Your parking costs could be about to soar – bad news for petrol & diesel drivers

DRIVERS in London are set to pay more for parking after yet another local council announced it’s to introduce tariffs based on vehicle emissions.

Lambeth council is the latest local authority in the capital to begin charging for parking based on emissions.

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The new measures are designed to improve air quality, but also mean that drivers of more polluting petrol and diesel cars will have to pay more to park.

London borough councils with ‘emissions-based parking charges’ already in place include Lewisham, Merton, Newham and Croydon.

Electric cars that emit zero emissions fall into Band A of the pricing structure, and will pay £120.21 per year for a parking permit in the Lambeth area, reports topgear.com.

But, drivers with cars with over 100g/km CO2 – which is most petrol and diesel models – will pay more than £200. 

And, this rises to as much as £500 per year to park a vehicle that is rated at over 255g/km (Band M).

The bands follow the same levels that decide how much road tax you pay for a vehicle, while there’s also a diesel surcharge of £140 applied to engines that don’t meet Euro 6 standards.

In justifying its move, Lambeth council pointed to a review carried out by Imperial College in 2021, which concluded that air pollution kills over 4,000 people in London every year.

And, Oxford University produced data back in 2018 that showed a cost of around £605 million to the NHS caused by pollution from motor cars.

However, the real-life problem faced by drivers of petrol and diesel cars is that they can’t necessarily afford to make the switch to an EV or plug-in hybrid model, so it’s those on lower incomes that are being squeezed – with not much apparently set to change in the foreseeable future.