Follow up: 'Toxicity charge' plans announced
Last year, the Mayor invited Londoners to share their experiences of London’s air quality and ideas for helping to improve it. Over 15,000 people responded here on Talk London and some of the impact of this participation can now be seen in an announcement on a new £10 toxicity charge.
The introduction of the ‘T-Charge’, also known as the Emissions Surcharge, would be aimed at the oldest, most polluting vehicles on our roads and follows your input after:
• 81% of Talk Londoners favour a T-Charge, with similar levels of support regardless of where people live in London.
• 41% of Talk Londoners told us that a daily charge of £10 was about right (the most popular charge level of those proposed).
• 42% favoured operating hours of Monday to Friday 7am-6pm. A further 39% favoured longer hours, but Transport for London has elected to use the same operational hours as the Congestion Charge.
This ‘T-Charge’ applies mainly to diesel and petrol vehicles registered before 2006 and will come into force on 23 October 2017 in time for the start of the school autumn half-term. Residents of the zone receive a discount and many of the same exemptions to the Congestion Charge also apply to the ‘T-Charge’.
You can check whether your vehicle will be affected by the 'T-Charge' by using this free online vehicle checker.
The 'T-charge' will operate on top of (and during the same operating times) as the Congestion Charge (Monday to Friday 7am-6pm. See map), so it will cost £21.50 to drive in the zone if you drive a relevant vehicle.
So, what’s next for improving London’s air? The Mayor has doubled funding spent on tackling air quality to £875million (over the next five years) and is consulting on bringing forward the start date of the central Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) from 2020 to 2019 and expanding the ULEZ up to the North/South Circular roads.
Your views have been central to the designing of new measures so far, and we’ll be keeping you updated as plans develop. You can read more on the planned measures to improve air quality in London, including improvements to the bus, taxi and private-hire fleets, emissions from buildings and cycling infrastructure.