s Clean Air Zones were a temporary fix, set to end once air quality targets were met. Parliament has now confirmed that promise is broken. New regulations approved by the House of Lords extend the legal basis for these zones from 31 March 2027 to 31 March 2031, four years later than drivers were originally told, and the fee that funds the system behind the scenes is doubling from 1 September 2026.

The change applies to the seven Clean Air Zones currently operating in England: Bath and North East Somerset, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Rotherham, and Tyneside. Drivers of non-compliant cars, vans, taxis, buses and lorries pay a daily charge to enter these zones, typically in the range of £8 to £10 a day for cars and vans and considerably more for heavier vehicles, depending on the city.

Why the Charging Period Is Being Extended

The Clean Air Zones Central Services (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 were debated in the House of Lords on 9 June 2026 and come into force on 1 September 2026. Transport minister Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill told peers the previous government’s own assumption, that zones would no longer be required by March 2027, has not held up.

“The previous Government were not able to achieve this, and it is now clear that in some areas compliance with these limits will not be achieved until the early 2030s,” Lord Hendy said in the debate, recorded in official Hansard transcripts. “Therefore, clean air zones will need to remain in place for longer than envisioned.”

Alongside the four-year extension, the fee that local authorities pay the government to run the “Drive in a clean air zone” central payment website, the system drivers use to check compliance and pay charges, rises from £2 to £4 per transaction. The government says this will lift cost recovery to around 90% of the scheme’s running costs, up from a fee that stayed at £2 for the whole six years of the service’s operation, dating back to its 2020 launch.

Councils Are Sitting on Multi-Million Pound Surpluses

The debate exposed an uncomfortable detail for a scheme that is legally required to avoid making a profit. Lord Hendy told peers that Bristol’s Clean Air Zone surplus has been running to “several millions per year,” and that the higher central services fee is expected to cut that surplus by around £400,000 in 2026-27, £1.2 million in 2027-28 and £1 million in 2028-29, still leaving the council in profit.

Clean Air Zones are meant to recover their costs, not generate income for councils. A scheme still banking millions in surplus after four extra years of charging drivers, while the government insists it is not a revenue-raising measure, is the kind of detail that rarely reaches the drivers actually paying the daily charge.

A regret amendment tabled by Lord Moylan argued the regulations risk pushing further costs onto motorists already facing high fuel bills and complained that peers were being asked to approve an extension to 2031 without firm assurances that charges to drivers would not rise as a result. The government’s position, set out in the same debate, is that local authorities have been told directly not to pass the increased central services fee on to drivers, and that any authority running a shortfall rather than a surplus will have the gap covered by the Treasury under new burdens rules.

How the Seven Zones Differ

Not every Clean Air Zone works the same way, and the daily charge you pay depends heavily on where you live and what you drive. Birmingham, Bath and Portsmouth run Class C or D zones that charge non-compliant cars, taxis and vans as well as buses, coaches and lorries. Bradford, Sheffield and Rotherham, and Tyneside charge commercial vehicles, taxis and buses but exempt private cars entirely, which means the burden of the extended charging period falls almost entirely on drivers who rely on a vehicle for work.

Compliance itself is based on engine emissions standards rather than the age of the car alone. Most diesel vehicles need to meet Euro 6 and most petrol vehicles need to meet Euro 4 to avoid a charge, standards that became mandatory on new vehicles at different points between 2005 and 2015 depending on vehicle type. A driver with an older but well-maintained diesel car bought in good faith years before these rules existed can still find themselves paying a daily fee every time they cross into one of these seven cities, now for four years longer than the government originally said they would need to.

What This Means If You Drive Into One of These Cities

The daily charge itself is not changing as a direct result of this instrument. What has changed is the expiry date. Drivers who assumed Bristol, Birmingham, Bradford or the other five zones would wind down by spring 2027 now need to plan for charges continuing until at least March 2031, and potentially beyond if compliance still is not reached by then.

The government’s own figures show the zones are doing what they were designed to do on air quality. Nitrogen dioxide concentrations fell by between 18% and 46% across the seven areas between 2019 and 2024, including around a third in Bristol, 40% in Bath and North East Somerset, and more than 40% in Tyneside. Ministers argue that exposure to air pollution is linked to between 29,000 and 43,000 shortened lives a year in the UK, and use that figure to justify keeping the zones running for longer.

How to Fight Back and Protect Yourself

Check whether your vehicle is compliant before you drive into any of the seven zones. Use the free vehicle checker on gov.uk to search by registration number rather than relying on the age or fuel type of your car as a rough guide. Compliance standards vary between zones and vehicle classes.

If you drive into these cities regularly for work, factor in charges running to 2031 rather than 2027 when deciding whether to upgrade or replace an older vehicle. Some cities offer local exemptions, discounts or scrappage support for residents and small businesses. Check your specific council’s clean air zone page directly. Eligibility rules differ between Birmingham, Bristol, Bradford, Sheffield, Portsmouth, Bath and Tyneside.

If you believe you have been charged incorrectly, each council operates its own penalty appeal process, and daily charges can be challenged through the same “Drive in a clean air zone” portal used to pay them. Keep evidence of your vehicle’s compliance status and any correspondence with the council if you intend to dispute a charge.

Residents in the affected cities can also make their views known before further changes are made. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has already told the government that future fee increases must come with clearer supporting evidence, a sign that this will not be the last time these charges come under scrutiny.

The Numbers That Did Not Add Up First Time

Part of why this extension caught peers off guard is that the original figures given to Parliament’s own scrutiny committee were wrong. Lord Hendy told the House of Lords he had written to the chair of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee to correct information his own department had submitted in May, before the fee increase was approved. He did not detail what the error was, only that the letter was needed to clarify the government’s estimates of how much money the fee increase would actually recover.

That correction came after six years in which the central services fee was never reviewed at all, running against the Scrutiny Committee’s own guidance that charges set out in legislation should be revisited regularly rather than left to build up into a single large jump. Drivers who assumed a fee held flat from 2020 to 2026 reflected careful, ongoing oversight of the scheme’s finances are, on the government’s own account, looking at a system that went unexamined for the better part of a decade before this year’s changes.

Sources:

• Clean Air Zones Central Services (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, House of Lords debate, 9 June 2026
• The Clean Air Zones Central Services (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, legislation.gov.uk