Just 1-in-200 Londoners are impacted by the extension of ULEZ to outer London and are paying a £12.50 fine for driving older, more-polluting vehicles in the capital.
That’s the findings of a Freedom of Information request conducted by BBC London, and comes eight months after the expansion of the air pollution-reducing measure to outer London, including Croydon.
Zack Polanski, who has been a London Assembly Member for the Green Party since 2021, in a podcast interview with Inside Croydon, described the ULEZ expansion as “the dog that didn’t bite”, a policy which has been framed as “controversial”, yet which the majority of Londoners have quickly realised does not affect their lifestyles whatsoever.
What ULEZ expansion does appear to have accomplished, however, is an improvement in air quality in outer London. Provisional monitoring data suggests that pollution has reduced in boroughs such as Croydon, Bromley and Sutton since August, when the Ultra Low Emission Zone was extended.
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This will cause a significant dent in the London election campaign of Harrow hairdresser and Donald Trump fan Susan Hall, who has clasped tightly to the misleading and deceptive anti-ULEZ rhetoric of her yellow-board, anti-vax mates, and the likes of climate change-denier Piers Corbyn.
Tory Mayoral candidate Hall has pledged to remove ULEZ from “Day 1” if she is elected (of which there is diminishing little chance, thank goodness).
Yet anti-pollution campaigners say that London’s toxic air pollution has improved since the ULEZ expansion.
Nearly 10,000 Londoners die each year of illnesses related to the city’s air pollution, which cross-party organisation London Councils say is costing the NHS in the capital up to £3.7billion per year.
More than 500,000 Londoners suffer from asthma and are vulnerable to the effects of toxic air. More than half of these people live in outer London, based on NHS data.
Last year’s ULEZ changes might, just might, be a step towards improving those horror statistics.
Clean Air in London has looked at provisional online monitoring data in outer London and says it shows nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations generally lower in the first six months since ULEZ expansion than the comparable period in 2022 to 2023.
The data is unverified, and could be variable due to many factors. But Simon Birkett, from Clean Air in London, told the BBC, “We have seen sharp reductions in nitrogen dioxide concentrations when the ULEZ was introduced in central London and inner London and that’s what we are expecting to see in outer London.
“It is a path that we are travelling down which is compliance rates, signs of nitrogen dioxide coming down, and then verification.”
Official pollution data will not be available until May or June.
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Hard data is available, though, for the number of drivers of non-compliant vehicles paying the daily £12.50 toll, and according to its FoI response, the BBC found that on average just 45,222 vehicles are affected by the charge.
Another 30,725 users of non-compliant vehicles still drive in the zone but are not charged due to various dispensations.
These figures demonstrate how few people are actually subject to the ULEZ charges, with 95.8% of vehicles recorded on London’s roads now compliant.
London-wide, the Ultra-Low Emission Zone has generated more than £130million since last August, with Transport for London predicting that income from the scheme will dwindle to almost nothing by 2026 as drivers switch away from more polluting vehicles.
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It isn’t a non issue to those of us who had to scrap their cars though is it? 2k scrappage just meant that similar size cars that are compliant jumped up in price so became unaffordable. Surely a £12.50 charge means that if you are well off then you are still allowed to pollute the air but for a price? It is not about clean air as otherwise all the older cars would have be banned, it is a tax. I wouldn’t trust Susan Hall to tie my shoes, but lets not keep spouting the same nonsense that ULEZ is about cleaning the air when it is a cash grab that has left poorer people worse off and richer people carrying on as normal. Vote Greens or Count Binface – the only credible options!
It is neither a “tax” nor a “cash grab”.
No one is forced to pay a ULEZ fine. Just use a less-polluting mode of transport. Simples.
“Nonsense about cleaning the air”? Yeah, because the air that we breathe is so pure… Yet you’d prefer it if nothing were done about it.
And let’s stop with all this nonsense about it being some attack on the poor. Relatively few Londoners even own cars, and the poorest are not among them. But the poor are disproportionately affected by toxic air pollution. No car = no ULEZ costs.
Any cash grab would not have built into its function making itself obsolete within three years, as is the case here.
So all nonsense. Are you sure you’re not Piers Corbyn in disguise?
Let’s hope you’re right. If Hall gets in, there will be a spike in toxic air pollution, carbon emissions and road congestion and a gaping hole in TfL’s finances. Is that what you want cos that’s what’ll happen
That’s all very well, but that figure won’t include all those who changed their car to comply which certainly impacted them!
Impacted them by changing their clapped out guzzler for a less polluting, cheaper to run, safer, newer motor
It always seemed a bit over hyped to me. The headlines were it will cost people a fortune but all you have to do really is drive a car less than 15 years old, which can be bought for less than £1000 and if you can’t afford that you probably can’t really afford to drive at all.
I swapped my 31 year old mazda for a newer car but it was just a bit annoying really.
The ULEZ charge is not a fine but a charge like the congestion charge. You get a ‘fine’, correctly called a penalty charge, if you don’t pay the charge. That’s £180 or £90 if paid within 14 days, or zero if you make successful representations to TFL or take the case to London Tribunals and win.
No one cares if it’s a ‘fine’ or a ‘charge’ – it has to be paid, or you get taken to court. You could always argue the semantics but the magistrate will in all probability say, ‘call it what you like and cough up’
No, it’s important to use correct terms otherwise you play into the hands of the right-wing ‘war on motorists’ crew.
And the Traffic Enforcement Centre, which enforces parking and other penalties, is not a conventional court and debts can only be chased by bailiffs instructed by local authorities (TFL, councils, DART etc.). There is no recourse to magistrates for decriminalised parking/road charging/moving traffic etc penalties issued by public authorities.