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Edinburgh's Low Emission Zone and your removal van

If either end of your move is in the city centre, the van has to meet the Low Emission Zone standard. This page sets out what the rule is, where it applies and what it means for you as the person booking, as the council publishes it.

What the zone is

Edinburgh's Low Emission Zone came in on 31 May 2022 with a two-year grace period. Penalty notices have been issued since 1 June 2024. Cameras that read number plates sit at the entry points, and the zone is signed where you go in and where you come out.

It runs all day and every day, including nights, Sundays and holidays. It applies to every vehicle that is not exempt, and a removal van is not exempt. There is no charge you can pay to drive in with a van that falls short; the council is explicit that you cannot pay in advance. A van either meets the standard or it should stay out.

Where the line runs

The zone covers the city centre. Going clockwise, the council describes the boundary as running from Tollcross in the south to Palmerston Place in the west, along Queen Street in the New Town to Picardy Place, out to Abbeyhill, onto Holyrood Road, up the Pleasance and back along the Meadows to Tollcross.

That puts the Old Town, the Grassmarket, Princes Street and the streets of the first New Town south of Queen Street inside it. Marchmont, Bruntsfield, Stockbridge, Leith and most of the places people move between are outside. If your street is anywhere near the line, look it up on the council's boundary map rather than guess.

One detail matters for a move: the roads that make up the boundary are not inside the zone. Any vehicle may drive along them, compliant or not. So a flat that sits just inside the line can sometimes be loaded from a boundary road without the van going in at all. Whether that works depends on where your door is and where a van can legally stop, which is a question for your driver.

Which vans can go in

For cars and vans the standard follows the fuel:

• a diesel van must meet Euro 6;
• a petrol van must meet Euro 4;
• a fully electric van meets the standard.

Most removal vans are diesel, so the question is nearly always whether a van is Euro 6. The Scottish Government's vehicle checker answers it from the number plate in a few seconds. It works for vehicles registered in the UK and does not show exemptions.

Who gets the penalty notice

The council sends penalty notices to the registered keeper of the vehicle. The charge for a van starts at £60 and doubles with each further notice, to £120 and then £240, stopping at £480. Paying within fourteen days halves it. If a van then keeps out of the zone for ninety days in a row, the next notice starts again from the bottom.

When you book a driver here, the van is the driver's own, so the keeper is the driver, not you. That is one reason it helps to tell them early that the job goes into the centre.

What to do when you book

If your pickup or your drop-off is inside the zone, put it in the notes when you book: something as short as "drop-off is inside the LEZ" is enough. Your driver gets in touch to settle the details before the day, and that is the moment to ask them to confirm the van is fine for the zone.

If a driver's van does not meet the standard, they can turn the job down, and it is offered to another local driver. If nobody can take it, the hold on your card is released and you pay nothing.

It is also worth thinking about the street itself. Several streets inside the zone have loading restrictions at busy times, and in August some of the Old Town is closed to traffic for much of the day. The page on parking, permits and suspended bays and the one on moving in August cover both.

If you are hiring a van yourself

The same rule applies to a self-drive hire van. Check its number plate on the vehicle checker before you set off for an address in the centre, rather than taking it on trust. A penalty notice goes to the hire company as the registered keeper, and its rental terms decide what happens next. It is the kind of thing that is easy to miss on a busy day, which is part of the case for a man with a van instead.