Since moving to London in 2016, Alice Montague has noticed that her lungs have taken a hit. “Every time I have a big laugh, I cough,” the 32-year-old NHS worker says. “Maybe it’s not that, but I attribute it to cycling in London pollution.” When we speak, she is suffering from a chest infection.
Montague, who has not received a diagnosis for her breathing difficulties, lives in Lewisham inside the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), which was expanded in 2021 to cover a portion of the borough. She cycles around the city frequently and says the city’s air quality is noticeably better than when she used cycle as a student in the years after moving to London.
She sometimes cycles on the south circular, a major road that will be covered by the expansion, and will be pleased to see Ulez stretch across the entire city from Tuesday. “It’s so important for the lungs of Londoners and will make London greener,” Montague says. “It is so horrible cycling and feeling the diesel fuel particles go into your lungs.”
Though she is not a motorist, she understands the frustrations of those who will have their livelihoods affected. “I do really feel for those who have to get a new vehicle or lose money from their business, but I believe that with compensation programmes this is perfectly reasonable,” she says. “The planet and health are so much more important than cars.”
While more Londoners support the expansion of Ulez than oppose it, those living in the capital’s outer fringes are evenly split on the issue, according to a recent poll. The survey, by Redfield and Wilton Strategies in July, found that across the whole city, 47% backed the scheme’s extension, while 32% were opposed to the idea.
Sinan Alan, a 43-year-old engineer living in Hounslow, is among those opposing the expansion, arguing that insufficient notice has been given. “I agree these measures are absolutely necessary to tackle with air pollution, but it’s the wrong time,” he says. “Such extensive expansion and not giving enough time to people, only nine months, is absolutely ridiculous. In the current financial climate, people are struggling and this move will make the poor even poorer.”
He bought a secondhand diesel car a few months before Khan announced in November that Ulez would be expanded. Alan chose a diesel car because of the savings compared with petrol, but says he would have opted for a compliant vehicle had he known the change was coming.
Alan commutes by train but he and his wife use the car every day for shopping and errands. “Public transport takes double the time locally, and it’s more difficult taking the bus with a young child,” says Alan, who has a two-year-old daughter.
“I expected to have it for about five years. Then a couple months later, the announcement came and we get just nine months to replace it,” he says. “Now, I can’t sell the car for the money I bought it for and I’ll have to do scrappage. Along with energy prices, it’s the icing on top of the cake.”
Others are happy to see their area brought into the fold, even if it means a financial hit. Polly Cetin, 47, a gardener in Crystal Palace, also had to sell the non-compliant family car. “We got £300 for our old diesel car at the end of July, two weeks before he expanded the grant,” she says, referring to Khan’s decision to make the £2,000 scrappage payment available to all Londoners with non-compliant vehicles. “We bought our new car, a Ulez-compliant diesel, for £9,500, which is a lot of money for us.
“However, I think the Ulez is a great idea. We have to think as a whole. The pollution levels in London are too high. I cycle into central London for work and am very aware of our need for cleaner air. In Crystal Palace, you can see all the way over London and how the smog sits over the city.”
While Ulez has attracted a great deal of attention, London is not the only UK city that has taken action to combat air pollution, with low emission zones (Lez) or clean air zones (Caz) implemented in Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford, Glasgow, Sheffield and Bradford.
David Shapiro, who is retired, says the clean air zone launched in Sheffield in February was a factor in selling his 2007 diesel camper van. “I’m strongly in favour of the principle of controlling emissions in an urban environment,” Shapiro says, citing public health and climate reasons.
But he adds there are inadequate scrapping subsidies from the government for diesel vehicles, meaning the “costs now fall disproportionately on individuals”.
Shapiro, 78, says Khan’s implementation of Ulez, without what he considers adequate scrappage subsidies, has given rightwingers ammunition to attack Labour’s cost of living credentials: “It’s a major own goal.”
Until he retired last year, Carl Smith, a 66-year-old supply teacher in Solihull, would often drive to work into Birmingham’s clean air zone, launched in 2021. With a hybrid Kia, he is exempt from Birmingham’s charges of typically £8 a day for inadequate cars and £50 for coaches and HGVs.
For Smith, the issue has “become a political football” in Westminster after the Conservatives made it part of the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, despite it being the area’s former MP Boris Johnson who first drew up plans for London’s Ulez. The Tories won the seat by fewer than 500 votes.
Smith supports the schemes and says they help raise money that can be ploughed back into high-quality public transport. “Trying to clean up the air is a good idea and trying to do it by reducing carbon emissions is a good idea,” he says. For Birmingham, “I think you’d have to have a pretty old, ropey car to not get away with paying the charge.”
