GM will “not accept” govt’s city centre Clean Air Zone proposal

Greater Manchester will not accept the government’s proposal of a city centre Clean Air Zone charging taxis, vans, buses and lorries, Andy Burnham has said.

The mayor was told in a letter from Secretary of State George to reduce the area affected by the controversial scheme by 95% or more, effectively containing the Clean Air Zone within Manchester city centre.

However, the letter said there is ‘little robust evidence’ that scrapping charges and offering funding to upgrade vehicles instead would clean up the air enough.

It comes after the controversial scheme which was due to come into force across the whole of Greater Manchester this week was put on pause and the deadline by which the city-region must meet air quality targets was delayed.

Since then, Mr Burnham has said the city-region can achieve air quality compliance by the new date of 2026 without charging any vehicles at all.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, he said Greater Manchester will no longer accept any charges as part of the Clean Air Zone.

He said: “We have said that this can be done by incentives and that’s the Greater Manchester policy.

“We’ve said if they want charges, they’ll have to impose it.

“That’s the Greater Manchester position.”

Greater Manchester put forward the plans for a Clean Air Zone which would cover the whole of the city-region and charge some vehicles up to £60 a day following a ministerial direction to bring NO2 levels below legal limits by 2024.

However, the scheme was halted after the government agreed to delay the deadline by which air quality compliance must be achieved by two years.

It came after research commissioned by the mayor’s office found supply chain issues caused by Covid increased the cost of some new vans by up to 60%.

 

 

Mr Burnham says this delay makes a city centre Clean Air Zone possible – but he believes that all charges should be scrapped now that the deadline is 2026.

He claims that the Conservatives also campaigned to scrap all CAZ charges during the local elections and described their ‘false promises’ as ‘dishonest’.

Nevertheless, local Tories and anti-CAZ campaigners are claiming victory, including local MP Chris Clarkson.

RethinkGM, the campaign group set up to oppose the original scheme, has also said that the latest intervention by the government is a ‘substantial win’.

But Mr Burnham says there are businesses all over the city-region which use Manchester’s inner ring road and would therefore be affected by the charges.

In his letter to the Labour mayor, the Secretary of State said that a smaller Clean Air Zone would ‘achieve most of the public health benefits of the original scheme while greatly reducing the potential impact on local businesses’.

Mr Eustice also said the mostly unspent £132m which the government has given Greater Manchester would help businesses upgrade to cleaner vehicles.

However, it is unclear whether taxis, vans, buses and lorries based outside of the city centre would be eligible for funding if the Clean Air Zone is cut in size.

Mr Burnham suspects the move is an attempt to reduce access to funding.

He said: “What they appear to be saying in this letter is that the zone would be shrunk and therefore it would only be people in the zone who get the funds.

“That’s why we came up with the construct of a non-charging zone in a wider area and therefore businesses outside of it access the funds because there’s a fair chance they’d have to pass through as part of their business.”

Chris Clarkson – the Conservative MP for Heywood and Middleton – has welcomed the news, claiming that the government is ‘forcing’ Mr Burnham to ‘scrap his controversial GM wide CAZ congestion tax scheme’.

The Secretary of State describes the proposal of a city centre Clean Air Zone as ‘early thoughts’ by his department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. However, the Tory MP has interpreted this as an ‘instruction’ to the mayor.

 

 

Mr Clarkson said: “I am grateful to the government for stepping in to stop Andy Burnham’s job-killing clean air tax. The mayor ignored the strength of feeling locally as he tried to force through a 500 square mile charging zone, the largest in the world, against our will.

“Rochdale Labour still have serious questions to answer about why they volunteered to put our borough into this disastrous scheme when they were under no obligation to participate.

“It should not have taken the intervention of Greater Manchester’s Conservative MPs to fix this problem, but once again the mayor was too busy trying to blame everyone else for his mistake rather than trying to work constructively to get the scheme right.

“We all want a cleaner, healthier environment, but squeezing commuters and businesses for thousands of pounds was never the right way to do it.”

Greater Manchester has until 1 July to agree a new plan with the government.

Leaders have promised a public consultation would take place, but transport bosses have suggested that this would happen after a way forward is agreed.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was asked why the Secretary of State no longer supports a Clean Air Zone covering all of Greater Manchester which was signed off by the government last summer.

It was also asked whether businesses based outside of the Clean Air Zone would be eligible for funding to upgrade their vehicles to cleaner versions.

However, rather than answering these questions, the department sent ‘background briefing’ notes and further information from its website.

A Defra spokesperson said local authorities are responsible for developing Clean Air Zone schemes in consultation with residents and local businesses before submitting them to government for consideration and approval.

Reporting: Joseph Timan, Local Democracy Reporting Service

Additional reporting: Rochdale Online News