When Will Private Electric Scooters Be Legal in the UK?
Will privately-owned electric scooters finally be legal in the UK? After years of waiting for an answer to that question, we might have one soon. UK Transport Secretary Louise Haigh announced last week that the government plans to rule soon in favor of scooters, a move, she said, that is “clearly required” by circumstances.
This comment comes after trials of shared scooters in cities around the UK since 2020 have become indispensable to what Haigh calls “an integrated transport strategy.” Oscar Morgan, CEO of scooter start-up Bo, put things more plainly in an interview with Zag Daily:
“For too long the UK has fallen behind the EU and the rest of the world on this simple issue. E-scooters give us the opportunity to introduce low cost, quiet, zero emission transport to cities – not in 2030, or 2040: today.”
You can be sure we agree at Electric Scooter Guide. Unfortunately, legislation in the UK will not arrive “today.” Despite the urgency in these statements, “We’ve not got parliamentary time in this session,” says Haigh, “but we will look to legislate, absolutely.”
Political winds can change between now and the near future, as we’ve seen on this issue in the past. At least commuters and electric scooter enthusiasts in the Republic of Ireland can buy and ride their own electric scooters, since the country legalized the fast, portable, inexpensive modes of transportation earlier this year.
Scooter riders in the UK can take heart from the Transport Secretary’s comments on electric scooter legalisation in the UK. But it may be another couple years before legislation fully goes into effect, as Richard Dilks tells Nicole Kobie at Forbes. “We are the only developed economy,” says Dilks of the UK, “aside from the Netherlands, to not legislate” on private electric scooters.
Just because privately-owned electric scooters are disallowed on public roads in the UK doesn’t mean that people aren’t buying and riding them. Dilks estimates the number to be somewhere in the six figures. But riders risk fines, penalties on their drivers license, or worse if they’re caught.
Those who want to stay on the right side of the law, Kobie says, will continue to be disappointed by Parliamentary slowness: “keep waiting, it’ll be a while.”
