ULEZ and Clean Air Zone rules for vans

The standard, in one line

For a van up to 3.5 tonnes, the test that matters almost everywhere in England is the same: Euro 6 for diesel, Euro 4 for petrol. Meet it and you drive charge-free in London's Ultra Low Emission Zone and in every English Clean Air Zone; fail it and you pay a daily charge every day you enter. Heavier vehicles — HGVs, buses and coaches — are held to Euro VI and are dealt with under London's separate Low Emission Zone and the higher CAZ bands (gov.uk, Clean Air Zones, 2026). Zero-emission vans are never charged. There is no partial credit and no annual allowance: the vehicle either meets the standard or it does not, and the charge applies per day, per zone, every day the vehicle enters. That binary quality is exactly why emissions compliance belongs in a leasing decision rather than in an operations one.

London: the ULEZ

The Ultra Low Emission Zone has covered all London boroughs since August 2023, up to but not including the M25. It operates 24 hours a day, every day except Christmas Day. A non-compliant van up to 3.5 tonnes pays £12.50 a day; the charge also applies to cars, motorcycles and minibuses up to 5 tonnes (Transport for London, 2026). There is no weekly cap and no residents' discount for commercial vehicles. Failure to pay results in a penalty charge notice of £180, reduced to £90 if paid within 14 days (Transport for London, 2026) — and the penalty is per day, so a week of unnoticed non-compliance is expensive. For a van running into London three days a week, a non-compliant vehicle costs roughly £1,950 a year in ULEZ charges alone before any other London charge is considered.

London’s other charges: Congestion Charge and LEZ

Two more London schemes catch commercial vehicles, and they are separate from ULEZ — you can be liable for all three on the same day. The Congestion Charge rose to £18 a day from 2 January 2026, when the full electric-vehicle exemption ended and was replaced by a tiered Cleaner Vehicle Discount: 50% off for electric vans, HGVs and quadricycles registered for Auto Pay, and 25% off for electric cars (Transport for London, 2026). The Low Emission Zone applies to heavier vehicles — vans and specialist vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, minibuses over 5 tonnes, lorries, buses and coaches — where the standard is Euro VI; vehicles meeting Euro IV for particulate matter but not Euro VI pay £100 a day, and those below Euro IV pay £300 a day (Transport for London, 2026). If you are moving to a 4.25-tonne electric van, check which London scheme it falls under before you order.

Clean Air Zones in England: which cities charge vans

How the classes work, and why Portsmouth is different

Clean Air Zones come in classes that determine which vehicle types are charged. Class B charges buses, coaches, taxis, private hire vehicles and HGVs — not vans or cars, which is why a non-compliant van can drive through Portsmouth without a charge. Class C adds vans, minibuses and other light goods vehicles. Class D adds private cars, which is why Birmingham and Bristol affect the most people (gov.uk, Clean Air Zones, 2026). The class also tells you what to expect if a zone is reviewed: a city under pressure to improve air quality can move up a class, and zones have been amended before. The charges in the table above are drawn from published 2026 reporting rather than a single official source, and zone charges change — always check the zone's own website or the GOV.UK service before you budget a route around them.

How to check whether a specific van is compliant

Do not rely on the badge, the age or a rule of thumb — check the registration. There are two official checkers: Transport for London's vehicle checker for ULEZ, the Congestion Charge and the LEZ, and the GOV.UK "check a vehicle in a Clean Air Zone" service for the English CAZs, which also lets you pay. Both work from the number plate. As a rough sense-check only: diesel vans registered from around September 2016 generally meet Euro 6 and petrol vans from around 2006 generally meet Euro 4, but the exact date varies by manufacturer, model and engine, and cut-over dates differ between the first registration of a type and the last date a pre-Euro 6 vehicle could be sold. Treat registration dates as a filter for what to check, never as the answer. The V5C also records the Euro status for many vehicles.

Scotland and Wales

FleetMe supplies businesses across England and Wales, but drivers travel. Wales has no charging clean air zone. Cardiff considered one and its Clean Air Plan concluded that a package of non-charging measures would bring nitrogen dioxide to compliant levels without a charging zone, so none is in force (Cardiff Council, Clean Air Cardiff, 2026). Scotland works on a different model that is important to understand: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen operate Low Emission Zones which do not offer a daily charge to enter. A non-compliant vehicle simply may not enter, and a penalty is issued if it does — reported at £60 for a first contravention, with penalties escalating on repeat contraventions (House of Commons Library briefing on Clean Air Zones, Low Emission Zones and the London ULEZ). For an operator, that difference matters: in England a non-compliant van is an expensive nuisance, whereas in Scotland it is simply unable to do the job.

What this means for a leasing decision

Emissions compliance is one of the strongest practical arguments for leasing a new vehicle rather than running an old one. Every new diesel van meets Euro 6 and every new petrol van meets Euro 4, so a van you lease today is charge-free in every English clean air zone and in the ULEZ for the whole of its contract, with no exposure to a future tightening of the current standards. An older bought van carries the opposite risk: a daily charge that compounds quietly, and a resale market that discounts non-compliant vehicles heavily. If your work takes you into charging zones regularly, price the charges into the comparison — three days a week in the ULEZ alone is close to £2,000 a year — and if the routes are urban and predictable, look seriously at an electric van, which is exempt everywhere.