London’s Lorry Rules: time for change

Operators of commercial vehicles in London have many issues at the forefront of their minds when delivering goods and services to the nation’s capital. Will the delivery be on time? Where will the offload take place as close to delivery as possible? How many penalty charge notices (PCNs) will this journey attract?

Interwoven in all of this is the simple fact that day-to-day work on the roads of London is a highly stressful activity to undertake, with many drivers citing stress as one of the reasons they do not feel appreciated in their work. There is the sheer amount of traffic on the streets: not only during the traditional rush hours, but seemingly at a constant the closer to the city centre you go. This is the heart of London, where the leisure and retail sectors need an unending supply to keep all residents and visitors fed, watered and content.

For a vehicle operator that is also looking to burn less fuel, and press on with its decarbonisation journey, there are several avenues open to it, and one of these would be to retime deliveries away from the main part of the day. This would allow the vehicles to be sent into London when there is less congestion caused by the private cars and fewer pedestrians and other road uses, such as cyclists, so less chance of a collision incident.

At face value, this appears to be a win-win situation. During the day the road network can be used by residents and visitors to move around, and at nights or weekends commercial vehicles can efficiently and effectively deliver and service, as per customer demand.

Sadly, it is not as simple as it sounds. Vehicle operators who wish to be as efficient as possible, by using larger vehicles to optimise payload to keep the number of vehicles required to a minimum, are potentially prevented from retiming their journey by the London Lorry Control Scheme, operated by London Councils: the pan-London organisation that coordinates work between the London Boroughs and City of London.

Introduced in the 1980s, with the aim to protect the sleep of residents of London, the London Lorry Control Scheme targets vehicles 18 tonnes and over by preventing them from being operated on a vast section of London’s roads at weekends and overnights. This means that some vehicles are required to follow strict diversionary routes around the city just to reach their usual delivery points, with the laudable aim of protecting the nighttime quiet of London’s residential areas.

But does it? Can a scheme that was introduced in the 1980s still be achieving its goals?

At Logistics UK, we don’t think so. In fact, we are now certain that the restrictions on vehicle movements during off-peak hours now result in more negative outcomes than benefits they are supposed to solve. We now firmly believe that it is well past the time for the scheme to have a full review of its hours of operation.

This would better reflect the use of London’s road network in the mid-2020s, rather than the 1980s, along with the radical redesign of vehicles and technologies being used.

A radical rethink of the London Lorry Control Scheme will deliver many quick wins to London’s elected representatives in terms of improving road safety for other road users, allowing operators to cut their fuel burn and thus improve emission output, and help London’s businesses increase their productivity – without any significant detriment to London’s residents. And here is why we believe this…

Improving road safety

The roads of London have seen an explosion in the number of cyclists, and other forms of personal mobility, in recent years. The Mayor and boroughs have spent a lot of money on improving the cycle infrastructure around the city. This will deliver significant public health benefits through increased active travel and should mean fewer private motorcars on the streets.

A great portion of this increased cycling takes place during peak hours in the week, with commuters heading to the workplace, so it would make sense to allow commercial vehicles entering the city to deliver or service, to retime away from when the roads are congested with private motorcars and cyclists.

The scheme actively prevents this from taking place, by forcing commercial vehicles to use the road network at the same time as everyone else at rush hour, thereby artificially forcing the interaction between all road users.

This is not a sensible position to be in.

Improving air quality

Modern commercial vehicles weighing 18 tonnes and over are far more efficient and produce far fewer emissions than their 1980s counterparts, however they still do require diesel for propulsion. One Logistics UK member has analysed their fuel usage, mapped against the requirements of the scheme.

Using their routing software, the member ran 15 consecutive days of data for the five distribution centres which serve the city. The following eye-watering numbers were generated:

• 2332 additional miles are being travelled per day to make provision for the scheme’s rules. That’s c. 850,000 additional miles per year on London’s roads.

• This equates to around 290,000 extra litres of diesel per year.

• From an environmental perspective, it’s the equivalent of around 750 tonnes of additional CO2 annually (and the associated NOx and particulates affecting air quality).

In any other industrial sector, such a quick win in reducing emissions would be seized upon by the elected representatives of the geographical area covered. But commercial vehicles are required to spend this extra amount on diesel to adhere to the strict requirements of the scheme.

This is not a sensible position to be in.

Improving economic efficiency

Commercial operators only send their vehicles on to the roads because of customer demand and, due to running costs, need to make their journeys as efficient as possible. Based on the same data analysis, as above, on the extra milage created by the scheme, our member is required to send an additional seven vehicles on to the roads per day to deliver the same amount of goods.

Setting aside the cost of purchasing and maintaining seven extra heavy goods vehicles and trailers, the payroll cost associated with the additional hours is over £1.3m per year.

This financial cost is a constant drain on companies, reducing the economic efficiency of the capital, and could be eliminated by a review of the control hours of the scheme, with the cost benefits passed on to London’s consumers.

This is not a sensible position to be in.

Let’s work together to resolve this

Logistics UK and its membership are more than ready to discuss a full review of the London Lorry Control Scheme with the authorities, particularly with London Councils. Indeed, we have been discussing this with other elected bodies, notably the Great London Authority (GLA) and Transport for London (TfL). We have submitted evidence to the GLA’s Transport Committee report on the allocation of road space and have spoken directly to its elected representatives.

The GLA published, in March 2026, its London Logistics Plan 2026: Progress update document, which forms part of the Mayor’s London Growth Plan, and we are very happy to see that our sensible arguments are beginning to gain traction.

The document talks about the challenge caused by restrictions on the retiming of deliveries and that the solution to this challenge would be to ‘reduce the hours of control to allow more logistics movements to be retimed to the off-peak and overnight’.

This is a sensible position to be in, and Logistics UK stands ready to get moving on it.