In June 2020 the London Congestion Charge (a.k.a. tax) was increased from £11.50 to £15.00 and the hours of coverage were extended. This was stated to be a temporary increase to cope with the Covid epidemic which was expected to lead to more people using private vehicles, when in fact traffic has reduced as more people worked from home.

Now the Mayor has announced more changes which are:

Phase 1 (from 20 December 2021)

The charge level will stay at £15.

The 90 per cent residents’ discount will be re-opened for all eligible residents to register for the discount.

The delayed payment charge will be £17.50 and the deadline will be extended to three days after the day of travel.

The Auto Pay and Fleet Auto Pay discount will be removed – that means an additional £1 payable for those registered with Auto Pay (a high proportion of payers).

The reimbursement arrangements that were introduced as part of the temporary changes will be retained or adapted to ensure that people most vulnerable to infection from epidemics and pandemics will continue to be protected. This will also facilitate essential trips made by NHS staff in times of exceptional or extraordinary circumstances including for commuting purposes – see https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/reimbursements-of-the-congestion-charge-and-ulez-charge for details.

The ability for residents to pay by App or online for multiple consecutive charging days will be removed.

Phase 2 (from 21 February 2022)

The operating hours for the Congestion Charge will be 07:00-18:00 on weekdays and 12:00-18:00 on weekends and Bank Holidays.

There was a public consultation on the proposed changes although only 9,680 responses were received when there are 2.6 million cars registered in London. Clearly most people affected did not know about it. The consultation did not ask simple questions about whether people supported the proposals or not. Our comment that the proposals lacked any evidence base to support them were reported however.

But the consultation report (available from here: https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/congestion-charge-changes ) claims that the Congestion Charge was successful in reducing congestion which is simply not true. This is a blatant lie repeatedly made by TfL. See our analysis on this page: https://www.freedomfordrivers.org/congestion . There has been no published data on traffic journey times in recent years, for reasons you can guess, but the experience of most drivers suggests it has got worse not better.

Comment: The Congestion Charge has always been about taxing London’s motorists to raise money for the Mayor and TfL to spend money on subsidising uneconomic public transport and on their bloated empire. These changes may mean that TfL will make over £100 million more in taxation if the higher Congestion Charge is retained.

You cannot tackle traffic congestion by charging because the unsatisfied demand for private transport is so high that people will pay almost anything for it and any road space released is soon filled up by new entrants. During the pandemic that is even more the case.

Roger Lawson

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