Bradford City Council has admitted that it will not meet a legal requirement to tackle air pollution as quickly as possible, having successfully ‘pushed back’ against government pressure to comply with the law.
The city’s delayed Clean Air Zone has gone live - though the city council fought successfully to water it down to the point where just 4% of vehicles will be charged.
Vehicles that do not meet the required emission standards will be subject to a daily charge to drive into the zone, apart from passenger cars, motorbikes and vehicles awarded an exemption, including local businesses.
A council spokesperson told Transport Network that the council had ‘worked to design a Clean Air Plan that delivers the primary objective set by Government to achieve compliance with air quality limit value for nitrogen dioxide in the shortest time possible’.
Despite this, the spokesperson added: ‘The legal requirement would be met quicker by charging passengers cars but Bradford pushed back on this as there would be a negative impact on the most deprived families in the district.’
Transport Network approached environment Department Defra for an explanation as to why it allowed Bradford to meet the legal limits later that ‘in the shortest time possible’ but received no response.
Oliver Lord, UK head of the Clean Cities Campaign, said city leaders who take ‘tough decisions’ to deliver Clean Air Zones should be applauded but added that it was ‘unfortunate’ that Bradford had excluded polluting cars, adding that this was ‘part of a broader issue that Clean Air Zones would be more robust and effective with sufficient support from the Government’.
Cllr Hinchcliffe (second from left) celebrates the launch of the watered-down CAZ with officials and business leaders
Council leader Cllr Susan Hinchcliffe said: ‘Bradford is acting on a Government directive to implement a charging Clean Air Zone. We know that air pollution levels are too high and have damaging impacts on the health of too many of our residents. There’s no escaping that fact.
‘After protracted negotiations with Government the CAZ has been designed very carefully to exempt private cars, motorbikes, and local businesses, while having an immediate and material impact on the air we all breathe. What we have to stop is polluting commercial vehicles from outside the district using Bradford as a de facto motorway, coming through the district but not stopping to do business here.’
The council said its ‘C+’ CAZ, which places additional requirements on private hire cars, has been designed around those areas where air pollution levels exceed the legal limit and is expected to reduce nitrogen dioxide (NO2) by 35% and CO2 by 147,000 tonnes.
It added that it expected that an average of 140,000 vehicles per day will drive through the CAZ, boasting that ‘the chargeable non-compliant vehicles are predicted to be 4% of all traffic’.
While Bradford attributed the low number of drivers charged to the support of local businesses who have already upgraded their vehicles with £30m of Government cash, it appears to be largely a function of the number of exemptions.
A spokesperson said it was not able to calculate the number of non-compliant vehicles that would not be charged.
Any revenue from the introduction of the Bradford CAZ will be reinvested in further programmes in the district to reduce harmful emissions, which may include support for zero emission buses, further help for residents and businesses to upgrade their vehicles, the development of hydrogen in the district and support for schools to reduce emissions in their areas.
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