The UK government has a long-term strategy to reduce carbon and nitrogen dioxide levels in travel and improve air quality across the country – specifically in targeted hotspots, which include areas of Bradford city.

One of its weapons in this battle is to discourage and penalise the use of older, more polluting commercial vehicles. As a result, it has tasked some local authorities with introducing CAZs.

Some CAZs went live in 2021 (for example; Bath, Birmingham, Portsmouth and London’s extended Ultra Low Emissions Zone). More are scheduled to take effect later this year, including: Bristol, Greater Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Sheffield and Bradford.

The Bradford scheme will impact on the city’s population of over half a million people and its thousands of businesses. It will be a Class C CAZ, which will affect commercial vehicles – including buses, coaches, lorries, vans and taxis – but not privately-owned passenger cars.

The CAZ will cover the area inside (and including) the Bradford outer ring road and an area along the Aire Valley corridor to include Shipley and Saltaire.

It will operate 24/7, all year round, and will be enforced by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (APNR) cameras, which will record all vehicle movements in and out of the zone.

The minimum compliance requirement for diesel HGV engines will be Euro 6. Non-compliant HGVs will be charged £50 per day to travel in the zone.

If you don’t prepare for the change and mitigate against the daily charge, the financial impact on your business could be significant – yet more pressure on top of the double-whammy of Brexit and COVID-19, plus the economic effects of the forthcoming ban on red diesel in refrigerated transport, which comes into effect on 1st April.

If you’re operating older trucks into Bradford seven days a week, the new CAZ could cost you £18,250 per truck per year!