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Gingers office on George Road Edgbaston sits just outside the clear air zone, which came into force today.

The chargeable zone is for any non-compliant vehicle travelling inside the ring road.

Vehicles trying to avoid the zone are opting to re-route onto the ring road which is causing major traffic on the feeder roads like ours at George Road.

For non-compliant vehicles, the charge is £8 per day. Drivers will have 12 days to pay ( 6 before and 6 after ) if you don’t pay you will receive a fine for £60 which is reduce to 30 if you pay it within the 14 days.

You can find out if your car is compliant by entering your registration in https://vehiclecheck.drive-clean-air-zone.service.gov.uk/

Becoming a net zero City was always going to be difficult and not popular with many who are financially burdened because of the changes.

But to reduce our carbon footprint, and encourage people to make changes so we can all benefit from a healthier environment and to protect the one and only planet we all share, we all have to adapt.

Unfortunately, this does come at a financial cost to those non compliant drivers and for the rest of us it means 10- minuets extra sitting in traffic jam to get into work.

It would be interesting to find out what Birmingham City Council will be spending the additional revenue earned from this campaign. Hopefully, it will be low carbon technologies. If it were my decision I’d be installing a city centre heat network. Then our City’s secondary heat could be distributed to the economically challenged arears of our city like Nechells, providing cheap – low carbon heating to those who are in fuel poverty.