Congestion charge, ULEZ and the London driving costs nobody mentions

They are two different schemes, and everybody merges them

The congestion charge and the Ultra Low Emission Zone get talked about as though they were one thing with two names. They are not. One is about how many cars are inside a small part of central London during charging hours. The other is about what comes out of the exhaust, across a far larger area. Different boundaries, different hours, different reasons for existing — and a car can be liable for one and not the other.

Both are set by Transport for London, and both change by political decision. The rate, the hours, the boundary and the list of exemptions have each moved more than once. That is why there is not a single figure in this article: anything printed here would be wrong inside a couple of years, and a wrong figure on a hire company’s website is worse than no figure at all. TfL publishes the current version on its own site, and that is the one to check on the day you drive.

Who Transport for London actually bills

Not you. The car is registered to Season Car Rental, so a charge incurred by that vehicle is billed to us rather than to the person who was driving it. The question that matters to a hirer, then, is not who pays TfL — it is how that reaches your invoice, and where that is written down.

On a corporate account it is explicit and it is the one exception to an otherwise all-inclusive figure: congestion charge, ULEZ and Dartford are paid by us and passed on at cost, itemised against the hire that incurred them, with no administration fee on top. Your finance team can tie every line to a booking without ringing anybody.

On a one-off self-drive hire it is set out on the rental agreement you sign before collection, and it varies with the car you take. Ask at the point of booking rather than at the door. Road charges are settled after a hire rather than inside the quote, which makes them the only part of a Season hire that is not already in the figure you were given.

ULEZ usually does not arise, and that is a fleet fact rather than a rule

The emissions charge applies to non-compliant vehicles. A modern prestige fleet is compliant, so on a car hired from us it does not arise — which is a fact about the fleet, not a concession anybody is making, and it would stop being true the moment a company started running older stock.

Where it does become relevant is the car you already own. People hire for a specific trip and keep their own car in London alongside it, or drive an older second car in from outside the city for the same week. That car is assessed on its own emissions, and the fact that a compliant hire car is sitting next to it changes nothing. The two schemes are also independent of each other: a compliant car pays no emissions charge and still pays the congestion charge.

Charged by the day, not by the journey

The congestion charge is billed by the day. That sounds like a technicality and it changes how you plan a week rather than how you plan a journey. Cross into the zone once and you have paid for that day whether you crossed the boundary once or six times, so a day with several appointments inside the zone costs the same as a day with one. Keep the car outside the zone entirely and the question does not arise.

It also means a long hire accumulates quietly. A car on a monthly hire that goes into the zone on weekday mornings is a real line in your month rather than a rounding error, and it is worth working out at the start rather than discovering in week three. If the car is mainly for weekends and trips out of town, it may barely register at all.

The money nobody budgets for is not the charges

Bus lanes, box junctions, red route stops and yellow lines. These are penalty charge notices rather than road-user charges, they are a different order of money, and they are the ones nobody budgets for. Penalties follow the driver: a charge incurred by the vehicle is passed on, and a penalty earned by the person driving is theirs, which is the correct way round and also the reason to be careful in an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar city.

The two that catch visiting drivers most are the box junction you entered because the car in front moved and then stopped, and the bus lane that is only a bus lane at certain hours and says so in small type on a pole you went past without reading. Neither is easy in a large car in heavy traffic. The rule that saves the most money is the simplest one: if you cannot see your exit, do not enter the box.

Dartford, and leaving London

The Dartford Crossing sits outside both schemes and has its own charge, with its own payment window. There is no booth and nothing to stop for, which is precisely why people forget it happened at all. Like the London charges, it is paid by us and passed on at cost.

Several other British cities operate clean air zones of their own, on a similar principle to ULEZ and with their own rules, boundaries and exemptions. If the hire is going out of London — and a good many are, since that is what people hire a Defender or a Ghost for — that is a question worth asking before you set off rather than a surprise afterwards.

On a chauffeured day you never see any of this

It is the quiet argument for taking a driver in London, and it rarely makes the brochure. On a chauffeured booking the zone is not your problem, the boundary is not your problem, and the parking — which is the expensive part — is somebody else’s job entirely. The driver waits somewhere legal between stops and comes back when you call.

That is not a reason to take a chauffeur for a week in the Cotswolds. It is a reason to think about the London days and the rest of the trip as two different questions.

The sentence to say before you take the keys

How are road charges handled on this hire, and where is that written down? It is one question, it has a one-sentence answer, and anybody who cannot give you that answer is worth a second question.

For the record, here is ours. The quoted figure is VAT-inclusive — VAT is never added on top — with mileage, comprehensive insurance and delivery anywhere in London already inside it, and no fuel surcharge waiting at the end. Road charges are the exception: they arrive from TfL after the fact and are passed on at cost, on the terms set out on the agreement you signed. If you want that confirmed against a specific car and a specific set of dates, ring 0207 046 0048 between 06:00 and 23:00, Monday to Saturday.

Questions this raises