Recently elected London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced a draft of plans designed to tackle air pollution in the Capital, including charging £10 to the drivers of old and more polluting cars.
The proposals come following research that showed that every year, almost 9,500 Londoners die because of issues related to air pollution (rising to 40,000 across the UK), and that almost a quarter of the Capital’s primary schools are currently situated in “areas that breach the legal limit for NO2 air pollution”.
According to a report published by King’s College London in July last year, the estimated cost of pollution to London’s economy is around £3.7 billion, made up of “cost[s] of treatment, lost work hours and concern and inconvenience to family members”.
Khan said: “With nearly 10,000 people dying early every year in London due to exposure to air pollution, cleaning up London’s toxic air is now an issue of life and death.
“It is the 60th anniversary of the Clean Air Act of 1956, which was passed following the great London smogs of the 1950s. Today we face another pollution public health emergency in London and now it’s our turn to act.”
As such, Khan is proposing to add a £10 surcharge, that will be due in addition to the £11.50 congestion charge. The charge will apply to all cars sold before 2005 that do fail to meet Euro 4 emissions standards and will come into effect in 2017.
Khan went on: “Unlike the smoky pollution of the past, today’s pollution is a hidden killer. The scale of the failure to tackle the problem is demonstrated by the failure of the Government and the previous Mayor to meet legal pollution limits. Urgent action is now needed to ensure Londoners no longer have to fear the very air we breathe.
“That’s why I’m launching a hard-hitting plan of action to clean up our filthy air. Tough challenges call for tough measures, so I’m proposing a new £10 charge for the most polluting vehicles in central London from 2017, followed by an even stronger crackdown on vehicles pumping out hazardous pollutants.”
Further measures announced by the London Mayor include an extension of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ), in which all motor vehicles that do not meet exhaust emissions standards must pay a daily charge to drive.
The ULEZ, which comes into effect in 2019 was initially going to cover just the centre of London, but Khan is proposing to extend it out to the North and South circular roads from September 2020.
Drivers of vehicles who fail to pay the daily charge for entering the ULEZ will face a penalty fine that can be reduced if paid within 14 days.
Khan’s proposals have been praised by a cross-section of groups including environmental and public health charities, although they are expected to be met with some resistance, particularly from drivers of diesel cars. Khan has argued in favour of bringing forward a diesel scrapple scheme to help drivers of diesel cars with the financial burden of switching over to less polluting vehicles.
Tony Devenish, a member of the London Assembly, said: “We all want to tackle NO2 emissions but most vehicles built after 2005 perform just as poorly as those built before so the cut-off date is meaningless. Small business owners and ‘white van drivers’ with older company vehicles will effectively be taxed for travelling into the capital to work – that cannot be right.”
Nonetheless, while these proposals are going to face some difficulties in terms of popular acceptance, the drive behind them, and the hard-lined stance against air pollution that they represent has drawn praise.
Charity Asthma UK’s chief executive, Kay Boycott, said: “Air pollution, in particular traffic pollution, plays a role in both triggering asthma attacks and causing asthma in both children and adults, affecting 600,000 people in London.”
Spokespeople for Greenpeace, as well as for ClientEarth, a group of environmentalist lawyers, both said that they welcomed Khan’s plans.
