The number of people who have applied for financial help to switch vehicles ahead of the introduction of the Clean Air Zone is only a few thousand - even though almost 100,000 drivers will have to pay the charges that are introduced on Monday.
Bristol City Council has revealed the scale of exemptions and applications for financial support, and they reveal that only a small proportion of people affected by the Clean Air Zone have asked for financial help or for an exemption.
There are various schemes available from the council as part of a £42 million package, with loans to help people buy new vehicles. But critics of the schemes say they don’t go far enough, don’t provide enough support to get a new scheme and the loan scheme on offer is too restrictive an onerous to be a viable option.
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Figures released by Bristol City Council to Bristol Live reveal the numbers of people potentially affected by the Clean Air Zone, and the numbers of people who have asked to be exempt or asked for financial assistance.
Over the course of three weeks in September, the council tested the cameras and systems. Drivers of the most polluting vehicles that are non-compliant with the Clean Air Zone were captured on the new CAZ cameras driving into the zone and they received a letter in the post weeks later warning them that if they made the same journey again they would have to pay a charge, or be fined.
Bristol Live has previously revealed that over the course of those three weeks, around 95,000 drivers received those letters. Because individual motorists only received one letter regardless of how many times in that three-week September period they drove into the CAZ, the total number of vehicle journeys that would be affected by the CAZ is certain to be much higher. But Bristol City Council has now confirmed that - up to November 14 - it had received only 2,107 applications for financial support for drivers wanting to change their car to one that complies with the CAZ emission levels.
The council has also confirmed that it has received a total of 2,143 applications from the owners of LGV vans and small trucks for financial support, and 130 from business owners wanting to upgrade their HGVs, and three applications involving buses. There have also been 76 applications from the drivers of taxis or Hackney cabs, and 124 from the drivers of private hire vehicles.
Bristol City Council told Bristol Live it was unable, at this stage, to confirm how many of those applications - 4,583 in total up until November 14 - had actually been successful, because the final figures from the finance companies which would be loaning drivers the money to change their vehicles had not been completed yet. As well as the financial support on offer, Bristol City Council has a range of exemptions for people who can plead the case that they need their vehicle to be exempted from the CAZ charges.
In December last year, Bristol mayor Marvin Rees said the council had finalised the financial packages available to people who need to change their older, more polluting vehicles, and want to apply for help to do so.
The mayor said drivers of private cars who are residents of Bristol could be eligible for a grant of around £2,000 as part of the scheme, with an option of a top-up loan of £5,000 per vehicle. Businesses who have vehicles that will also fall foul of the CAZ charges will be eligible for the same grants and loans as residents - a grant of £2,000 with an extra loan option of £5,000 per vehicle.
Hackney taxi drivers will get even higher grants and loans. Many have already converted to either Euro 6 diesel or electric vehicles, but the ones who do still need to change their vehicle or face charges every day, will get up to £4,000 as a grant and up to £9,000 as a loan to contribute towards the costs of a new vehicle.
As of November 14, the council has accepted 242 applications for a daily blue badge for disabled drivers, but rejected 45 applications. The authority has also accepted 769 driver’s applications for a long-term blue badge exemption, but rejected 500. The council’s CAZ team has accepted two applications for an exemption for commercial vehicles with finance, and rejected one.
It has received a total of 624 applications from workers on low incomes who said they have to drive through the Clean Air Zone, and asked to be exempt. It has accepted 228 of those applications for exemptions, but rejected 396 of them - almost two-thirds.
People operating community transport schemes have applied for exemptions for their vehicles - the council has received 30 and accepted 28. Local residents living inside the Clean Air Zone with a non-compliant vehicle have been able to ask for an exemption under certain circumstances. The council has received 601 of those applications and accepted almost three-quarters of them - with 448 accepted and 153 rejected. The drivers of specialist vehicles that are not compliant with the Clean Air Zone have also been able to apply for exemptions - the council has accepted 360 of these applications and rejected just 32.
The council did say, however, that the total number of individuals making applications for support or for exemptions could be slightly lower, because each application was counted, even if someone has to make a second application when asked to provide more information. That means the number of rejected applications may well not reflect the true number of people who have had applications rejected, as their application for an exemption might have been rejected once but then accepted on receipt of more information. The deadline for people to apply for an exemption as a blue badge holder has already been extended until the end of March next year.
In total, the council has awarded 2,077 exemptions to drivers of non-compliant vehicles for a variety of reasons. As well as awarding exemptions to the drivers of those vehicles, the council’s multi-million pound CAZ scheme is also making ‘sustainable travel offers’ to people to encourage them to find alternatives to driving non-compliant vehicles into the Clean Air Zone each day.
Again, given there were 95,000 drivers who drove into the CAZ in non-compliant vehicles over a three-week period, the numbers of people seeking these alternative is comparatively low, albeit in the hundreds or low thousands.
The council has told Bristol Live that it has provided 1,222 train tickets to people to take the train instead of using their too-polluting vehicle, 2,299 ‘bus taster’ tickets to use in Bristol, and another 762 to use in the West of England outside of the city boundary. The council has also issued 1,064 vouchers to join car clubs, 987 vouchers to use one of the Voi e-scooters, and issued 587 ‘journey planners’.
It is also offering help and support to encourage people to start cycling instead of using non-compliant vehicles to travel around Bristol, and that includes training course to teach people to ride bikes, as well as a scheme which helps people ride in the city by accompanying them on a bike on their route.
So far, 540 people have requested to join an adult cycle training course, and they have been contacted by the council to set that up, with 81 people contacting requesting a ‘family group cycle training’, who have received vouchers to join a session.
The ‘accompanied ride scheme’ has had 451 people request this and they have been contacted by the council, and there have been 107 vouchers provided by the council for people to join an ‘adult group new and returning cyclists’ course. A total of 8,100 specific ‘sustainable travel offers’ have been made.
Read next:
- Where the borders for the scheme will fall street by street
- When will the CAZ charges operate
- Clean Air Zone start date finally announced
- Clean Air Zone fee and how people will be charged
- Bristol Clean Air Zone timeline: the story so far as start date finally announced
- Thousands of drivers 'caught' in Clean Air Zone every day in council test
- Camera error sends Clean Air Zone warning letters to drivers who've never been to Bristol
- Clean Air Zone and underground metro will make cycling safer claim council chiefs
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