'Cash guzzling' councils push up parking prices with clean air charges

Petrol and diesel vehicles across the country are being hit with steep parking price rises as councils impose clean air levies to deter polluting vehicles.

One in five councils is now adding a surcharge onto parking tariffs and resident parking permits, including two-thirds of London boroughs.

The levies, reports The Guardian, are in addition to low emission zone penalties imposed on older vehicles.

The surcharges vary across the country, with some councils only targeting diesel-engined vehicles, others exempting Euro 6-compliant models, while many calculate liability according to CO2 emissions or engine size — this can lead to a dozen or more price bands for the same parking slot.

The parking surcharges are often not flagged on street signs or parking notices, despite potentially tripling the cost of a tariff. Drivers only discover them when they come to pay on a parking app.

The AA is now speaking out against the clean air surcharges, calling them a stealth tax that disproportionally affect poorer drivers.

“A ‘charge’ reasonably covers the cost of providing a service, plus some profit,” an AA spokesperson told The Guardian. “Anything above that is a ‘tax’ according to evidence submitted to parliament. Tying emissions to the cost of parking is cash-guzzling by councils.”

One Lambeth resident said the cost of a permit for his Euro 6-compliant diesel-engined car has risen by more than a third this year to £795. This is on top of it almost doubling back in 2023. The car's owner pinpointed that “it’s now impossible to predict what it will be in the coming years as the goalposts keep moving with no transition period.”

The Guardian adds that many emissions surcharges have been made possible by councils’ increasing use of apps as a payment method. Apps use a car’s registration number to discover its engine size and emissions status via a DVLA inquiry service. The resulting levy is added to the parking tariff at checkout.