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Norfolk County Council will not rule out extending its newly-launched Norwich Low Emission Zone (LEZ) to target HGVs in the future. Last week, part of its city centre became the latest patch of the country to be covered by an LEZ, but the clean air zone is only designed to clean-up buses and coaches spewing out harmful NOx emissions into the atmosphere, not trucks.

Offenders will  be written to and asked to convert their engines to Euro-3 repeat offenders will be reported to the Traffic Commissioner, who could remove their licence. The council hopes that by 2010 100% of buses will reach its LEZ standard.

However, when a spokesman was asked about the possibility of HGVs being targeted, he says: "It won't impact on delivery vehicles at this stage it's targeted at the much higher percentage of buses and coaches in the area than delivery vehicles. But we never say never we will see what effect this has. These measures are becoming increasingly stringent as the years goes on."

Norwich's LEZ differs from the London LEZ in that it will measure NOx emissions from vehicles, not particulate matter. It has also been introduced as part of the EU-financed Civitas initiative, which is for cleaner and better transport in cities.