While Dutch cities spent the past year fine-tuning zero-emission zones and exemption regimes, London opened a different front. In March, the GLA and Transport for London published a progress update on the London Logistics Plan, due in late 2026 — the city’s first attempt in years to treat logistics not as a nuisance to be regulated, but as an economic sector to be grown.
From nuisance to asset
The framing matters. The plan sits under the London Growth Plan and complements, rather than replaces, the 2019 Freight and Servicing Action Plan.
Logistics is a cornerstone of London’s economy: in 2023 the sector employed nearly 5 percent of the capital’s workforce across more than 37,000 firms, while nationally it generated £1.2 trillion in revenue, 2.7 million jobs and £79.8 billion in Gross Value Added. Logistics employment grew 26 percent between 2010 and 2022, almost twice the wider economy’s rate. Planned expansions of Thames Freeport and London’s airports will strengthen its role in UK supply chains. Yet success brings pressure: London lost 9 percent of warehousing land between 2001 and 2020 — 39 percent in Inner London — pushing logistics outward and lengthening freight trips.
Its four draft objectives mirror the Growth Plan ambitions:
- Productivity – To improve the efficiency and reliability of London’s logistics system by optimizing freight networks, improving kerbside loading and delivery space management, capturing the benefits of new technology, data tools, and innovative operational practices.
- Inclusion – To reduce work‑related road risk for delivery drivers and riders, and support fair, safe, and improved working conditions across the logistics workforce.
- Green growth – To enable faster uptake of zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) within the sector, and support a transition to alternative, more sustainable logistics modes, including rail, water, cargo bike and deliveries on foot.
- A global capital – To strengthen London’s position as a world‑leading logistics hub by supporting continued investment, innovation, and sector development, contributing to national productivity and export growth.
Few city freight strategies put labor on the same level as emissions and congestion. The numbers explain why: roughly 45 percent of people killed or seriously injured on London’s roads (about 1,700 a year) are harmed in collisions involving a working driver or rider.
The numbers behind it
The baseline is candid. Freight vehicles entering the Congestion Charge Zone in the morning peak are down 20 percent on 2016; double the Mayor’s Transport Strategy target. Good news, until you read on: van kilometers keep rising, parcels hit 4.2 billion in 2024-25, and national greenhouse gas emissions from vans have grown by 60 percent since 1990, while HGV emissions fell by 15 percent. In other words: the cordon works, the system does not.
The most sobering figures concern land. Between 2001 and 2020, London lost 9 percent of its warehousing land and 18 percent of all industrial land; in Inner London, the losses were 39 percent and 37 percent, respectively.
Logistics has been pushed outward, producing more and longer freight trips while inner-city space grows scarce and expensive. Every city densifying around housing targets should recognize this mechanism.
Why this matters beyond London
Tellingly, London searched for comparable plans in New York, Paris, and Amsterdam, holding follow-up meetings with officials in New York, Paris, and Flanders. The comparison cuts both ways. The Dutch approach leads on regulation: zones, tolls, harmonized exemptions. London’s draft leads on economics: land strategy, productivity, labor standards.
The lesson
London’s own data shows that access restrictions alone do not fix urban freight; vans multiply outside every cordon. A serious city logistics policy needs three legs: regulation of vehicles, allocation of land, and protection of the people doing the work. London has now sketched the second and third. Dutch cities, busy perfecting the first, should read this progress update carefully before their zero-emission zones become clean, congested, and staffed by an exhausted workforce.