Birmingham, UK: Birmingham’s clean air zone comes into effect today but there will be no charges for the first two weeks.
Non-compliant HGVs will be charged £50 a day and vans £8 a day to drive through the city centre under the clean air zone rules.
The zone applies everywhere inside the A4540 Middleway Ring Road but not on the ring road itself. The vehicle standards for entering these clean air zones will be Euro VI for diesel and Euro IV for petrol.
Birmingham is one of a number of cities planning to introduce clean air zones after the government lost a high court battle over breaches to legal levels of air pollution in England and instructed 37 local authorities to take action.
The Road Haulage Association’s policy director Rod McKenzie said: “Far from being good news all round, Birmingham’s CAZ [clean air zone] will fine lorries £50 and make the city’s post pandemic recovery harder and slower – HGVs are essential for business. This is short-sighted politics.”
Birmingham City Council says: “The government has said that Birmingham needs a Clean Air Zone and that we need to reduce levels of NO2 in the air to a maximum average of 40μg/m3 as soon as possible. Once we reach that target, we want to continue to lower the amount of NO2 and particulate matter in the air as far as we can.”
