Glasgow City Council spends ?100k hiring LEZ compliant vehicles …

Glasgow City Council^[1] has spent almost £100,000 hiring vehicles to replace parts of its fleet that don’t comply with the Low Emission Zone.

The local authority has already been fined several times for breaching the rules in the first two months of their enforcement.

Freedom of Information Requests have revealed that the council spent £95,344 hiring 131 vehicles to cover vehicles in their fleet that couldn’t be used in LEZ.

The list includes two eight-tonne DAF trucks, a Skyking cherry picker, a Mercedes refrigeration van, 52 Ford Transit vans and 22 Vauxhall Corsa cars.

The council said some of the 131 vehicles were hired to replace older non-compliant parts of the fleet that were earmarked for removal as part of a planned process, rather than specifically because they were required in the LEZ zone.

It said £74,128 was spent in the two months from June 1 on hiring 50 vehicles for LEZ compliance purposes.

By July 27, 21 of its vehicles had been issued penalty charge notices but nine were subsequently cancelled as the vehicles were found to be LEZ compliant.

We previously reported the number of Low Emission Zone fines more than doubled in its second month of operation.

Almost 6,000 penalty charges notices (PCN) were handed out last month with 777 people being charged for repeated breaches. In the first two months,

However, figures show that only 2,674 fines out of 8,855 have been paid since the LEZ was introduced. Only 2,617 fines have been paid within 14 days of being handed out since the start of the scheme.

A council spokesperson said only a limited part of its fleet would be required to enter the city-centre LEZ, and those that do will be required to meet the emission standards.

“New vehicles which meet LEZ requirements are expected to be delivered to us in the near future and we are also retrofitting existing vehicles to improve emissions standards across our fleet,” they said. “LEZ compliant vehicles have been hired in the short term to ensure emissions standards are met.

“The cost of these hires has been mitigated by taking a number of older vehicles out of service in line with our fleet replacement programme, offsetting their operational costs.”

References

1. ^{^} Glasgow City Council (www.glasgowlive.co.uk)
2. ^{^} Carnbooth House hotel fire ‘reignites’ after crews spend 24 hours bringing blaze under control (www.glasgowlive.co.uk)