To try to reduce air pollution in London, the toxicity charge, or T-charge, will come into effect on the 23 October 2017. It aims to discourage the use of older cars on the road, as these produce the most dangerous fumes.

Now, however, FairFuelUK is seeking to raise a legal challenge against the T-charge, arguing that a full public enquiry should have preceded the decision to implement it. The challenge could have implications for every major UK town and city.

What is the T-charge?

The T-charge is expected to affect up to 10,000 vehicles every weekday, so plenty of people will find themselves needing to pay it. It targets nitrogen oxide and particulate matter, as these have a negative effect on human health. This is becoming more worrying as the population of London continues to grow.

Anyone driving through London in a car, van, minibus, bus, coach or heavy goods vehicle that does not meet the Euro emissions standards will be required to pay the T-charge. This is in addition to the congestion charge that is already in place.

What will you be paying?

The minimum emission standards are Euro 4 for petrol and diesel vehicles, and Euro 3 for motorised tricycles and quadricycles. Any vehicle that does not meet these standards will be subject to the T-charge.

The charge will apply to drivers using the capital’s roads between 7 am and 6 pm Monday to Friday. The cost to those drivers will be £10 per day. The T-charge does not apply on bank holidays, or from Christmas Day to New Year’s Day.

If you are unsure of whether you’ll need to pay the T-charge for your vehicle, you can check your vehicle registration certificate (V5C), which displays the emissions standard that the vehicle is classed as.

If your vehicle doesn’t meet the Euro emissions standards, and you fail to pay the T-charge, you will be sent a penalty charge notice for £130. This will be reduced to £65 if it is paid within 14 days.

(Credit – Mariordo CC BY 3.0)

Legal issues with the T-charge

The T-charge has recently come under fire from FairFuelUK. The organisation has described the Mayor of London’s decision to implement this charge as unlawful and unfair. This is because FairFuelUK doesn’t believe that drivers should be penalised for driving older petrol and diesel cars. The campaigning organisation feels that a full public enquiry should have been carried out before the decision to roll out the T-charge was made.

FairFuelUK has now launched a crowd funding campaign to raise money for a two-part legal challenge against the T-charge. This would firstly see it ask the Mayor of London to change his mind about introducing the T-charge. Secondly, it would ask the Prime Minister and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) to investigate how else London could reduce pollution.

Learning from other countries

The T-charge may seem like a harsh idea. However, examples from around the world show that Londoners could actually have it worse. Paris, for example, has banned all cars registered before 1997 from using city centre roads between 8 am and 8 pm on weekdays in a bid to reduce pollution.

Similarly, the Mayors of Mexico City, Madrid and Athens are currently looking at banning all diesel cars from their city centres by 2025.

If the T-charge is a success in London, it is thought that it will be rolled out to 25 other UK towns and cities. These include Birmingham, Nottingham, Southampton and Derby, which will start by charging older lorries, taxis and coaches by 2019.

With legal issues against the T-charge being raised before it has even been implemented, the future of the charge is far from certain. However, one thing is for sure – urgent thought needs to be put into how else pollution can be lowered in the UK’s major towns and cities, whether this has to do with penalising certain motorists or not.

What can we do to reduce pollution in our city centres without penalising motorists? Or is charging drivers based on their vehicle type the only viable solution? Leave a comment below. 

People in Britain have been struggling with the rising cost of living for some time. In August, the situation worsened when fuel prices shot up faster than wages, meaning that people are feeling the pinch more than ever.

Over the summer, motorists have been enjoying lower fuel prices. These falling prices have been keeping inflation down, which has offset the rising cost of food and clothing. However, August saw petrol and diesel prices on the rise again. This meant that inflation increased from 2.6% to 2.9% in the last month, which is higher than the predicted jump to 2.8%.

(Credit – Pete, under public domain 1.0)

Economists have suggested that this rise in inflation could be partly due to retailers increasing their prices as a result of the value of the pound decreasing following the Brexit vote. This is because import and export costs have increased. The price of transportation has also shot up, due to the growth in fuel costs.

Rising prices

Some of the numbers that have come out of the latest inflation figures make for grim reading:

• Petrol – up 5.1%
• Coffee – up 5.1%
• Clothes – up 5.1%
• Oils and fats – up 5.9%
• Electricity – up 9%
• Fish – up 9.6%

The costs of airfares, second hand cars, toys and games have fallen in price, which has brought the inflation average down to 2.9%. However, these are less likely to be items that you would find yourself purchasing on a regular basis, meaning that families’ regular monthly budgets are likely to feel particularly hard hit.

The real cost of driving to work

The figures have also revealed that driving to work now costs people 5% more year on year. However, wage increases are not keeping up – the value of real wages is actually falling. This may seem surprising given the fall of the unemployment rate to 4.3%, the lowest it has been in over four decades, but it seems that many are not getting paid in line with the cost of living, as often the jobs are both low skilled and low paid.

(Credit – Pixabay)

Another reason why the wage increase may be being suppressed is because of companies like Amazon, Uber, and Netflix. These have disrupted the way that these particular industries traditionally work, and this has had an effect on the way in which people are paid.

2.9% is the joint highest that inflation has been in the past five years, and the Bank of England expects that it may rise to 3% in October. Wages have only risen by 2.1% over the past year. This means that people have less to spend each month. That’s why many are finding it difficult to afford everything that they need in order to live a comfortable life.

The future of fuel prices

The price of petrol is a strong indicator of whether inflation will rise or fall. As such, it’s worth using the PetrolPrices app to keep your eye on the price at the pumps. This can give an indication of how prices for other items will be changing too, not just the cost of what you’re putting into your tank.

Predictions suggest that people will continue to struggle with the cost of living for the next few quarters, but that wages will start to overtake inflation next year. This is because it is expected that the impact of the recent failure of the pound will start to fade, providing relief for cash-strapped drivers and families up and down the country.

Have you noticed the rising price of fuel biting into your budget? Do you believe that wages will finally overtake inflation in 2018? Share your thoughts via the comments section below.  

The personalised number plate market is booming. More and more people want to exhibit their ‘individuality’ on the front and back of their cars. However, new research by MoneySuperMarket has revealed that drivers with personalised plates might be getting more than they bargained for – including six times as many speeding tickets as drivers with regular number plates.

What’s in a name?

The MoneySuperMarket research found that a third of Brits consider those with personalised plates to be posers, but this hasn’t slowed demand for the so-called vanity plates. According to number plate dealer National Numbers’ search data, first names are some of the most sought after personalised number plates. The most popular are ‘BEN’ (5,318), ‘JOE’ (4,171), ‘MAC’ (3,261), ‘ALI’ (2,960) and ‘LOU’ (2,780).

It doesn’t even have to be your first name – it can be someone else’s; 93 people searched for the number plate ‘TRUMP’ over the past 12 months!

The average cost of a vanity plate is £512, though prices for particularly prized plates can rise much higher. As we revealed in our recent news item, the most expensive plate bought in the UK was ’25 O’ which came with the eye-watering price tag of £518,480.

Even that pales into insignificance compared with the latest number plate purchase by Chinese-Australian billionaire and avid number plate collector Peter Tseng. Tseng just splashed out a whopping £1.5 million (A$2.45 million) on a rare number 4 plate from New South Wales, following a bidding war with another collector. Tseng arrived sporting a number 2 plate on his red Ferrari and apparently calmly kept his hand in the air throughout the entire auction.

(Credit – PetrolPrices)

Car brands attract attention

With the DVLA’s September number plate auction approaching, fans of personalised plates will be on the hunt for the most exciting options available. A surprising number of drivers seek inspiration based on the car that they own. According to National Numbers, the most popular brand-based searches include ‘MERCEDES’ (1,328 searches), ‘JAG’ (2,719 searches) and ‘BMW’ (4,396 searches).

Meanwhile, MoneySuperMarket’s recent survey has found that it is BMW and Audi drivers who top the list of those who are most likely to own personalised plates.

Offensive number plates

According to National Numbers’ research, potty-mouthed plates are also popular in the UK. In fact, there were more searches over the past 12 months for offensive plates than for those relating to people we cherish. For instance, the word ‘F**K’ was searched for 40% more than ‘MUM.’ In fact, over 2,000 people looked up the popular swear word, compared to more than 1,400 for ‘MUM’ and 1,700 for ‘DAD.’

This penchant for profanity is seemingly endless, according to National Numbers, with the highlights/lowlights including:

’S**T’ – 687 searches

‘XXX’ – 1,077 searches

‘D*CK’ – 1,424 searches

‘F**K’ – 2,081 searches

The DVLA takes a very dim view of offensive plates. It has recently been on a culling tour of its number plate database, as the new 67 plate comes online. That said, it doesn’t always work. Successful outbreaks of expletives have included ‘U TO2SER’ on a Lambo and ‘M1LFS’ on a Transit.

It’s worth pointing out that the DVLA reserves the right to scrap your plate if a one-off should make it past quality control. For instance, poor Alan Clarke was gutted to have his number plate ‘BO11 LUX’ withdrawn by the DVLA (though he could bid for ‘TE51 CLE,’ which can currently be found dangling from the back of a UK Corvette).

Autonomy of a plate

For those of us who prefer to stick to what we are given by our car dealer, what do the numbers and letters actually stand for on a plate? The first two letters signify where the vehicle was registered. This is divided into two parts – the first letter is for the region such as B for Birmingham or S for Scotland (see the complete list here). The second represents the DLVA office within the region where the vehicle was registered.

The two numbers in the middle of the plate represent how old the car is, while the final three letters are typically a random selection. The system used for number plate creation offers enough combinations to keep the DVLA producing plates until 2051.

How much would you be willing to spend on a personalised plate? Or are such vanity plates just a waste of money? Let us know your views below.

The RAC has warned that the UK could see petrol prices rise above those of diesel in the next few days and weeks as a result of the disruption caused by Hurricane Harvey in the main oil-producing regions of the US. It is predicting that the price of unleaded could rise by as much as 4 pence per litre, taking average prices above the 121 pence mark.

This kind of price hasn’t been seen since December 2014. It is due to one-quarter of the oil refining capacity of America being offline due to the devastation caused by the hurricane. Added to that, demand in the US for petrol has increased, which can also drive up prices.

Average prices

According to RAC spokesman Pete Williams, these issues are already affecting the forecourts in the UK. The average price of petrol stood at 117.29 pence per litre at the end of August, while the diesel price was 118.14 pence. However, this is likely to rise over coming days to 121 pence for unleaded and around 118.5 pence for diesel.

This would make it the first time this year that the average price of unleaded would be higher than that of diesel. Experts also think the price is liable to stay at these rates for some time, until the oil industry is able to get back to full production levels.

Seasonal factors

Experts are also quick to point out that the effect of Hurricane Harvey isn’t as severe as that of Hurricane Katrina, which struck over the August bank holiday weekend in 2005. Katrina added 5 pence per litre to the price of petrol within a matter of a few days. The price dropped back down a few days later.

While Katrina destroyed the infrastructure used to create the petrol, Harvey has only caused infrastructure to be shut down temporarily.

Prices were already rising in August due to seasonal factors and a general increase in the price of a barrel of crude oil, which reached £40 a barrel by the end of the month. In the US, demand for petrol would also be higher than normal due to the Labor Day weekend.

The crude oil price per barrel on the 6th September 2017 was at 48.88 per barrel.

(Credit – Gas Station Damages, US Dept. of Defense)

How to avoid the increases

There are things that you can do the avoid the increases as much as possible. For starters, use the PetrolPrices service to find out where in your area has the cheapest fuel. This is often the supermarkets.  Be sure to avoid places that are more expensive – motorway services are usually the priciest places to fill up. If you’re taking a long trip, remember to fill up at your local supermarket station before you set off.

In addition, regular maintenance can help keep your car working in top condition, which can help minimize petrol consumption. Small touches, such as having properly inflated tyres, wheels that are aligned and regularly servicing spark plugs and filters, can help the car run at peak efficiency and thus use less fuel.

Even reducing what you leave in the car can help it run better and use less fuel. If you’re just driving to the shops or around town, look at what is in the boot and see if there is anything you can leave behind. According to the RAC, you can save around 2% of fuel for every 50kg you remove from the car. Don’t leave behind essentials such as safety equipment, but look at what else you carry around and might not need.

Have you already seen the affects of Hurricane Harvey at the pumps? What tactics do you use to reduce your fuel spend? Let us know by leaving a comment.