New Mayor announces steps to tackle poor air quality in London

Thu 26 May 2016 View all news

The new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced that he will soon launch a formal policy consultation on a major package of measures to tackle air pollution in London. The Mayor has also joined the environmental lawyers, Client Earth, in a legal challenge to the government on air quality.

Sadiq Khan said: "I want to act before an emergency, which is why we need big, bold and sometimes difficult policies if London is to meet the scale of the challenge.”

The Mayor's press release said that 10,000 Londoners die every year because of polluted air according to the latest medical research.  London does not currently meet the legal requirements for pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and that new research published by the World Health Organisation showed that London has breached safe levels of PM10 particulates.

The proposals in the consultation will include:

  • Extending the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to the North Circular Road and the South Circular Road and the possibility of bringing forward the introduction earlier than 2020. Under current plans the ULEZ will only operate within the Congestion Charging Zone and it is due to come in from 2020.
  • Implementing an extra charge on the most polluting vehicles entering central London using the Congestion Charge payment and enforcement system from 2017 (this would not mean an increase in the Congestion Charge but just the method for collecting the extra charge from people driving the most polluting vehicles)
  • Introducing ULEZ standards for heavy vehicles London-wide from 2020
  • Giving the go-ahead for Transport for London (TfL) to start work on the costs and challenges of implementing a diesel scrappage scheme as part of a wider national scheme delivered by the Government
  • Proposals to work with the Government to tackle air pollution on a national and international level.

It will also include proposals for TfL to lead by example:

  • Introducing self-imposed ULEZ standards a year earlier for TfL double decker buses
  • Implementing clean bus corridors – tackling the worst pollution hotspots by concentrating cleaner buses on the dirtiest routes
  • Expanding the ULEZ retrofit programme to 3,000 buses outside the central zone (up from 2,000)
  • Purchasing only hybrid or zero-emission double-decker buses from 2018.

In a later and related development, the Mayor has joined a high court challenge against the government over its air pollution plans, overturning the position of his predecessor, Boris Johnson. The Mayor has filed a legal submission and is expected to make a witness statement and provide evidence to the court on the air pollution crisis in the capital.

Environmental lawyers ClientEarth are suing the government for the second time in a year, having won a case at the supreme court in 2015 which ordered ministers to fulfil their legal duty to cut pollution in “the shortest time possible”. The new case argues the government is still failing to do this.

The UK missed a 2010 deadline to meet EU air quality rules but (the Guardian reports) the new plan put forward by the government after losing at the supreme court would not cut pollution to legal levels until 2025 in some cities, including London.

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