Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ expansion: Outrage as thousands of drivers will have to pay £12.50-a-day

Furious motorists have blasted Sadiq Khan’s controversial decision to expand London’s ultra-low emissions zone from next August as the Labour Mayor ratchets up his ‘war on cars’.

Hundreds of thousands more drivers face a daily fee of £12.50 for using the capital’s roads after the city’s Left-wing mayor announced that he will expand Ulez to cover all of Greater London in a bid to boost air quality. 

Mr Khan insisted that extending the zone – which will now stretch more than 30 miles from  Uxbridge to Upminster – from August 29 next year is ‘one of the toughest decisions’ he has had to take, but that it will give 5million Londoners cleaner air to breathe.

The scheme, which operates at all times except Christmas Day, is currently limited to the area within the North and South Circular roads.

Furious drivers have slammed the controversial decision, which will cost commuters £3,250-a-year and comes as families are already facing soaring grocery, energy and fuel bills amid a cost of living crisis.

James Pearce, a teacher who lives half a mile outside the new Ulez zone, said it will now cost him £62.50 a week to travel to work unless he can fork out for a new car. He said he is ‘hugely disappointed’ by the decision, adding: ‘In the midst of a cost of living crisis and with two years left to pay on my car, not good timing.’

Care worker and mother-of-two Carly Meechan said she does not know how she will be able to do her job, which requires her driving to lots of vulnerable people’s homes. 

‘Are you going to buy me an electric car?’ she asked the London mayor. ‘I can barely afford to live on my wage as it is’.

And pensioner Ann Craig, who lives in Epsom, said she is on a low income and cannot afford to change her car but is worried that she won’t be able to travel for medical appointments as her local hospital will be in the new Ulez zone.

Another annoyed commuter said: ‘Cost of living crisis, and the ULEZ zone is stretching far out to Greater London. Thousands of people are struggling to turn the heating on, and now they’ll need to buy a new car. It’s laughable really.’ 

A fourth added: ‘This is nothing but a money-making scheme and will cripple tradespeople when already facing ridiculous inflation and taxes.’

Another outraged woman said: ‘So you’re telling me next year I cannot drive 5 mins down the road to work because I have to pay ULEZ charge for my car ??? With the cost of everything going up, are you paying for my new car??’ 

Transport for London (TfL) estimates that on an average day about 160,000 cars and 42,000 vans would be liable to pay the £12.50 Ulez fee once the area is expanded. 

It will cost those who drive in the area every day £4,500-a-year if their vehicle does not meet the requirements.

But transport officials believe that by the end of next year the expansion of the scheme will have encouraged tens of thousands of those drivers to switch to vehicles that comply with the minimum emissions standards or use other modes of getting around such as walking, cycling or public transport.

The ULEZ expansion is only the latest action in Sadiq Khan’s war on motorists, including:

Whether or not a vehicle is liable for the £12.50-a-day charge depends on how much nitrogen dioxide it emits.

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For diesel cars and vans to avoid the charge they must generally have been registered from 2016, while most petrol models registered from 2006 are exempt.

Drivers can check the status of their vehicle by entering its registration number on TfL’s website.

Mr Khan said air pollution is making Londoners ‘sick from cradle to the grave’, with illnesses such as cancer, lung disease, dementia and asthma.

He described the Ulez as ‘transformational’ and claimed extending it will mean ‘five million more people will be able to breathe cleaner air and live healthier lives’.

It comes despite fierce opposition, with an independent report showing that four times the amount of people told Tfl they opposed the move than supported it.

The Conservative transport spokesperson in the Greater London Assembly Nick Rogers said: ‘The official report from TfL shows an overwhelming majority – about 60 per cent – of respondents are opposed to Sadiq Khan’s damaging plans to expand the ULEZ. 

‘This increases to 68 per cent when you exclude organised campaigns, and a staggering 80 per cent of people who work in outer London are against.

‘Now is not the time to hammer Londoners with a £12.50 daily cost-of-living charge. 

‘Residents have made their views very clear to the Mayor: they do not want the ULEZ expansion. The Mayor must listen to them, scrap these plans and use the £250 million saved on real measures that tackle air pollution.’

The mayor insisted that the rising cost-of-living was a ‘key consideration’ in his decision on whether to implement the proposal, which was featured in a public consultation between May and July.

This led to him to introduce measures such as a £110million scrappage scheme to support Londoners on lower incomes, disabled people, small businesses and charities to scrap or retrofit their non-compliant vehicles.

There will also be a major expansion of bus services in outer London.

Mr Khan added: ‘Expanding the Ulez London-wide has not been an easy decision. The easy thing for me would have been to kick the can down the road.

‘But in the end, public health comes before political expediency.

‘Our city is being smothered by toxic air—and it’s hurting and killing Londoners, leading to asthma, dementia, and even cancer. Air pollution particles have even been found in the livers and brains of unborn babies. We cannot stand idly by and allow this to continue.’

Billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, who is the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy on climate ambition and solutions, claimed Mr Khan’s leadership is ‘helping to clean London’s air and set an example for cities around the world’.

Meanwhile the chief executive of charity Asthma + Lung UK described the move as a ‘public health victory’.

Sarah Woolnough said: ‘This is a huge win for everyone’s lungs. Asthma + Lung UK is delighted that the Mayor of London has listened to our campaigners. 

‘We hope this will lead to fewer premature deaths and fewer hospital admissions linked to air pollution.

‘We urge other polluted cities to follow in London’s footsteps by introducing ambitious Clean Air Zones to protect everyone’s right to breathe cleaner air.’ 

RAC head of roads policy Nicholas Lyes said the announcement will be ‘a hammer-blow for desperate drivers and businesses already struggling with crippling fuel costs’

The chief executive of the National Franchised Dealer Association, which represents car and commercial retailers across the UK, also argued against the expansion during ‘one of Britain’s worst cost-of-living crises.’

Sue Robinson said: ‘The Ultra-Low Emissions Zone expansion will undoubtedly have a disproportionate and adverse effect on London’s most deprived communities and motorists.

‘This £12.50 daily charge will hit businesses, key workers and less affluent families the hardest and the additional cost to some of London’s poorest communities will push some families over the brink and force a reduction in their access to private mobility.

‘We do not believe that this has been fully considered by Transport for London and looks more and more to be a money generating scheme for TfL.’ 

Meanwhile Michael Lloyd of the Federation of Small Businesses said a ‘heavy-handed’ Ulez expansion will ‘leave many small firms in a precarious position’.

He added that a recent survey of affected small businesses suggested 18 per cent planned to shut down if the extension went ahead, and 25 per cent intended to pass the extra cost on to customers.

But Mr Khan has said the expansion is needed because the ‘current and long-term threat from toxic air pollution to public health is significant’, adding that harmful emissions will cost the NHS and social care £10.4billion if no further action is taken to improve air quality.

The Mayor is also concerned about traffic congestion which he said had an estimated cost to the London economy of £5.1billion last year. Mr Khan added that nearly two-thirds of the cost of congestion in the city has been attributed to traffic delays in outer London. 

He has said that in the short term, expanding the Ulez zone ‘will have the biggest effect on emissions relative to the cost to Londoners as a whole, as well as helping to tackle the climate emergency and traffic congestion’. 

The staggering cost of driving in London has been laid bare in recent days, as it was revealed that parking firms are on track to issue demands for up to £1billion fines in the capital this year.

Meanwhile, London councils have issued 1.1 million fines – worth up to £100million – to motorists who drove through low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) over the past three years.

The multi-million pound schemes, which were put in place by the government to encourage a long-term move towards more cycling and walking, have been branded as council ‘cash cows’.

Labour mayor Mr Khan has been a particularly vocal proponent of them, issuing guidance to the capital’s 32 town halls on how to create them. 

But the widely hated schemes have been accused of making little impact on pollution and simply moving congestion and CO2 emissions to other areas. 

New government data has revealed that car use in London boroughs where controversial low-traffic neighbourhoods were installed during the pandemic rose more quickly compared to areas where the schemes were not adopted.

The ten inner London boroughs that adopted the car-free zones saw total vehicle miles rise by an average of 41 million (11.4 per cent) in 2021 as road traffic in the capital rebounded to similar levels seen before the first lockdown.

Meanwhile, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, the two inner boroughs that chose not to introduce LTNs in 2020, saw total vehicle miles rise by an average of just 29 million (8.9 per cent), according to the Times.

Mr Khan’s ‘war on motorists’ also saw him introduce a controversial scheme in 2020 in which roads were closed and others were narrowed to create new cycle lanes.

But the ‘Streetspace’ scheme was found to be ‘seriously flawed’ by a High Court judge last year, who said it ‘took advantage of the pandemic’ to push through ‘radical’ and permanent changes to London’s roads.

A big proponent of ditching cars in favour of walking and cycling, Mr Khan joined tens of thousands of people on a bike ride from London to Brighton to raise money for research into heart and circulatory diseases in the summer.

After arriving at the coast, Mr Khan – who has been Mayor of London since 2016 – said: ‘I was delighted to join 14,000 other cyclists taking on the 54-mile route which took us from my south London home turf, to Brighton’s historic seafront where a fantastic crowd gave us riders a much-needed boost for the final push.’