London ULEZ charge and historic vehicles
911SC owner Andy R recently contacted us via our Register Facebook page about over 40-year-old historic vehicles and exemption from the London ULEZ charge. As you may be aware, correctly DVLA registered historic vehicles are exempt from the daily £12.50 fee.
However, although Andy’s car is correctly registered as historic, when he used the ‘check vehicle’ facility on the Transport for London (TfL) webpage, it said his car was not exempt.
Barry, our Register Technical advisor, decided to check his two historic 911s and found his 1969 correctly showing as ULEZ exempt but his 1981 SC incorrectly showing as needing to pay the £12.50 fee.
He then tried the TfL ‘pay charge’ webpage for his SC and found the ULEZ tick box blanked out so couldn’t pay the ULEZ charge (but could pay the congestion charge as expected). After more digging on the TFL website, Barry found a ‘register your vehicle’ page. After entering the details for his SC, he got the answer ‘you don’t have to register this vehicle’ (the small print says because it is exempt).
Having spoken to Barry about this, I decided to check it for my own 1980 SC which is also historic registered with the DVLA but, guess what, it did not work and I was asked to supply further evidence about my car being on the Historic Register and this would take five days to review!
So, in conclusion, it seems obvious that the various government and TfL webpages don’t talk to each other and, while a correctly registered historic vehicle is indeed exempt from the ULEZ fee, we would recommend you double check your car as Barry and I did and register it on the ULEZ / TLF website now, even if you are not planning to drive within the M25 soon, as it may take a while to get your car on the register and confirmed as exempt.
Please also do not forget that more and more clean air zones are in place in the UK (Bath, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Tyneside), with more surely to be introduced in the future (Greater Manchester currently under review) so make sure to check your car status on the DVLA website (different to the TfL).
PS: We will put links to the various relevant websites on the resources section of our 911SC register to help you get straight to the correct webpages and check your car’s status. clcik HERE.