New driving laws and rules you need to know for 2025

The automotive industry plays a vital role in the UK’s economy. The governing bodies work on various plans throughout the year so that the auto industry can keep making progress. From reducing CO2 emissions to supporting technological advancements, various laws and rules are being planned and implemented each year that may affect you.
Here’s our round-up of what’s coming up in 2025:

From 1 April 2025 onwards, all electric vehicles will have to start paying a higher band vehicle excise duty (commonly referred as ‘car tax’) set by the government. The standard rates currently stand at £190/year for cars, £335/year for vans and £25/year for motorcycles and tricycles.
Electric cars registered on or after April 1, 2025 will pay a first-year rate of £10 as opposed to the £0 paid in financial year 2024-25. These cars will also have to pay the Expensive Car Supplement levied on cars with a list price of more than £40,000, which electric vehicles were previously exempt from. The current Expensive Car Supplement charge stands at £410 in 2024/25. Diesel and petrol cars producing Co2 more than 76g/km will start paying double the first-year tax in 2025/26 as compared to 2024/25. Vehicle excise duty (VED) has been increasing in line with inflation since 2010. Changes in VED for the next financial year were announced in Autumn Budget 2024.

2. Fuel duty freeze to continue in 2025/26 and Fuel Finder will be introduced end of 2025

In the Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced that fuel duty will remain frozen for another year till March 2026 to help with the cost-of-living crisis. Fuel duty has been frozen since January 2011 to prevent its rise with inflation. The basic rate on diesel and petrol has been 52.95 pence per litre (ppl) as per the Office for Budget Responsibility which includes the 5 ppl cut.
The government also announced that they’ll be introducing a new scheme called Fuel Finder (previously called Pumpwatch) by the end of 2025, to help improve road fuel price transparency. Under Fuel Finder, all UK retail petrol-filling stations will be required to share details of any price changes and unavailability of fuel within 30 minutes. This will help drivers get a fair deal for fuel across the UK.

Benefit in Kind (BiK) refers to the tax you pay when you buy a car through your company’s salary sacrifice scheme. BiK rates, like vehicle excise duty, are dependent upon your car’s CO2 emissions.
Since 2022, BiK rates have been stable, but this ends in financial year 2025-26. From April 2025 onwards, BiK rates will increase by 1% in each tax bracket, including tax on zero-emission cars. Fully electric vehicles registered after April 6, 2025 will pay 3% BiK as opposed to the current 2%. The BiK rate keeps increasing as the level of CO2 emitted by the car increases, all the way up to 37% levied on cars producing more that 154g/km CO2.

To reduce the number of deaths and injuries on London roads, Transport for London (TfL) implemented a Direct Vision Standard (DVS) and safety permit scheme from 28 October 2024 onwards which mandates heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) to have a safety permit before entering most parts of Greater London.
Lorries that applied for and were granted a grace period now have until 23:59 on 4 May 2025 to install the Progressive Safe System and obtain an HGV safety permit. TfL assigns a star rating to vehicles based on the DVS which measures how much of the road and surroundings can the driver see through their cab windows to ensure that the other road users are visible and safe. All lorries over 12 tonnes must have a three-star rating or fit a progressive Safe System in the vehicle to make it safer, and keep driving and operating in Greater London. Failure to meet the new requirements will result in the drivers getting a Penalty Charge Notice (PNC). HGVs are also required to hold a safety permit before entering and using the areas covered by the HGV safety permit scheme. You can apply for the permit for free. Find out which areas of Greater London are covered under this scheme here.

Tachographs are fitted in certain commercial vehicles with a maximum authorised mass of more than 3.5 tonnes. They’re used to track data like driving time, the car’s speed and mileage. Using a tachograph helps ensure that all drivers follow the rules of the road, as well as ensures driver wellbeing.
According to the Regulation (EU) 2020/1054, a ‘full’ smart tachograph 2 or ‘transitional’ smart tachograph 2 must be retrofitted into in-scope vehicles with: • an analogue or digital tachograph undertaking international journeys, on or after 31 December 2024 onwards • a smart tachograph 1 that are undertaking international journeys, on or after 19 August 2025 onwards This new version of the tachograph will be able to record when the vehicle crosses borders, when the vehicle is being loaded and unloaded, and will feature strengthened anti-tempering mechanisms.

Until now, unless you drove a fully-electric vehicle or a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, anyone driving through London’s congestion charging zone (CCZ) have had to pay a £15 congestion charge. This changes from 25 December, 2025 onwards where all drivers, irrespective of their vehicle will be liable to pay the congestion charge.
Since it’s free to travel in the congestion charge zone at all times from 25th December till 1st January (inclusive) every year, drivers of an electric car or hydrogen fuel cell vehicle will have to start paying congestion charge from 2 January, 2026 onwards. Many businesses have signed an open letter asking Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to exempt electric vans from congestion charge to help ease the cost of businesses investing in environmentally friendly fleets. Learn more about congestion charge.

Emission standards help keep the emissions produced by vehicles in check, to help improve the air quality. Euro 6 is the latest emission standard rating introduced on 1 September 2015.
Euro 7 was adopted by the EU in April 2024 to help further reduce pollution emitted by vehicles in Europe, and is set to be implemented from 2026 onwards. The Euro 7 emission standards set out newer and stricter rules for emissions from cars, vans and heavy-duty vehicles. While Euro 7 has kept the same level of exhaust emission limits, it has introduced stricter requirements for solid particles emitted by cars and vans, particle emitted when braking and stricter lifetime requirements for all vehicles in terms of mileage and lifetime.

We could see self-driving cars arrive by 2026 after the Automated Vehicles (AV) Act was passed in May 2024.
The AV Act requires all self-driving cars to undergo robust safety testing. Cars will need to achieve at least the same level of safety and competence as human drivers and meet all safety checks before they can be allowed on the roads. Using this technology, the government hopes to reduce road collisions and fatalities, boost the economy and deliver new jobs, improve the quality of transport in the UK, help deliver essential goods, and increase connectivity. While this technology exists and has been in good use in countries like the US and China, the UK is yet to reap the benefits of this technology.

9. Safety cameras trial to end in March 2025

Ten police forces have been working with the National Highway to trial a new automatically technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to catch drivers not wearing seatbelts or using their mobile while driving.
The technology trial was first launched in 2021 by the National Highway. For the latest trial, which will be running from Feb 2024 to March 2025, they’ve joined forces with the police to learn more about how the technology could be used. The AI technology is capable of capturing footage of drivers driving dangerously and send it to police. Once caught, drivers can be fined up to £500 for not wearing a seatbelt, and a £1,000 fine and six penalty points for using their mobiles. Through this trial, the National Highway hopes to expand the deployments and integrate data processing with police systems to help make roads safer and eventually roll out the technology nationwide.

Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) is a certificate required by all professional drivers that operate HGVs (heavy goods vehicles). From 2025 it may become easier to qualify as a CPC driver and return to professional driving for those who only want drive in the UK.
The government has proposed dividing CPC qualifications into International Driving CPC and National Driving CPC. This will help make it the National CPC course easier with training providers being able to offer longer course if they want and being free to set their own time limits to course completion. You’ll also be able to do 12 hours of e-learning towards your overall 35 hours of training required, from the comfort of your home or workplace. The government has also proposed adding more options to make it easier to return to professional driving, including taking a new 7-hour ‘return to driving’ training module for International Driver CPC, driving professionally again in the UK, and then taking a further 28 hours of National Driver CPC or International Driver CPC training within 12 months of finishing the ‘return to driving’ module to requalify. All these changes are subject to Parliamentary approval.

Guernsey might implement a vehicle inspection scheme to ensure the local vehicles can continue driving as normal in Europe post-Brexit.
Under this scheme, vehicles that are more than five years old will be required to go through an inspection once every three years. The standards of the inspection would align broadly with the UK’s, with some adjustment for local factors and local legislation where appropriate, according to Environment and Infrastructure (E&I) Committee. This scheme was initially due to go live in 2022 but was delayed due to the COVID pandemic.

Japanese battery technology company AESC’s second Sunderland battery plant is due to start production in 2025.
According to AESC, this plant will have a capacity of 12 GWh and will employ more than a 1,000 people when operational in 2025. This represents a sixfold increase in the electric vehicle battery production in the UK. AESC UK is Nissan’s battery partner. They’re now planning to build their third gigafactory in the UK after the Sunderland City Council passed their planning application for the plant in September 2024.

Chinese carmaker Chery Automobile could be launching its brand Jaecoo in the UK in 2025. Chery has already launched its brand Omoda with their car Omoda 5 priced around £25,000 onwards and the Omoda 5e priced around £34,000 onwards.
Jaecoo is a premium sister brand to Omoda and will enter the UK market with its mid-size SUV - Jaecoo 7. Founded in 1997, Chery is one of the top car manufacturers in China. Unlike other Chinese new entrant, Chery is going to offer both traditional and electric cars in the UK. Chery aims to offer a line-up of ‘affordable premium’ cars in the UK.

The DVSA strategic plan to 2025 sets out everything that the DVSA wants to achieve by 2025, to help work towards achieving their vision to 2030: keeping Britain moving, safely and sustainably. The hope to make their services simpler and more inclusive, and harmonise how the industry works with their operations.
Some of the things the DVSA hopes to achieve by 2025 include reducing test waiting times, support the national supply chain through recruitment and development of drivers, improve their services in heavy vehicle testing, MOT and vehicle approvals, make the UK roads safer, and focus on employee talent development among other things, subject to trials.

All vehicles need to display a registration plate to be legally driven in the UK.
In March and September each year we get a new set of number plates, which are registered to new car buyers. In 2024, you’ll be able to register a new car under the ‘24’ reg plate in March and under ‘74’ plate in September. If you’re after a new car, you can find thousands of new electric cars, hybrids, SUVs, coupes and more on Auto Trader – start browsing today.