Bromley Council has criticised the mayor of London’s plan to expand the ULEZ scheme and is now “examining the legal basis of the decision”.

Hundreds of thousands more drivers will face a daily fee of £12.50 for using London’s roads after mayor Sadiq Khan announced he will expand a pollution charge zone to boost air quality.

Khan is extending the ultra-low emission zone to cover the whole of London, including Bromley, from August 29, 2023.

Bromley Council has said that it has received a “steady stream of enquiries” and would like to clarify its continued opposition to the proposal.

The council says that while it “supports for call for cleaner air” it also criticizes “the decision to blatantly ignore a significant majority opinion of Londoners who responded to TfL’s consultation exercise.”

The council claims that Bromley already has amongst the cleanest air in London.

Transport for London (TfL) estimates that on an average day about 160,000 cars and 42,000 vans that use London’s roads would be liable for the £12.50 ULEZ fee.

Whether or not a vehicle is liable for the charge depends on how much nitrogen dioxide it emits.

Bromley Council, along with Bexley, Harrow and Hillingdon are currently examining the legal basis of the decision and have now formally served a Pre Action Protocol letter to the Mayor’s office and TfL.

Bromley Council is now seeking further information to “demonstrate the lawfulness of the decision they have made”.

Councillor Colin Smith, Leader of Bromley Council said, “Our complete opposition and cynicism as to Mayor Khan’s rationale for expanding ULEZ is well documented.

“In light of the widespread ongoing public interest on related matters, I thought it might be helpful to outline the council’s latest position.

“The decision to blatantly ignore a significant majority opinion of Londoners who responded to TfL’s consultation exercise, based on the highly questionable, selective and incomplete findings of a research paper commissioned by TfL themselves, simply cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged.

“Whilst we all support the call for cleaner air, it should be noted from the latest authenticated data to hand that Bromley already has amongst the cleanest air in London and indeed, that Bromley’s air remains cleaner than that of any of the Boroughs already ensnared within the existing ULEZ scheme.

“It is also the case, that local asthma sufferers recorded the lowest incidence of attacks requiring hospital admission and long may that remain the case and improve upon further as drivers slowly but surely trade in or retire their petrol and diesel vehicles at the end of their serviceable, lives for Green and Hybrid vehicles.

“We all support that too, but it rather misses the point.”

“The ‘scheme’ isn’t actually about air quality in the final analysis.

“The stealthy, unstated and cynical intention remains, under the guise of ULEZ, to erect a network of traffic cameras across the whole of the Capital which can then be used at the flick of a switch to introduce road price charging for all.

“Whether that is a good thing, or bad thing, clearly depends on your point of view, but it should at least be fully debated and publicly scrutinised as a policy initiative in its own right, rather than slyly slipped in through the back door under a false agenda as a fait accompli.”

Sadiq Khans spokesperson told PA News: “The real scandal is that toxic air leads to the deaths of thousands of Londoners every year, which is why the mayor took the difficult decision to expand the Ulez London-wide.

“The mayor made the decision after considering TfL’s (Transport for London’s) full final report on the consultation responses.

“The consultation was not a referendum. However, TfL made a number of modifications to the scheme following feedback received in the consultation.

“This included addressing cost of living concerns with a £110 million scrappage scheme for low-income Londoners and extending the exemptions for disabled Londoners.

“TfL takes its responsibility to run robust and legally compliant consultations extremely seriously, with an independent consultancy putting together the final analysis and report, and any suggestion that TfL or the mayor has sought to influence the results of the Ulez consultation is simply untrue.

“As part of a rigorous consultation process, it was right for TfL to seek responses from as wide a range of Londoners as possible, including young Londoners – whose lives will be affected by air pollution for years to come.”