Portsmouth City Council working with contractors Colas and telecom company Siemens to put up 39 ANPR cameras. These cameras will be used to check the vehicles number plate on whether the vehicle may need to pay the clean air zone charge or not.
Drivers of private cars, motorcycles and vans wont be charged to drive in the Portsmouth CAZ, no matter how old the vehicle is, but could be charged if they drive through other clean air zones in the UK.
The Portsmouth CAZ is a class B, meaning that only vehicles that don't meet Euro 6 emissions standard (if diesel) or Euro 4 emissions (if petrol) will be charged, meaning that only most polluting 'non-compliant' vehicles will be charged daily for driving through the clean air zone with non-compliant taxis and private hire vehicles being charged £10 a day to drive through the zone, and non-compliant heavy goods vehicle (HGVs), buses and coaches will be charged £50 a day.
There are however some vehicle exemptions for emergency service and military vehicles.
The government mandated CAZ covers the are in the south west of the city, including the city centre where pollution is the highest. Portsmouth International Port is not included within Portsmouth CAZ as high points of pollution would not be significantly reduced in this area if it where to be implemented, as the majority of traffic traveling to and from the internal ports do not travel through high pollution points. However, the Wight link ferry terminal is included in the zone, since the majority of traffic does travel through the high pollution points.