London ban on older cars cuts pollution

“Quite often I have to go with a bag of PPE (personal protective equipment),” he says. “So it’s not as easy as just saying I can ride a bike. Yet he supports the rules. “I’m all for it. I think we need to make some significant changes.

As the extension loomed, webuyanycar.com reports that there was a 57% increase in the number of London drivers selling their non-compliant cars to Ulez to the car buying service in September. Comparison site Carwow saw a similar increase. The picture is mixed, however, with Auto Trader, the UK’s largest car sales platform, reporting no influx of non-compliant cars.

More than 127,000 diesel cars are said to have left London between 2017 and 2020, with a subsidy program for low-income drivers sending more than 12,000 older cars to be scrapped.

Others, however, are pushed back to the Home Counties or further afield. “Many non-ULEZ vehicles are still needed across the country, so they tend to re-enter the market through the auto trade,” explains webuyanycar.com.

Anthony D’Silva, owner of the A&R Carriages dealership in Croydon – outside the emissions zone on the outskirts of London – says the market for non-Ulez cars is “quite buoyant” outside London. “We have delivered a lot to Cornwall, Bournemouth, Bristol,” he says.

For activists, this is a sign that restrictions must be tightened elsewhere if the UK is to reduce toxic air. “The national government should have been running this rather than the local authorities,” says Jemima Hartshorn, founder of Mums for Lungs, which avoids taking her children to the busy street of Brixton, London, amid concerns about pollution .