ULEZ enforcement stepped up in light of £450 million debt

Transport for London is stepping up its efforts to reclaim unpaid Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) fines, with their total value sitting at hundreds of millions of pounds since the scheme’s expansion last year.

To recover lost funds, TfL has decided to triple the size of its enforcement investigation team, with agents and bailiffs recouping as much as £25.6 million in the past 12 months. A proportion of this was generated via the seizure and sometimes eventual auctioning of non-payers’ vehicles – TfL says this alone allowed it to recover more than £700,000 in debts.

In a statement, TfL referred to one specific case in August in which a driver was sent a total of 43 fine reminder letters and had as many as 10 legal warrants against them to recover what was owed; after five visits from bailiffs, the driver’s car was seized.

However, TFL’s recuperation efforts pale in comparison to the £376 million it’s owed in unpaid penalty charge notices. While the government body says it expects the majority of this to be recovered, the chair of City Hall’s Budget Committee, Neil Garratt, said that such a large sum of money “may not be recoverable”, warning some “much-needed transport investment projects may need to be scrapped.”

To make matters worse, these unpaid fines coincide with a sharp increase in the amount of debt owed by TfL itself, which has risen from £160 million in 2020-2021 to around £450 million today. With this in mind, the London Assembly has written a letter to Mayor Sadiq Khan, urging him to “increase collection levels” for road charging schemes such as ULEZ. 

TfL has repeatedly stated that the ULEZ scheme is not a moneymaker. However, despite Chief Customer and Strategy Officer Alex Williams, saying that “on average, over 96 per cent of vehicles seen driving in the ULEZ are compliant”, TfL has previously made more than £23 million in a single month since the scheme’s expansion into Greater London.

Williams warned drivers that TfL “want[s] to send a clear message to vehicle owners that if you receive a penalty charge for driving in the zone, you should not ignore it. Your penalty will progress to enforcement agents to recover the fines that you owe, and there is a risk that your vehicle and other items of property will be removed.”

The standard daily charge for vehicles that aren’t ULEZ exempt – typically those that don’t meet Euro 6 emissions standards – is £12.50. If this isn’t paid by midnight on the third day after entering the zone, drivers will face a PCN of £180 – or £90 if settled within 14 days.

Those experiencing financial hardships, Williams continued, should not ignore PCNs and “engage with our staff, who will work with you towards a resolution, including setting up debt payment plans.”

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