Bristol Clean Air Zone (Class D)
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page
Charging began on 28 November 2022 in a zone of 1.18 square miles around Bristol's centre: £9 a day for a non-compliant car, taxi or van, £100 for a lorry, bus or coach, 24 hours a day and every day of the year, enforced by automatic number plate recognition cameras. It is a Class D zone — of England's seven Clean Air Zones, only Bristol and Birmingham charge private cars. Bristol did not choose it; the Secretary of State directed it.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →📊 Impact
The council's own monitoring recorded an average fall of 13.2% in annual NO2 across 191 locations between 2022 and 2023, the zone's first year, and a further 4.7% between 2023 and 2024. The Direction had required compliance by 2023 at the latest. Five monitoring sites were still above the 40µg/m3 annual objective in 2024, and the council's own progress table records the measure as "Compliance not yet achieved". Charges and penalties raised more than £26 million after operating costs in the first year.
🎓 Lesson
A clean air zone is a fixed price, not a feedback loop: the charge is set by the vehicle's Euro class, not by any reading, and no measured threshold moves it. What the readings govern here is the council's legal position rather than the price — an exceedance is what placed Bristol under a Direction it may not vary, revoke or suspend without the written consent of the Secretary of State, and the same monitoring now records that the deadline was missed. The cameras turned out to be the diagnostic instrument as well: to work out why two streets stayed above the limit, the council apportioned NOx by vehicle type from a week of anonymised number plate data.
Sources
Show 2 more sourcesShow fewer
📅 How old is the evidence?
Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2022. 5 of 7 sources carry a publication date, from 28 January 2020 to June 2025.
When the sources were published
- GOV.UK — Driving in a clean air zone (authority) · updated 12 February 2026
- Environment Act 1995 (Bristol City Council) Air Quality Direction 2021 (Defra)
- National Audit Office — Tackling local breaches of air quality (independent audit)
- ITV News West Country — Clean Air Zone first-year revenue (press)
- Bristol City Council — 2025 Air Quality Annual Status Report (authority)
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 16 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence Passport · public beta 16 addressable claims, 7 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 16
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
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quantitative
Charging began on 28 November 2022
Sources carrying this claim
clm-ff098ea2dfd89943
quantitative
in a zone of 1.18 square miles around Bristol's centre
Sources carrying this claim
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quantitative
£9 a day for a non-compliant car, taxi or van, £100 for a lorry, bus or coach
Sources carrying this claim
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quantitative
24 hours a day and every day of the year
Sources carrying this claim
clm-48728df008e1385e
descriptive
enforced by automatic number plate recognition cameras
Sources carrying this claim
clm-7e836fa729f15980
descriptive
It is a Class D zone — of England's seven Clean Air Zones, only Bristol and Birmingham charge private cars
Sources carrying this claim
clm-99b8af652e468798
descriptive
Bristol did not choose it; the Secretary of State directed it
Sources carrying this claim
clm-b2e54d2a9ecc6670
quantitative
an average fall of 13.2% in annual NO2 across 191 locations between 2022 and 2023, the zone's first year
Sources carrying this claim
clm-3d0dad9fca3b75a3
quantitative
a further 4.7% between 2023 and 2024
Sources carrying this claim
clm-b464de7a95538d85
quantitative
The Direction had required compliance by 2023 at the latest
Sources carrying this claim
clm-7ca4780c86be7539
quantitative
Five monitoring sites were still above the 40µg/m3 annual objective in 2024
Sources carrying this claim
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descriptive
the council's own progress table records the measure as "Compliance not yet achieved"
Sources carrying this claim
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quantitative
Charges and penalties raised more than £26 million after operating costs in the first year
Sources carrying this claim
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descriptive
the charge is set by the vehicle's Euro class, not by any reading, and no measured threshold moves it
Sources carrying this claim
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descriptive
a Direction it may not vary, revoke or suspend without the written consent of the Secretary of State
Sources carrying this claim
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descriptive
to work out why two streets stayed above the limit, the council apportioned NOx by vehicle type from a week of anonymised number plate data
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
sha256:e3ae9d8628f2d075a0723ee9067fa721686a5a2b37dce897cb3fd83ca1c7ba24
- 16
- of 16 claims mapped
- 7
- source dossiers
- 4
- publication dates recorded
- 0
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- Bristol City Council
- Actor types
- city-government, national-government
- Funding model
- public
- Funding description
- UK government (Joint Air Quality Unit) grant funding, then charge revenue
- Cost
- Not recorded
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
7 source dossiers
GOV.UK — Driving in a clean air zone (authority)
- Stable source ID
src-b6d1b4390e951ee6- Publisher
- Name not classified · gov.uk
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2020-01-28
- Updated
- 2026-02-12
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The national list of England's Clean Air Zones. Gives Bristol as Class D covering 1.18 square miles, defines Class D as the only class whose charges reach cars, and its change history dates the start of charging to 28 November 2022. It states that London's low and ultra low emission zones are a separate regime run by the Mayor.
Bristol City Council — Pay the Clean Air Zone daily charge (authority)
- Stable source ID
src-1a5516d880c4593e- Publisher
- Name not classified · bristol.gov.uk
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The operator's charge schedule: £9 for private petrol cars, private diesel cars, taxis and light goods vehicles under 3.5t; £100 for heavy goods vehicles over 3.5t, buses and coaches. It also carries the operating hours and the six-day payment window. A single flat rate per vehicle category, with no variation by measured air quality.
Bristol City Council — What are Clean Air Zone Exemptions (authority)
- Stable source ID
src-688a5c6fb10e6dfa- Publisher
- Name not classified · bristol.gov.uk
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The operator's exemptions page, and the council page that states plainly how the zone is enforced: cameras with automatic number plate recognition, which also recognise exempt vehicles automatically.
- Claims linked
Environment Act 1995 (Bristol City Council) Air Quality Direction 2021 (Defra)
- Stable source ID
src-bfc46f6d725e81e9- Publisher
- Name not classified · assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
- Type / language
- pdf · language not classified
- Published
- 2021-11-01
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The statutory instruction behind the zone, made by the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at Defra under section 85(5) of the Environment Act 1995. Schedule 1 names the measure as a "Charging Clean Air Zone Class D"; article 4(2) requires compliance "in the shortest possible time, and by 2023 at the latest"; article 5 forbids the council from varying, revoking or suspending it without the Secretary of State's prior written consent. It revokes an earlier 2020 direction to the same council.
Bristol City Council — 2025 Air Quality Annual Status Report (authority)
- Stable source ID
src-efb0b9ae9b251edd- Publisher
- Name not classified · bristol.gov.uk
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The council's statutory Local Air Quality Management report, covering 2024 monitoring data. Source of the 13.2% and 4.7% average NO2 falls, the count of five sites still above the objective in 2024, the progress-table entry "Compliance not yet achieved", the statement that the CAZ charges on Euro class, and the Appendix C description of the ANPR-based source apportionment at Bond Street and Colston Avenue.
National Audit Office — Tackling local breaches of air quality (independent audit)
- Stable source ID
src-0801319cffcea9e9- Publisher
- Name not classified · nao.org.uk
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2022-06-17
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Audit of the national NO2 Programme that Bristol sits inside (HC 66, Session 2022-23), published five months before the zone opened. It records that government expected in 2017 that measures would take three years or less with all measures outside London implemented by 2021, and that as at 1 April 2022 the 17 authorities still implementing had been in the programme for 4.5 years on average. It lists Bristol Urban Area among the zones breaching the NO2 annual limit in 2020.
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
ITV News West Country — Clean Air Zone first-year revenue (press)
- Stable source ID
src-31b44f5d4866c63b- Publisher
- Name not classified · itv.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2024-01-17
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Regional broadcast report on the council's first-year figures: more than £31 million taken, £4.8 million of it spent on operating costs, leaving £26.4 million. No independent audit of these figures was found.
- Claims linked
Known limits of this passport
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Bristol Clean Air Zone (Class D)” — Bristol, United Kingdom. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/bristol-clean-air-zone/ (last verified 2026-08-25). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
