Time flies… It has been about 6 months that I started a new job and did my trip to Spain and the UK. So, it is about time to visit my son in the UK again. And the upcoming MGB60 event in the British Motor Museum in Gaydon is a fantastic opportunity to this. When I bought the tickets back in August, it felt like there is plenty of time to prepare and plan the tour – but so much other stuff came up at work and home – and you know… time flies ….
Maybe it was good not to have planned too much in advance, because last week my son moved just south of the London city center. And as he asked me to bring over a few things he needs in his new apartment – I need to adjust the route slightly. For the last few years, I always tried to avoid driving into London – picking up stuff and Moss in Feltham or driving around in Hounslow, Hayes and Uxbridge was already enough “London traffic” for my taste. For visitors (well, most likely for everyone) public transport in London is usually the better choice.
But now I cannot avoid it and the new address is right in the London Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). The daily charge is 12,50GBP if you don’t meet the emission standards. According to the website that applies to non-UK registered vehicles alike. However, quite a few people warned me that said, that if I don’t register in advance, I will get a hefty fine with cost around 70 to 80 Euros.
I assume that this not entirely correct. Most likely it is similar to my experience at the Dartford tunnel crossing. The toll costs 2,50GBP – but the letter you get from EPCPLC is misleading. It lists the fine if you don’t pay within two weeks on the upper half of the document in bold print – and the correct amount is listed in one line and smaller print at the bottom. If you don’t read it carefully – you might pay the fine right away although you don’t have too. I guess it will be similar here.
Anyhow – I drive a 1967 MGB – it should be exempt for the ULEZ anyway as the website states. All I need to do is register my car. For this you need to create an account on the TFL website – which turns out to be a challenge for non-UK residents. The form allows you to enter an address manually and select e.g. Germany as country. But when you try to complete the account creation process on the next page, you get an error message that “Something went wrong”. If you try again, you get told that “the Capita CCRS BizTalk services returned and error”. Biztalk is a Microsoft Enterprise Service bus tool – which leads me to assume that they have a programming error if a non-UK address is being entered.
After a few attempts to create tickets on their website, my workaround was to create an account with my son’s address in the UK. This worked right way. And when I try to change the address in my account profile – I get the same error message that I get on account creation – clearly, TFL does not consider non-UK residents as a test case in their software development….
Once you have an account – you can add a vehicle. However, if you want to request the exemption for a car not registered in the UK, then you need to click on the “LEZ/ULEZ” services. This brings you to a page that has a link for “applying for the Showman’s discount” at the bottom – which seems to be right link to to register a historic car in the LEZ/ULEZ. The screenshots below might be helpful and guide you. I uploaded my cars official papers as well as the British Motor Heritage certificate I have (to hopefully make the process easier for whoever is going to look at it)
It is too early to say that this worked out. They need up to 10 days to check this. I also opened another ticket for the problem with the non-UK address. Who knows – maybe somebody will investigate the issue.
With the ULEZ registration done, it was time tonight to do a checkup Maggie. Greasing up the front suspension, checking all fluids, brakes, and lights took just over an hour. Far less than I spent the last couple of nights on the TFL website… 🙂
Fixing C6622 
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