ULEZ: The one borough where drivers won't be charged £12.50 on any roads if council blocks cameras

Transport for London won’t be able to fine drivers on any road in Harrow if the council refuses to let it install cameras for the ULEZ expansion. TfL owns and manages a network of roads across London, but none of them run through the borough.

The transport body would need to get permission from the council to install cameras on roads when the Ultra Low Emission Zone expands into Harrow in August. But in December 2022 the council said it “will not be cooperating” with the expansion, after raising serious concerns about the plan.

Drivers of the most polluting cars will face a £12.50 daily charge for driving in the Ultra Low Emission Zone. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, claims this will cut pollution in the capital.

In conjunction with Hillingdon, Bexley, and Bromley Council’s, Harrow’s leadership wrote a letter to Mr Khan objecting to the plans, citing the “adverse effects” it will have on residents, businesses, and visitors.

The letter said: “Until we have seen compelling evidence to the contrary, it remains our position that this scheme will not translate successfully to outer London and the negative impact to local households and economies will far outweigh the negligible air quality benefits.”

A Harrow Council spokesperson told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The evidence that ULEZ will work is not there. We have suggested a more generous scrappage scheme for instance or better public transport, but this scheme fails to understand the difference between outer and inner London.”

Mr Khan said he was listening to outer Londoners during a recent visit to Enfield (January 30), where he announced a £110m vehicle scrappage scheme - which provides money to help Londoners scrap their non compliant vehicles.

He told MyLondon: "Outer London residents wanted more buses, so I announced a million kilometres of more buses - the biggest expansion in Outer London in history. Also, residents in Outer London, sole traders and small businesses were saying 'we'd like to keep our van, rather than scrapping it, we'd like to retrofit it,' so we listened to those residents, and now for the first time ever you can get £5,000 towards a retrofit scheme.

"Then, residents in Outer London said 'look we don't want to replace a polluting vehicle with a less polluting vehicle', we'd like to have bus usage or tram usage. So the new scheme gives you money towards scrapping your vehicle and two free bus and tram travel passes for an entire year. Those are just three examples of where we've listened to Outer Londoners.”

Harrow Council leader, Cllr Paul Osborn, has called the expansion plan “outrageous”, claiming the mayor’s “vanity project” ignored residents and businesses. He added: “This is the wrong solution at the wrong time. There is no evidence that it will improve air quality but it will hit the poorest households most.”