Number of Households in Cornwall
As of March 2011 – according to the Council’s own figures: https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/media/3642934/BN4-Households-v4-Nov13.pdf – the number of households were 230,400, and based on their projection of the number increasing on average by 2,400 per year, that would suggest that the current number of households in Cornwall to be around 247,200 (7 yrs @ 2,400 = 16,800 + 230,400).
Average number of Cars per Household
The current statistic I could find for the average number of cars per household in England is for 2014/15, which returns a figure of 1.31 cars per household. https://www.statista.com/statistics/314912/average-number-of-cars-per-household-in-england/
Estimated number of Cars in Cornwall
On that basis that would estimate the number of Cars in Cornwall to be around 323,832 (247,200 * 1.31), of which there are 1,200 licensed vehicles, which represents a percentage of 0.49%. Of that 1,200 licensed vehicles, 1,049 are Diesel powered, which represents a percentage of 0.42% of the total vehicles in Cornwall.
Percentage of Diesel Cars on the roads today
If the statistics show that 2 out of every 5 of the 31.2 million cars that are on the UK’s roads are diesel cars, then that would suggest that the overall percentage which are diesel powered would be 40%. https://www.petrolprices.com/news/number-diesel-cars-record/
If the above details are correct, then 40% of the total cars in Cornwall (323,832 * 40%) returns an estimated number of 129,533 diesel cars in Cornwall. Which suggests that the 1,049 licensed diesel cars in Cornwall would be 0.81% of the overall diesel cars in Cornwall.
This information suggests that there would be very little impact whatsoever to air quality in Cornwall by imposing the current recommendations upon the trade, and considering this does not take commercial vehicles into account, would suggest perhaps no impact at all, meaning that it would just be an expensive exercise for the trade.
I suspect that if you then roll the numbers of Vans, HGVs, Buses & Coaches into the equation then our percentage will diminish into nothingness.
It will be interesting to see what the licensing officer comes back with!
Well they did come back with official numbers here.