Portsmouth awarded funding to introduce CAZ

Portsmouth Clean Air Zone (CAZ) to go ahead thanks to £6.6m government fund. 

Portsmouth City Council was issued with a ministerial directive in March 2020 to introduce a Class B CAZ in the south-west of the city as soon as possible. 

Under the Class B zone, buses, coaches, taxis, private hire vehicles and heavy goods vehicles that don’t meet Euro 6 emission standards if diesel and Euro 4 emission standards if petrol will be charged to enter the zone. 

Non-compliant taxis and private hire vehicles will be charged £10 and HGVs, buses and coaches will be charged £50 a day. 

£3.4m of the fund will cover the cost of installing number plate recognition cameras and signs, and a further £3.2m will pay for grants for affected drivers to allow them to either retrofit or upgrade their vehicles.

Pam Turton, Portsmouth City Council’s assistant director for transport, said: ‘Air pollution is the greatest environmental threat to public health, so it is important we all take action. Like many cities across the UK, the council is required by the government to address air pollution in the shortest possible time by introducing the CAZ.”

‘Our Clean Air Zone will go live in November 2021. Alongside this we are delivering £100M of improvements for bus, walking and cycling journeys, as well as trialling rental e-scooters, safe and secure cycle storage in residential areas and encouraging cleaner areas around schools, all to help make the air we breathe cleaner.’

In related news,  late last year Portsmouth City Council awarded Siemens Mobility a contract to design a Clean Air Zone (CAZ) for the south-west side of the city.