Some vehicles set to be exempt from clean air zone in Portsmouth

Portsmouth City Council is set to consider some of the finer details of its chargeable clean air zone for the south west of the city, including sparing emergency vehicles and specialist heavy vehicles, such as cranes, from costs.

It is also proposed wheelchair-accessible taxis and private hire vehicles will be exempt for the first six months, and community and school buses will be excluded for two years - to give drivers time to make the vehicles compliant.

The council's environment boss, Councillor Dave Ashmore, said: 'What we have said all along is that we don't want to place the burden of this on people who can least afford it.

'A lot of wheelchair users can only get about by taxi and it would be very unfair to say “your fare is going to have to go up”. Our licensing team is working with taxi drivers on this.

'There's a fund from government to help people retrofit or upgrade to become complaint.

'The clean air zone is part of a government initiative to clean our air up. Obviously air pollution is a public health concern and also the council has also worked to retrofit buses, run trials for cycle lanes and encourage children to walk to school with walk to school champions.'

Under the government-imposed scheme only non-compliant buses, coaches, taxis and lorries - petrol vehicles older than 2006 and diesel vehicles older than 2015 - will have to pay. Non-compliant mini-buses and vans could also be included.

A Portsmouth taxi driver, who has worked in the city for more than 40 years, said drivers were ‘happy’ about the six-month exemption.

However, he said: ‘We believe in general taxi and private hire vehicle drivers are being unfairly penalised.

‘We are not the main contributors to bad air quality in this city. There are a lot of old vehicles driving around that are worse, and a lot of old delivery vehicles.

‘We all want clean air - hand on heart - but I think the taxis are being penalised. The taxi trade has been decimated this year, so this has come at a really bad time.’

Vehicle owners will have to apply to the council for the grace period.

It is not known yet how much the daily charge for the clean air zone will be.

As previously reported it is thought the zone will cost £25m to run - which will be covered by government - until air quality levels in the city reach compliant levels.

Councillors will consider the zone exemptions during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, December 1.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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