The price of pollution controls

DARREN is an LRM reader from north-west London. He got in touch with me in early May. His daily driver is a 2006 Defender 110 Td5 and he has what he tells me is ‘a modest little collection of late 4-door V8 Range Rover classics’. But he thinks he is going to have to get rid of the lot. Why? Because the London Ultra Low Emissions Zone is being massively extended this year and, as of October 25, Darren will find himself living inside the new boundary.

The extended ULEZ is a whopping 18 times the size of the current Central London emissions zone and will be bounded by the North and South Circular roads. That means it extends from Tottenham in the north to Clapham in the south, and from Woolwich in the east to the borders of Ealing in the west. Transport for London estimates it will include over 100,000 cars, 35,000 vans and 3,000 lorries. The AA has said that around 350,000 motorists will be affected.

Darren’s view is that none of us can honestly say we are opposed to measures designed to reduce air pollution in built-up areas, especially since Southwark Coroner’s Court found that it was a material factor in the tragic death of a nine-year-old London girl in 2013. I agree with Darren, and the ULEZ approach certainly works: tests have shown that toxic air pollution within the current zone in London has dropped by two-thirds since the scheme was launched just two years ago. But, as Darren said to me, it becomes much harder when the consequences of emissions controls have such a dramatic impact on your own hobbies and interests, to say nothing of your bank balance.

Unless your petrol Land Rover meets the Euro 4 emissions standards, or Euro 6 if you are diesel-powered, you will have to pay £12.50 per day to drive your vehicle within the zone, and that applies whether you live there or are just visiting, and that is every single day of the year with the exception of Christmas Day. If you used your non-compliant Land Rover every day that would set you back an eye-watering £4550 per year!

Put simply, if your petrol Land Rover was registered before 2006 or your diesel before September 2015 it will quite probably not meet the required standards, although the advice seems to be to check specifically whether your vehicle is compliant or not, rather than relying on these approximate dates.

What is clear is that the scale of the overall problem is huge. Nicholas Hellen wrote in The Times that a freedom of information request had revealed that 337,000 vehicles registered in the expanded London ULEZ breach the clean-air rules and will have to pay the daily fee. How many of these are Land Rovers is not specified, but there will be more than a few for sure. Either way, that’s an awful lot of cars to be sold over the next five months and no doubt most of them will be diesel models that are already declining in popularity. There must be a risk that supply outstrips demand for some models, and values will drop as a result.

Much has been made of the exemption that will apply to classic vehicles, but basically it only applies if they are 40 years old, although the good news is that the 40-year exemption is applied on a rolling basis, so if your Land Rover is 39 years old on October 25 this year it will become exempt next year.

Not that this is of much use to Darren, because he is one of the thousands of people whose vehicles are significantly younger than 40 years old but nevertheless too old to meet the emissions standards. Some of these vehicles will undoubtedly be just cheap transport rather than cherished vehicles, but they might be doing the daily commute, the weekly shop and running the kids about, and be owned by people who might not be able to afford a more modern and therefore emissions-compliant car. And paying an extra £12.50 a day will simply not be affordable. Some, like Darren’s 110 and his firstgeneration Range Rovers, will be much-loved classics.

There is increasing evidence that some vehicles are now pretty much unsellable in London, and owners who have decided to replace their older vehicles with something that meets the emissions tests are finding that they have to find a buyer outside the new London low emissions zone. I’m told there are now independent Land Rover dealers who are specialising in taking your non-compliant vehicle off your hands for resale well away from London, but I can’t say that I’ve come across any myself.

And if you’ve read this far and are thinking you don’t have anything to worry about because you don’t live in London, think again. Birmingham is introducing its clean-air zone in June, with Bristol and Portsmouth following in November. Manchester and Oxford are planning to impose emissions zones next year, while other cities that are believed to be in the advanced stages of planning include Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle. Places like Bath and Sheffield either have or are planning schemes that will not initially impact the private motorist, but it’s pretty clear where this is all going to end. It won’t be long before you won’t see many old Land Rovers in Britain’s inner cities.

“What is clear is that the scale of the overall problem is huge... Diesel models are already declining in popularity... There must be a risk that values will drop as a result"

Award-winning journalist Gary Pusey is co-author of Range Rover The First Fifty, trustee of The Dunsfold Collection and a lifelong Land Rover enthusiast. What this man doesn’t know, isn’t worth knowing!