Sadiq Khan’s Ulez expansion ‘failed to lower pollution levels’
Sadiq Khan’s Ulez expansion to outer London failed to lower pollution levels, a report has found.
Bromley Council measured no “overall lowering in pollution” in the months after the mayor expanded his £12.50 daily charge zone to cover the whole city last year.
The partly rural borough, which is the largest in London, saw pollutants emitted by vehicles increase after the charge was imposed on Aug 29 2023, a report by the council’s environment committee said in June.
It found that in November last year, three months after the Ulez expansion, levels of pollutant nitrogen dioxide were higher across all the borough’s 32 air quality monitoring locations than they were in the preceding August.
The increase was blamed on “seasonal weather and temperature variations” and only eight of the locations saw more nitrogen dioxide in December 2023 than in August that year.
However, when comparing the data with 2022, the report concluded: “What cannot be seen at present is an overall lowering in pollution levels that can be directly attributed to the implementation of Ulez in outer London.”
The report added that the pollution levels in 2022 it compared its recent data with may have been artificially suppressed by the after-effects of Covid restrictions. The last major pandemic restrictions on travel were removed in July 2021.
It comes as City Hall maintains its own research, released in July measuring the success of the Ulez expansion in reducing air pollution, proves the scheme is working “even better than expected”.
The report measuring pollution across the capital released by the mayor’s office claimed that exhaust emissions from cars in outer London were estimated to be 22 per cent lower than without last year’s expansion.
Mr Khan faced widespread criticism for expanding Ulez to every borough in the capital and campaigners warned it would be unaffordable for the poorest Londoners who rely on cars in areas with poor public transport.
Simon Fawthrop, a Bromley councillor who opposed the expansion of the clean air zone, accused the mayor of using the Ulez expansion to carry out a “tax grab” to raise revenues.
He said: “We always said that the Ulez expansion would have no, or negligible impact on air quality, so far it looks like we were spot on and Khan was wrong. It’s time for Sadiq Khan to finally come clean and confess this was nothing more than a regressive and iniquitous tax grab, by a mayor desperate to raise revenue.”
Mr Khan has defended the scheme as necessary to tackle air pollution in London, which he is legally obliged to ensure is within a certain limit, and reduce the number of premature deaths attributed to toxic air in London every year.
Several claims about the benefits of Ulez, made by City Hall and independent academics, have been called into question in recent years.
The London School of Economics was recently accused of “verging on irresponsible” after researchers at its Grantham Institute published a study claiming the grades of children in schools had been improved by Ulez.
The Telegraph revealed last year that an “independent” peer reviewer who approved a report used to justify the expansion of Ulez to outer London worked for a research group at Imperial College London that had received funding from the mayor’s office.
A spokesman for Sadiq Khan said: “The mayor is committed to improving air quality in London and has taken world-leading action to tackle toxic air pollution, which prematurely takes the lives of an estimated 4,000 Londoners each year.
“The London-wide Ulez six-month report shows the scheme is working even better than expected, with pollutant emissions lower than if the mayor hadn’t expanded the scheme.
“Air quality in London is improving at a faster rate than the average for the rest of England, and with 96 per cent of vehicles now Ulez compliant, thousands of Londoners have made the switch to cleaner vehicles.”