Editor’s note: This story was updated on 25 November, after the London mayor confirmed the ULEZ expansion.
Tens of thousands of drivers of modern and modern-classic cars face increased costs to drive in London, as Sadiq Khan, mayor of the capital, has announced he will expand the city’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone out across the suburbs, in some cases as far as the M25.
From August, 2023, owners of petrol cars which fail to meet Euro 4 emissions regulations, diesels which don’t match Euro 6 and two-wheelers that can’t pass Euro 3 tests will face a daily charge of £12.50 for driving anywhere within London.
City Hall claims that it will lead to a reduction of up to 40,000 of the worst polluting vehicles from the road, but, as Hagerty has reported previously, it will be classic car owners and those who simply can’t afford to trade up to a modern vehicle that will be hit hardest – at a time when the cost of living is higher than ever. Anyone living within the boundary will only be exampt from the charge if their meets emissions regulations.
When ULEZ, which currently covers the area inside the North and South Circular roads, was announced Transport for London provided a £2,000 scrappage scheme incentive for lower income drivers to get rid of their old cars. The new zone will be backed by a £110 million scrappage fund to help drivers living within the zone to switch to lower emission vehicles, with the detail still to be announced. Those travelling from outside the zone have been promised the option of a travelcard worth more than swapping a polluting vehicle for a cleaner one under the scrappage scheme.
According to The Times, the mayor said the extended zone is a “stepping stone” to cleaning up the city’s air pollution. He said the “ultimate destination” was a smart road user charging scheme, and said the best international example was Singapore, where drivers are charged based on the distance travelled.
To beat the new charge some of London’s modern classic drivers are already switching to older vehicles. Cars and bikes aged 40 or older can be granted “historic” status, making them exempt from the charge. Bentley Turbo R driver Luc Lucchesi previously told Hagerty: “I think I will change the Bentley for something older that’s exempt. I’m lucky that I can afford to do this, but a lot of people won’t be able to.”
With cars from the 1980s and 1990s falling foul of the rules another option for some may be to pick up a newer cult car, although given the rapid expansion of the ULEZ area and Khan’s determination to tackle air quality in London we can imagine the rules could soon be tightened further.
“The triple challenges of tackling toxic air pollution, the climate emergency and congestion mean we need to further reduce emissions from vehicles in London. We simply don’t have time to waste,” said the Mayor.
It’s also worth noting that where London leads other cities follow. Glasgow, Bath, Birmingham already have Clean Air Zones, with Aberdeen, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield all stating plans to introduce them in 2022. In time all of the UK’s urban drivers will surely be affected.
Read more
9 modern classic cars to beat the ULEZ charge
Government plans road pricing schemes as fuel revenue falls
Transport for London ULEZ website causes confusion for classic car owners
Vote Kahn out next time
just another nail in the coffin
If they want people out of their cars, improve public transport and drastically reduce the cost.
Just another way of shafting the working men and women
So that’s it is it? As the spineless nation that we are we’re just going to roll over and take it? Poor driver who lives say 100 yards inside the zone and travels outside the zone daily to go to work therefore NOT driving within it paying the daily charge! It is unfortunate that we moan and yet do nothing about it, me included.
“Cars and bikes aged 40 or older can be granted “historic” status, making them exempt from the charge.” yet I put my Triumph Stag’s details in the TfL vehicle checker and it claims I need to pay to use the existing ULEZ … is this right?
Public transport must be reliable, clean and safe. It must also run a full 24/7 service with no weekend reduction in service. But he will also have to contend with county councils as the M25 is not all in London !
Most if not all of the M25 in not in London, but in surrounding counties, I don’t think Mr Khan can assume he can extend his ulez scheme where wants, another flawed tax the motorist scheme, when he taxed all of us to extinction maybe he will start taxing bikes, pedestrians, horses as there are areas in side the M25 that have little or no public transport.
Who Voted Kahn in .worst mayor ever he is trying to destroy London
Please don’t use the expression “climate emergency” as if it’s true. There isn’t one.
Hi Lawrence, the term you object to was used in quoted text, so whatever your beliefs on the matter it is accurate to what is being quoted.
SO MANY OF US WILL HAVE TO PAY WHEN WE LEAVE OUR DRIVE WAY, DO WE SCRAP OUR CARS WHAT A WASTE, THIS MUST NEVER GO AHEAD,WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT THE MAYOR OF LONDON.
If you convert your car to run on LPG it will be excempt from any ULEZ charges.
For example for the last 8 years I have run a 4.0Ltr V8 Discovery 2 on LPG and had to pay nothing.
Getting a bit silly now, isn’t it… so cars get ever cleaner with 2030 targets etc and natural wastage will do this job. No doubt next its 10mph limits for EVs only and men with red flags in front. Oh, hold on, why don’t we all just move to Utopia. Anyone know why Londoners vote for this clown?
There is a saying which is sadly proving to be true and that is when people get scared the rich get greedy.
Fourteen months ago in the middle of the Covid epidemic this government dropped the bombshell that the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would be brought forward ten years to 2030. People were in such a panic over the aforementioned epidemic they had neither the heart or means to protest this. Here we are now in the grip of what is basically a war in Europe and the knock on effect of crippling fuel prices and rising costs of pretty much everything else we depend on and they take this wonderful opportunity to hit us with this. Will people protest?
I very much doubt it…and to quote Boris after his lot won the general election ” I promise I won’t let you down” ….
None of this has anything to do with “cleaning up the air”, it’s a further attempt to force people to take out crippling finance deals on new vehicles with the aim of benefiting the financial system.
These government decisions HAVE to be stopped in their tracks otherwise travel restrictions like this will multiply out to smaller towns in time with further drastic effects on people’s finances.
Run on LPG ? 🤨 I don’t think I’ll be converting any of my MB 107’s and sure as sugar won’t be bastardising my Maranello 348 to run on camping gas 😄😄😄😄😄
Its OK for for these politician’s to make up these money grabbing schemes they have plenty of it. We hard working tax paying people can not take anymore there is nothing left to give.you are destroying London wake up and smell the coffee people are broke and can take no-one.
Dear Mr Flourentzou,
If you have even one MB107 a 348 I believe that you hardly have to worry about a mere £12:50 a day & can afford an EV or compliant vehicle but if like many residents of our fine capital city you can only just afford say a 90’s Ford Focus to scratch a living then £62:50 a week is actually more than the road tax !
Thank you for the insight Robin and I can say that it’s a fair comment. I am now retired and my income is no where near what it was when I made my purchases. I am trying to hold on to things that I worked my butt off during my working life but at the rate of gas and petrol prices along with people like khan putting their hands in our pockets to replace funds they have mismanaged is not a pill I want to take. Also let’s take it to the extreme and say ok we will ALL pay this 12.50 it’ll be fine to use our cars will it? Because let’s face it it’s a cash thing more than anything.
Excuse me, Khan does not control Surrey (area) within the M25, we get no TFL/benefits like 60 bus passes, so he can sod off trying to increase his sphere of control that is not in ‘his’ Greater London area boroughs…..
It was H M Government who recommended buying diesel cars, What about compensation?
Mr Flourentzou, I am now agreeing with you.
London does NOT belong to Mr Khan it belongs to the people of this country (let’s be generous & call him a temporary caretaker) and just to emphasize on how alarming his ULEZ charges are the £12:50 per day x 7 days a week x 52 weeks for a year = £4,550 !!
Yes Mr Khan FOUR THOUSDAND FIVE HUNDRED and FIFTY POUNDS !!
Even Mr Flourentzou pays the DVLA a fraction of this 12 months road fund licence to travel the whole of the UK everyday if he wishes.
How can you justify this, it is extorsion, it is profiteering. (ps. where is this money going ?)
I not sure he is legally allowed to extend as such plans were not in his manifesto. If they were – he would not have been voted in. He is a deceitful politician and cannot be trusted.
This idiot has to go. So much for being labour, all he is doing is killing the working man. I think having an older well kept vehicle is far greening than creating a mountain of scrap metal and tearing deposits from the earth to make batteries that in 10 years time you cant get rid of. Short sighted.
I agree with everyone and there comments, it’s a mass tax on working class and the poor, I personally think everyone should stop driving, stop going to work all jump on benefits and see what happens to this rubbish government, no money for them what would they do, probably tax you for breathing next , its always the motorist that get exploited first , I remember when in 1989 when I passed my test that it was one of the most happiest times in my life, they soon put a stop to that for a lot of people, it’s all about the money and how far they can dip their hands in your pocket, daylight robbery its like getting robbed an insult to being English.
One other point; China and India the two biggest populations of the world, what are they doing, not a lot so why has our small country got to lead the world in climate change? We are all mugs for even suffering it in the first place, while the rich get richer the poor get poorer, nothing much changed there.
My rant for the day.
This has nothing to do with emissions. Its fine to buy a new 5.5l twin turbo mercedes that weighs 2.5tons and drive that just fine. But I can’t drive my 1989 escort van that i have owned and used for work for 15 years does 45mpg its manufacturing carbon footprint surpassed long ago and puts out far less harmful emissions than all of the new executive or prestige cars. I’m meant to scrap my van and buy a new transit for £20.000 that does 32mpg costs more to run and I can’t fix it myself. Its money grabbing from the people that need it the most. Utter madness and almost criminal
The the ulez zone in London failed to generate the money it was expecting to make. So expanding it to the greater London boroughs is need to boost the income needed for TFL it has nothing to do with toxic air. It’s just a tax wiping out classic cars and 90s classics you could still just about work on yourself with out plugging them into a computer which are built better as well. The classic car federation need to get a grip in this country! Also the cost of signage for expanding the London Ulez zone costing 8 million pounds. Such a waste of money.
It’s a shame that the mayor of London don’t show as much interest in knife crime than he does with cars my car is 9 years old
I now have to pay ulez charge can’t afford to buy a new car this just adds to the cost of living crisis
I have a bmw 640d grand cope 2015
Utf 🤬🤬🤬
I have an old ‘97 Toyota 4×4 pickup truck for my gardening business.
I bought it because it’s a good old workhorse and of course, it’s all I could afford!!!
I, along with thousands of others, simply CANNOT AFFORD a newer ULEZ compliant truck, van, or large car for this type of work, and electric vehicles don’t cut it. We also still don’t have the infrastructure in place to support them. It’s insane.
Furthermore, I can’t afford an expensive LPG conversion, and not even doing that necessarily exempts it from the regs.
There is no fair discretion.
Over 4 and a half grand a year just to roll a wheel on an old car every day? You have to be kidding me?!
And it doesn’t matter who gets the job of mayor, they all want to look “right on” and cool and wear the halo whilst strangling the livelihoods of the workers.
Can’t afford it? Oh dear you’re not wealthy enough? TOUGH.
Absolutely disgusting.
Rip off Britain. What a country.
I for one know I’ve worked bloody hard to put for the cars and van that I own, only to be told by some t**t that I’m gonna have to get rid of it all because he wants to make a change, (5.1bn made last year) which I can’t afford and will not be able to live or survive if I do!
I can see what there trying to do but we’re just a spot in the world compared to other countries which are not trying to sort this issue, so why does he feel to cripple our country. I will not be selling my cars or will I be paying fines.
Can take me to court for trying to survive..
What has this country become, we need to stand together, block shit up and not be controlled by this t**t.
Its rediculous I bought a new eco friendly diesel 20 quid a year road tax in 2014 on governments advice. I now have to scrap it and buy a car 10 years older to comply. If it were about emmissions it would be an outright ban not pay us 12 quid and pollute as much as you like. It’s just a revenue raising racket to AGAIN bail out our incompetent mayor.
The only toxic substance in London is Khan!!!
The poor and middle class people all ways hit rip off Britain
Do we really live in a democratic country!!??? WE SHOULD ALL HAVE A VOTE. Simple : yes I agree to be ripped off on a daily basis. OR no this is just a money making scam. dressed up as a clean air policy. LET US HAVE A SAY. VOTES CAN BE COUNTED!!! SADIQ SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO DICTATE TO HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. ALL WE WANT IS TO HAVE OUR SAY. GO TO WORK, PAY OUR BILLS, PUT FOOD ON TABLE, TIMES ARE SO TUFF ANOTHER MASSIVE BILL IS WRONG. IF THIS REALLY WAS ABOUT CLEANER WHY CAN THE RICH WHO CAN AFFORD TO PAY THIS TAX TO DRIVE STILL DRIVE WHAT EVER THEY WANT!!! IF YOU CAN PAY YOU CAN POLUTE AS MUCH AS YOU WANT.
I am in the last decade of my employable life. I have a car that I love and thought I would cherish to the end of my days. Now Khan is going to take it from me and give me nothing back. I live in Greater London and thought the ULEZ zone was done and dusted at the current zone, but that’s obviously not making enough money. Can he expand it again? I will never be able to acquire another vehicle to the level of what I have. I don’t understand who or what he thinks he is.
Not worried about fresh air just the money , hitting the car drivers as always !!
People should refuse to pay ulez and set up blockades at at lez junctions
Totally agree, it’s a tax to cover for TFL incompetence and greed.
It’s a mf tax on the workers.
It’s a one up for the rich and a boot for the poorer people.
It’s a two fingers from Gov to basic workers.
It’s a RIP off charge that’s doomed to failure.
It’s a disgusting theft of basic resources from the poor/hard working lower classes.
The ulez expansion and ulez in general is stealing the roads from ordinary people and giving it to the filthy rich.
The ulez is a clever trick to further one world government and steal your basic rights under a false premise of clean air.
All this whilst millions of highly toxic polluting leaf blowers , blow leaves around London every day.
Massive SUVs tear up the roads, intimidate pedestrians and honk their horns in indignation and entitlement whilst the rest of us are crushed under the Jack boot of capitalism fir the rich and communism fir the poor, whilst ordinary people struggle with their bag of carrots.
Doesn’t matter which political party, they serve the same masters.
Workers need to stand up for their rights and right to fair treatment, shove your 30k electric car.
This just doesn’t make sense to me. My son works at Heathrow airport (so just inside the M25). He has bought a 2nd hand diesel car for commuting, that does 70mpg and has half the carbon emmissions of his 3 year old petrol sports car which does 28mpg. Under these rules, his pertrol car will meet the ULEZ requirements and not have to pay, but his efficient and less poluting deisel will attract the £12.50 fine everyday becuause it was registered in 2009. Where is the logic here????
How can one man have this much clout people can’t afford new cars people will end up not being able to work and then claiming unemployed money
I’m a self employed plumber in my later years and have grandchildren all living with me my wife my daughter all my family are NHS workers low pay I mean low so how can this man sleep at night knowing he’s going to put district nurses on public transport with bags of dressings and still see 20 patients a day for less money than people claiming benefits its only pride that keeps those people working for such low pay so Khan if one of your friends or relatives need home visits god help you it’s not going to happen so please don’t go ahead with this madness and consider the cost to all life is hard enough
Basically, they don’t care about air quality. It is another massive revenue generator.
There’s going to be civil unrest if he try’s to put this threw
Ever the idiot Kahn. Los Angeles kept tightening the air regs to no effect. Finally proved its the filth from all the fast food joints and similar. Hello London!
The way to reduce pollution is to reduce the population. Unfortunately there are a lot of immigrants in London, who generally vote Labour and tend to have more than two children, which increases the population.
And to add insult to injury, another stupid scrappage scheme that will destroy more classic cars.
The way to stop it is if everyone refused to pay, but the sheeple will just grumble and roll over.
The only tiny silver lining is that a lot of modern classics will come onto the market at bargain prices, but I’m glad we moved 100 miles away.
You have no idea how upset I am at this dreadful decision. I am retired and look after grandchildren and run 2 allotments, I am surrounded by fields and woods. Where is the congestion in my area? I just cannot afford to buy a new car and will not even be able to carry out my duties as a grandmother all because this idiot of a mayor has no idea how the ordinanry people of this country live. We do not have bullet proof offices nor do we need them it is only the rich that don’t give a toss about the ordinary person that need protection from the decent hard working people of this country. That creature really needs to rethink this ridiculous situation he is going to ruin so many peoples lives its just so unfair and narrow minded.
I agree we just roll over and accept it the French stand up for themselves lets object all together
Also my car is 2014 and diesel so got to go its ridiculous
why are we all being made to do our bit with regard to pollution when you have richard branson and elon musk putting thousands of tons of pollution in the atmosphere every year with their rockets just for money and fun; people should put a stop to it rules are for everyone.
Why isn’t the government building a not for profit people’s eclectric car one we can afford?
Ere we go again! money money money to charge us all! With the way things are going that the cost of living increasing and mortgages having a big impact on our lives to keep a roof over us then this! I simply cannot afford a electric car even though I do not want one, simply cos I think its not doing a world any good of the batteries they contain. Going through the inner London when the congestion charge was introduced was bad enough throughout the week now the mayor wants to put a BIGGER impact on the situation by punishing more people?! ridiculous! Road tax, fuel prices and using adblue on some vehicles getting costly enough and this to happen? shops, companies and offices etc will have a big impact of giving up as its driving people away so buildings become more empty. People are giving up in the London boroughs and the government are just not doing anything just making our lives a misery. Get the atlas stone from the worlds strongest man and plonk the thing on the mayors head! We not living in a ‘Star Wars’ world of Landspeeder’s! nuf said.
I cannot believe this rotten to the core mayor he has racked thousands of miles for him and his cronies by jet travel (polluting all over OUR world) and has the audacity to think he can say and do what he likes we need more councils to join in this fight and just a word on asthma people nave always suffered from that and what about that poor girl who died from a peanut allergy on a plane did the stop putting peanuts in food -NO! We all need to urge our councils to fight against this or my suspicions is Sadique Khann is gunning for PM job. God forbid
the only solution yto ulez expansion is dont pay the fine.if they tow you its classed as car theft .does any body agree??????????
Is the east part of the M25 included in this proposed charge or NOT ??
I will be driving on the M25 to Folkestone in September from Sheffield to take the Shuttle train to Dover. Do I need to register/pay a fee/what? Can somebody please tell me what to do?
That’s a ridiculous bullying tactic. Motor vehicles only account for 3% of the world’s pollution. The biggest offender is heavy industry. And good luck getting them to comply. It’s astonishing how many fools there are out there that don’t know this is just a petty money grab against a scapegoat.