MANCHESTER Renege on Promise not to charge Private Car's Emission Fee.

Councillors have agreed to look at introducing a new London-style clean air zone. Two years ago, the region's mayor promised motorists wouldn't be hit with fees

Manchester councillors have agreed to look at charging older cars to drive into the city centre in a new London-style clean air zone.

At the first full meeting of the council this year, members also agreed to investigate banning through-traffic inside the inner ring road. 

No details of how such measures would work - or how much drivers would be charged - were outlined, but members agreed to ‘explore the feasibility’ of such a zone, bounded by the Manchester/Salford inner ring road.
 

But it appears to contradict a 2017 promise made by the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, that there would 'never' be a charge imposed on individual motorists.

The latest proposal was put forward by city centre councillors Jon-Connor Lyons and Marcus Johns, before being supported unanimously by Labour and Liberal Democrat members.

 

Coun Johns said London’s ‘ultra low emissions zone’ - which charges older cars £12.50 a day to drive into the centre of the capital, as well as older motorbikes, lorries, taxis and vans - had successfully slashed toxic nitrogen dioxide emissions by a third in the space of just a few months.

“This is also being explored in cities like York, Bristol, Oxford and Birmingham,” he said, adding that there was also ‘no reason’ for traffic to cross the city centre given the existence of the inner ring road, an expanded tram network and expected forthcoming decision from Andy Burnham to reform the bus network through franchising. 

Pointing to the ‘severe health consequences’ of current pollution levels in the city, he added: “I’ve not heard one reason not to act.”

Coun Lyons said such a charging zone ‘will help to tackle this, but only if the government will work with us’, a reference to the need for extra national cash for public transport. 

But Manchester ‘must be ambitious’, he said, adding that it was ‘the least we can do’.

City centre spokesman Pat Karney - who last year was critical of the environmental group Extinction Rebellion for closing Deansgate in an environmental protest, warning that shutting the road was harming city centre businesses and alienating the public - also backed the idea, arguing that younger city centre councillors such as Coun Johns and Lyons were forward-thinking, adding that the climate crisis ‘needs people like me and Richard Leese to catch up’, a reference to the council leader.

The motion contradicts Greater Manchester’s plans for air quality improvement, which have been drawn up jointly by all ten councils, including Manchester.

 

At present that plan - which has been submitted by Andy Burnham to government along with a request for extra public transport funding - only proposes charges for the most polluting heavy goods vehicles, taxis and buses, to be imposed Greater Manchester-wide, with a charge for polluting vans to be brought in from 2023. It doesn't include cars, or a specific city centre zone.

It is unclear what the effect of today’s decision by Manchester councillors will have on that plan.

While to date Greater Manchester councils have worked jointly on their clean air proposal, technically each individual local authority - including Manchester - has legal responsibility for bringing in measures to cut pollution in their own areas as soon as possible, leaving the prospect that the city could now unilaterally switch tack.

 

Some insiders also speculated the move had in part been drawn up ahead of this year’s local elections, in which south Manchester and city centre Labour seats could potentially be vulnerable to the Liberal Democrats.

Several other cities across the country are considering variants on such a plan, most recently York, where councillors want to ban cars entirely from the city centre.

But there had been some nervousness in Manchester about such a move, partly due to concerns that the public might equate it with the congestion charge proposed in 2008 - a different plan with different objectives, but still one that proposed vehicle charging and one that was ultimately defeated in a referendum.

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham also ruled out any charge on drivers of private vehicles in an interview with the Manchester Evening News in September 2017.

In London, the Ultra Low Emissions Zone applies to vehicles that don’t meet specific European standards - generally petrol cars and vans registered before 2005, diesels cars before 2015, vans before 2016, motorbikes registered before July 2007 and lorries registered before 2014.

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