Dear LPG, 

I don’t drive but currently when so many pensioners’ children have moved out of London in order to be able to afford to buy a house, ULEZ is still having quite an effect on us oldies. 

Like many children of South London pensioners, both of mine have moved further south and a couple of decades ago I had my concerns about not being able to see them so often.  When they each made the move, I remember being told that it really would not make a lot of difference, and they were right.  Over the past twenty years, the fact that they lived a bit further away really did not make that much difference. Getting around was easy and their coming to visit was just a matter of 40 minutes on the motorway.  Well, that is how it was until last October.   

Over the past couple of years, I have heard all the talk about it, but I never really thought that the whole petrol ULEZ emissions situation would affect me.  As I said, I don’t drive but over the past year a few of my friends who do have found themselves buying new wheels if they could afford them or giving up because the new law forced them to get rid of their cars which were not always possible or easy to replace.

The problem is that, while the new laws do not yet affect the areas where many of those grown-up children live, it has added an extra £12.50 to the cost of the visits they used to make to see me.  My son has a diesel car and while he has plans to change it later this year, the regular visits that I was assured would not be affected by the 25 or so miles between his house and mine, have seriously thinned out over the past 6 months.

So many were influenced by the considerable encouragement that was given by the government.  For quite a while during the first decade of the 21st century, ‘go diesel’ was their advice, but now we have been told that, often quite new cars were not a good buy.  It is something that we all must live with, but in the middle of last year I saw an interesting advert on TV urging drivers of cars that run on diesel of possible compensation.  That was before I felt the full force of ULEZ, and I was not really paying that much attention, but I have recently seen it again and with a more personal reason for having an interest, I took more notice.

I looked online to see if it was worth pursuing and it all looks so simple on the surface but, having found some independent viewpoints, I am not so sure now.  I don’t know how viable it all is and my son says that it all comes over as the latest no-win-no-fee ploy to follow the PPI campaigns that came to an official end on August 29th 2019, but having found the information and passed it on to my son, I thought I should ask LPG to bring it to the attention of my fellow readers, although I advise that you read both sides of the story before getting involved.

OL, New Cross.

OL shares the information she found…

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