The number of vans on UK roads rose by 29% to 3.3m between 2002 and 2012, with the biggest rise in the north east, where van numbers rose by 82.5% over the ten-year period.
A new report commissioned by the RAC Foundation found that every tenth vehicle on UK roads is now a light commercial vehicle, but said that over the same period, car numbers had risen by just 11% to 28.7m.
Interestingly, the number of lorries on British roads fell by 5% to 460,000 between 2002 and 2012 — suggesting that perhaps some lorry traffic has moved into vans, either for reasons of load efficiency, or more worryingly, because the van sector is very lightly regulated compared to the heavy goods sector, and drivers are cheaper to employ, are not required to have an additional driving licence, and are not required to use a tachograph to monitor their working hours.
Here is the full table, showing the changing number of vans on UK roads between 2002 and 2012:
| REGION | Number of vans – 2002 | Number of vans – 2012 | % change 2012 on 2002 |
| North East |
77,300 |
141,000 |
82.5% |
| South West |
270,100 |
391,100 |
44.8% |
| Wales |
124,400 |
176,000 |
41.4% |
| Scotland |
174,600 |
241,500 |
38.3% |
| South East |
388,700 |
526,400 |
35.4% |
| Yorks & Humber |
182,000 |
246,000 |
35.2% |
| East Midlands |
220,600 |
278,000 |
26% |
| West Midlands |
307,900 |
382,000 |
24.1% |
| East |
274,000 |
330,300 |
20.6% |
| London |
194,000 |
203,000 |
4.7% |
| North West |
282,500 |
294,500 |
4.2% |
| GREAT BRITAIN |
2,542,300 |
3,280,600 |
29% |
(Source: Department for Transport)
The RAC report concluded that while an increase in internet shopping and home deliveries was one possible contributing factor to the increasing number of vans on our roads, there wasn’t sufficient data to draw a definite conclusion — in other words, the reports authors didn’t have any idea why van numbers have shot up so fast.