Bristol’s ruling Labour administration is set to approve its controversial clean air plans today (November 5), despite concerns they are unfair and will hit low-income families the hardest.
Bristol City Council is under a legal obligation to reduce air pollution in the city by lowering toxic nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels to within legal limits as quickly as possible.
After detailed technical modelling and public consultation, Bristol City Council has proposed a clean air zone (CAZ) that polluting commercial vehicles would be charged to enter and a daily eight-hour, inner-city ban on privately owned diesel vehicles.
Officers said it is the only “reasonable” way to meet the legal requirement, as the only other alternative would involve charging private drivers to enter the CAZ zone as well.
This is an option the city’s elected mayor, Marvin Rees, has said would disproportionately affect people earning less than £25,000 a year.
Setting the scene for tonight’s decision on the clean air plans, Mr Rees said: “We have a moral, ecological and legal duty to clean up the air we breathe.
“Anyone promising alternative proposals is simply misleading the city”.
If implemented, the plans are required to be in place by March 2021 and are predicted to reduce NO2 levels to within the legal limit by 2025.
The outline proposals have been broadly welcomed by elected members of the council who agree on the urgent need to tackle air pollution, which is estimated to kill 300 Bristolians a year.
But the plans, yet to be finalised, have been criticised by some members of the public and the automotive industry.
And top scrutiny councillors, whose job it is to examine council policy, have raised several concerns which they would like addressed before the final plans are submitted to government early next year.
Key among their concerns was the fear the plans would simply drive air pollution into residential areas, as traffic skirted around the CAZ to avoid charges and fines.
Members of the council’s overview and scrutiny board also worried the proposals were “unfair” and would see people fined for visiting the hospital between 7am and 3pm if they drive a diesel car.
A senior officer said the council was still “zeroing in” on the final scheme and would be consulting on mitigations, exemptions and requirements before coming to a final plan.
The diesel ban zone takes in the Bristol Royal Infirmary and the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children.'
Scrutiny board member, Conservative councillor Claire Hiscott, said: “The main thing I want to flag up is that the hospitals and our accident and emergency are within the diesel ban zone which means that should you need to access accident and emergency from a large part of the city you are going to incur a penalty if you drive in.
'I think the poorest are going to suffer'
“That worries me that as a parent, you try to do the right thing and buy a diesel car because the government told me to, and I would take my child in an emergency to the children’s hospital and incur a penalty.
“I think that blanket ban on private cars is going to cause all sorts of problems that we haven’t really teased out.
“I think the poorest are going to suffer.”
Cllr Hiscott and others pointed out changing a car is a “massive big deal” for a family, even if they get £2,000 from a proposed diesel vehicle scrappage scheme.
Adam Crowther, the council’s head of strategic city transport, said low-income households would be prioritised in any scrappage scheme, but warned the government would not necessarily agree to fund such a scheme.
Board members also raised concerns the diesel ban did not discriminate between older and newer diesel vehicles.
Labour councillor Jo Sergeant said she didn’t think the ban was “terribly fair” on families who have invested in a modern Euro 6 diesel vehicle.
But Mr Crowther said Euro 6 diesel vehicles still produce “quite significant emissions” and, since the Volkswagen emissions scandal, there were questions over whether the published emission levels of diesel vehicles were lower than the actual output.
Liberal Democrat group leader Gary Hopkins asked whether it would be possible to grade the CAZ charges for commercial vehicles, depending on how polluting they were.
Mr Crowther said it was something the council could take a look at, but warned grading the charges would add a level of complexity to the scheme that could prevent it being “comprehensible and enforceable”.
“There has to be a degree of understandability to a scheme,” he said, noting there have to be clear signs telling people what they have to pay and what that charge relates to.
The committee heard an estimated 40,000 fines would be issued in the first year of the scheme to businesses which did not pay the CAZ charge of £9 a day for taxis and light-goods vehicles or £100 a day for buses and heavy-goods vehicles.
Board members raised concerns about the impact of the charges on shops and other businesses, including smaller bus operators and tourist attractions such as We The Curious.
Liberal Democrat councillor Anthony Negus called for “much greater mitigation measures” to reduce the impact on individuals and businesses affected by the clean air proposals.
Green councillor Jerome Thomas said he was worried plans had been chosen to fit the mayor’s preferences.
“I’m genuinely not sure how much the mayor’s very public refusal to countenance charging [private] cars is driving our approach,” he said.
“I’m concerned that what’s happening is that the evidence is being shaped to in order to support the mayor’s personal agenda.
“And it’s particularly important because the government is going to kick up a stink about a complete ban on diesel cars and lots of people who have invested £25,000 to £40,000 in a Euro 6 diesel car are going to kick up a big stink about being excluded from large parts of the city.”
Mr Rees was not at the scrutiny meeting on October 30, but Mr Crowther said the only other option which would reach compliance faster than the plan on the table was not seen as “reasonable”.
That option would combine the private diesel vehicle ban with CAZ charges for privately owned and commercial vehicles that do not meet emissions standards.
Mr Crowther said: “The mayor has expressed his concerns about the impact of schemes on lower income households and we’ve taken time to give that issue more consideration.
“But it has not been the organising framework for the [clean air plan] work. That has been organised entirely around the legal test for compliance.”
Response from Marvin Rees
Mr Rees told the Local Democracy Reporting Service today (November 5): “People can have views but they need to be informed.
“Only two methods will meet our legal duty to reach compliance.
“The first is the proposed ‘hybrid’ plan, including a small area diesel ban and no charging for private vehicles.
“The other is a CAZ D, where everyone has to pay a charge, every time they access a large area of the city centre. This option also has a disproportionate impact on the people in the city who earn less than £25,000.
“No other option will reach legal compliance and so cannot be considered.”
Cabinet is due to meet at 4pm at City Hall today.
If approved tonight, the outline clean air plans will be further developed into final plans, which are due to be submitted to government in February 2020.
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