Birmingham City Council has no plans to make any changes to the Clean Air Zone’s midnight-to-midnight charging system. As the scheme’s second anniversary approaches on June 1, it said the current system provided ‘consistency’ with the rest of the country.
One might assume that if you were to cross the A4540 Middle Ring Road in a non-compliant car and be charged £8 for the privilege that you would have a 24-hour window in which to leave. But the way the scheme operates, the closer to midnight that you arrive, the sooner you will have to be on your way to avoid being charged twice.
Unlike a car park where you pay for however long you stay, usually by the hour, the Clean Air Zone does not take the length of your visit into account. The £8 fee for a non-compliant car is simply for crossing the line.
Read more: Birmingham Clean Air Zone shock on way for those living inside it as they face £8 daily charge
It does not take into account how long you are in town. Nor does it consider how far you might travel once inside the middle ring road boundary.
After publicly questioning whether there should even be a Clean Air Zone in Birmingham, Westside BID general manager Mike Olley said the charge had a disproportionate impact on ‘poorer’ drivers who couldn’t afford a more modern car. He said the policy also affected workers in, and visitors to, the BID’s bars, restaurants and other recreational facilities that were part of the night time economy.
One of the first road signs for the Clean Air Zone when it was being installed on the A4540 Dartmouth Middleway(Image: Graham Young / BirminghamLive)
Mr Olley said: “In Westside we spend more on security than anywhere else. Some of our staff might not start work til 7pm but then be working after midnight. If they have a non-compliant car, they end up paying twice – £16 instead of £8.
“One girl works two days a week across midnight and is then faced with four payments of £8 to be here. I think that is a regressive tax and quite detrimental to the area.
“Members of my own BID staff who work as street wardens aren’t the highest paid people in the city. They are all above the national minimum wage, for sure, but they also often work across midnight and how are they expected to get home when they’ve been doing more for society than anyone else?
Clean Air Zone signs at the Islington Row Middleway entrance to Tennant Street(Image: Graham Young / BirminghamLive)
“Even members of my own family in south Birmingham have to drive further than they used to in order to come to see me on the north side of Birmingham.”
Thousands of people have refused to pay their Clean Air Zone penalty charges notices. Birmingham City Council said it represented six per cent of the total issued.
What the council said
BirminghamLive asked Birmingham City Council if the driver of a non-compliant vehicle could be given a 24-hour window from the time of initial entry.
The city council said: “A chargeable ‘day’ (i.e. midnight to midnight) is in line with other similar schemes such as the other Clean Air Zones in operation in Bristol, Bath, Sheffield, Bradford, Newcastle and Portsmouth. It is also in line with London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ).
“On that basis this approach provides a level of consistency in approach for these types of schemes across the country.”
Traffic and car park signs welcoming visitors to Birmingham city centre via Horsefair off Bristol Street, with Centre City Tower in the background. In February 2023 it was named the ‘Ugliest building in the UK’ by photography company ParrotPrint who described the building as an architectural ‘disaster’(Image: Graham Young / BirminghamLive)
Compliant vs non-compliant cars
BirminghamLive also asked the city council if the ‘goalposts’ would be shifted in years to come in order to aim to keep a certain proportion of vehicles out of the city centre. Perhaps if they had narrowly passed the limit in 2021, might they be considered to be ‘non-compliant’ in, say, three more years’ time?
The city council replied: “The council publishes data about the operation of the Clean Air Zone on the Brum Breathes website: www.brumbreathes.co.uk/CAZdata.
“This data is updated on a monthly basis and includes the volume of unique vehicles that enter the Zone each day, the volume of vehicles by category and the number and percentage of compliant/non-compliant vehicles entering the Zone.
“Since the introduction of the scheme the percentage of the most polluting vehicles (i.e. non-compliant) entering the zone has reduced by over half since the introduction of the scheme – from June 2021 (15.2 per cent) to February 2023 (6.6 per cent). The test of whether or not a vehicle is compliant or non-compliant is based on NOX emissions from that vehicle and is in line with the Government’s Clean Air Zone framework.”
Birmingham Clean Air Zone signage and cameras on Bristol Road near McDonalds(Image: Birmingham Live)
Clarity of trends for decision makers
In the 2022 BCC Annual Status Report (ASR), Section 3.21 (Nitrogen Dioxide) said: “In 2021 the NO2 annual mean limit value was exceeded, by a small margin, at the automatic monitoring site BCA2 (St Chads Queensway). Annual means at all other automatic sites were less than 40 µg/m3 (the air quality target is to always be below that figure)… It is difficult to discern a clear trend from the data from the automatic monitoring sites.”
BirminghamLive asked: “Has a ‘trend’ now become clearer re the level of NO2 being used to justify the CAZ? When will the next official figures be published?”
Birmingham City Council said: “Following the declaration of a city-wide Air Quality Management Area in 2005 the Council has collated and published an Annual Air Quality Status (ASR) report, which is an annual requirement and sets out the strategies employed by the Council to improve air quality.
“The air pollutant of greatest concern to the Council is Nitrogen Dioxide because of the negative impacts of this air pollutant on human health and because the levels of this pollutant exceed the current legal limit in a number of locations – specifically in and around the city centre.
“The data included in the report is captured from a number of continuous analysers and diffusion tubes – in line with the approach to the monitoring and collation of air quality data provided to all local authorities by DEFRA.
“The data in the report is aggregated to provide an annual mean for each monitoring location. This approach smooths out the hour by hour and day by day variation that occurs and provides a comparator with other local authorities.
“The last ASR recognised that the levels of Nitrogen Dioxide have been reducing over time but that they remain above the legal limit in a number of locations. And that the Council is under an obligation (via a Ministerial Direction) to reduce the levels of nitrogen dioxide to within the legal limit in the shortest possible time.
“The Clean Air Zone is specifically designed to achieve this objective – accelerate a reduction in the levels of Nitrogen Dioxide in order to reduce the impact of this air pollutant on human health. The next ASR covering 2022 is likely to be published in late Summer/early Autumn 2023 in line with the annual publishing cycle.”
Anyone who wants to install their own ‘indicative air quality sensor’ can find out more by emailing [email protected] but the council also warns: ‘Birmingham City Council accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of data presented on third party sites. There are many manufacturers of sensor systems and most do not have formal performance certification for ambient air quality measurements. Most sensors do not provide data that is as accurate as that obtained from a reference analyser’.
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