Summary and Key Points

• In 2008 the Greater Manchester local authorities proposed a congestion charge zone scheme, which would charge vehicle users for entry and exit to various areas of the city.
• Public opposition pressured the authorities and caused a referendum to be held on the scheme.
• The authorities lost the referendum with around 78% of votes opposed to the scheme.
• The congestion charge zone was not implemented.
• Around 2017, plans became public for a Manchester Clean Air Zone (CAZ) which would be charging vehicles to use the roads. This time in the name of reducing the levels of nitrogen oxide pollution.
• Around 2022 Greater Manchester authorities installed over 400 automatic number plate recognition cameras (ANPR) and over 1000 signs for the Clean Air Zone. They intended to target commercial vehicles (taxies, buses, vans, trucks, hire cars) with daily charges as part of the scheme.
• Public opposition was able to stop the scheme and “Under review” stickers were added to the CAZ signs for over year while the scheme was “paused”.
• The Greater Manchester Mayor stated in 2023 before his re-election, “There will never be a CAZ charge whilst I am mayor”.
• Investments in cleaner vehicles were instead proposed by the authorities as the main pollution-reduction scheme with no charges to road users.
• However, the automatic number plate recognition cameras remain. This time in the name of assisting the police investigate crimes.

Relevance to New Zealand

New Zealand cities are investigating various forms of congestion charges, smart road pricing, and the more ambitious Zero Emission Zones/Areas. In the United Kingdom we are able to find for examples  of both how these types of schemes are implemented and how public opposition can stop them.

The people of United Kingdom have spent over 15 years resisting the use of automatic number plate recognition cameras (ANPR) to charge vehicle travellers in Manchester. This case provides examples of successful public opposition as well as examples of what to expect from the authorities in terms of agendas, language, tactics, and levels of resolve.

The Congestion Charge Scheme

 In 2008 the Greater Manchester authority proposed establishing congestion charge zones for vehicles entering parts of the city, charging them a few pounds for entry and exit of different parts of the cordon around the city.

Groups such as National Alliance Against Tolls  prepared counter arguments to the authorities.

(See this document http://www.notolls.org.uk/ourfutureleaflet.pdf)

New groups formed and multiple groups worked together to oppose the proposed congestion charge  zone.

These groups included Manchester Against Road Tolls (MART) who worked alongside national groups such as the Tax Payers’ Alliance, the Drivers’ Alliance, and National Alliance Against Tolls

Groups worked on petitions and gathering community support to pressure the councils to put the congestion charge proposal to a referendum.

Manchester Against Road Tolls Leaflet

In the Manchester Congestion Charge Referendum, there was an overall voter turnout of approximately 53% with over 78% of people voting “No” to the congestion charge.

The congestion charge scheme was part of a proposal for billions government funding (and loans) to improve public transport. Voters were threatened with the loss of that transport funding if they reject the congestion charges.

“A total of just over a million votes were cast and of those 812,815 – a massive 78.8 per cent – put their cross in the ‘No’ box. Only 218,860 people, 21.2 per cent of those who voted, said they were in favour of the scheme.

Greater Manchester’s 10 councils have been bidding for more than £2.75bn from the government’s Transport Innovation Fund, including £318m to set up a charging scheme. Some £1.2bn would have been in the form of a loan, paid back over 30 years out of profits from the charge.”

C-charge: A resounding ‘NO’, David Ottewell, Manchester Evening News

 

“Greater Manchester rejected the idea of a congestion charge in a 2008 referendum after a heated campaign that deeply divided the region’s leaders.

It was proposed that vehicles entering the area bounded by the M60 motorway would be charged £2 in the morning peak, with a further £1 for those entering the Manchester Inner Ring Road. In the evening, a further £1 would have been charged on exit of each cordon.

It had the backing of former Manchester council chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein. But he admitted last year the policy had been a ‘mistake’ – because it had not allowed for the ‘day to day political and practical implications’ of such a radical move.

Transport leaders have been clear that Clean Air Zones and the congestion charge are two very different things.”

A bold new plan to tackle pollution levels could mean you have to pay £7.50 to drive into the city centre, Charlotte Cox, Manchester Evening News

The Clean Air Zone

Around 2017, the Manchester Evening News revealed details of a draft proposal to install cameras and start charging vehicles travelling in Manchester.  This time the justification being used was meeting pollution reduction targets.

“The four-page report outlines a draft proposal to meet the targets by placing 66 number plate recognition cameras across the region to form a ‘ring of steel’ around the charging areas…

…It states all zones could include restrictions on buses, coaches, taxis, HGVs, LGVs and cars.

‘Recommended charges’ cite a daily tariff of £7.50 for cars, £20 for LGVs and £100 for HGVS.

These would operate 24 hours a day.

Measures to curb polluting vehicles are central to new government air quality guidelines published on Friday by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

It’s part of a long-term ambition for nearly every car and van to produce zero emissions by 2050.”

A bold new plan to tackle pollution levels could mean you have to pay £7.50 to drive into the city centre, Charlotte Cox, Manchester Evening News

In late 2021, the authorities began installing automatic number plate recognition cameras amid the COVID19 disruptions and during the busy lead-up to Christmas. The authorities had plans to install between 800 and 850 automatic number plate recognition cameras in the Greater Manchester area.

In January 2022, the authorities planned to install enough cameras and CAZ signage to cover “all ten boroughs and an area of around 493 square miles” in Greater Manchester and then start charging commercial vehicle owners daily in May 2022.

Further groups formed to oppose the CAZ scheme such as the “RETHINK the Clean Air Zone – Greater Manchester” Facebook group and people were petition-signing in great numbers.

“The scheme has resulted in controversy, including a petition calling for a stop to the CAZ, which has attracted nearly 20,000 signatures, and a Facebook group called ‘Rethink the Clean Air Zone’ has more than 27,000 members.”

BREAKING: Manchester councils agree to refer the CAZ back to the Government, Pippa Neill, Air Quality News,  20 January 2022

Parts of the wider community organised protests including hundreds of taxi drives blocked a street outside the Greater Manchester Combined Authority while honked their horns for about an hour. A few farmers did a trial run of using Manchester public transport to move their livestock, anticipating the CAZ interfering with future visits to the vets.

The Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham had a regular appearance on a local radio, and many people phoned the station to question and criticise the Mayor about the Clean Air Zone.

“So when the CAZ cameras started appearing towards the end of last year – and particularly over Christmas, when a concerted social media campaign sprang up – the issue finally caught fire.

On his first Radio Manchester ‘hot seat’ appearance of 2022, Andy Burnham was faced with a perhaps unfamiliar political reality: concerted outrage. Host Mike Sweeney began the show by noting that the Clean Air Zone was only one of the issues they would be discussing, before being so inundated with calls about it that no other topic featured; it was a mayoral phone-in unlike any other that had taken place before, he said.”

What’s really going on with the Greater Manchester Clean Air Zone?, Jennifer Williams, Manchester Evening News

In February 2022, the Greater Manchester Mayor “paused” the activation of charges on the CAZ scheme for a year. Signs around the camera checkpoints were marked with “under review” stickers.

By February 2023 the Clean Air Zone (CAZ) plans were revised and scaled back with a focus on an “investment-led” approach.

“It comes around a year after the controversial scheme to charge taxis, vans, buses and lorries across all of the city-region’s roads – except for motorways – was put on hold following a public backlash. Since then, Greater Manchester has called for an ‘investment-led approach’ instead of charging any vehicles.

This means owners of vehicles which do not meet emissions standards would be offered funding for cleaner models, instead of paying daily penalties. Local authorities – who have been instructed to tackle illegal levels of pollution on the city-region’s roads – put this new proposal to the government last summer…The daily charges would be the same as previously proposed – £7.50 for taxis and private hire vehicles, £60 for buses, coaches and heavy goods vehicles and £10 for vans and minibuses.”

 Greater Manchester clean air zone charges and locations set out in revised plan, Joseph Timan, Manchester World,

The charge part of scheme was officially delayed to 2026 while the Manchester authorities conduct a review and send alternative proposals to central government.

“In the end, the government agreed to delay the deadline by two years to 2026, and gave Greater Manchester until July to come up with an alternative plan. Meanwhile, 1,194 signs which referenced the original start date of the scheme had to be covered up with stickers saying ‘under review’, costing an extra £120,000 on top of the £3m already paid to J McCann & Co for signage.

The 407 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras installed for the scheme would still be switched on to collect data which would inform the review, transport bosses said. The cameras have also been used by Greater Manchester Police in crime investigations and may be retained for this reason.

But keeping the cameras on is costing the city-region £375,000 a month. In total, day-to-day costs which were supposed to be covered by the revenue generated from the charges, are now forecast to total £7m by March 2023.”

One year on from the Clean Air Zone being paused, where are we now?, Joseph Timan, Manchester Evening News

In December 2023, the Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said “There will never be a CAZ charge whilst I am mayor” on BBC Radio Manchester in response to questions from listeners.

“I don’t think we’ll get working class people behind the drive to net zero if it’s about tax, charges, bans on things – basically making their lives suffer more. The only way we can do it is to give people incentives to do the right thing.”

Mayor Andy Burnham in a BBC Radio Manchester interview, as quoted by the Leigh Journal

Andy Burnham was re-elected as Mayor of Greater Manchester with an overwhelming majority in April 2024.

The authorities are now promoting a scheme to invest in cleaner vehicles to meet the pollution reduction targets. The charges associated with vehicle travel apparently have been dropped from the updated scheme. However, Mayor Andy Burnham intends to keep the 400 installed cameras, this time in the name of helping the police solve crimes. The United Kingdom is already widely-regarded as one of the most watched countries, outside of China, due to its extensive surveillance camera networks. The term “omni-surveillance” was used by Professor Fraser Sampson, the UK’s Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner.

The CAZ scheme is reported to have cost over £60 million, with local politicians still in doubt as to whether central government is forcing councils to charge vehicle travellers as a condition of those councils receiving transport funding.

“By October 2022, the Caz had cost over £62m. The service contract has so far cost £18.4m and £120,000 has been spent on 1,309 “Under review” stickers to paste on the dormant signs.

Eamonn O’Brien, the leader of Bury council and holder of the clean air brief, insisted it was not “fantasy politics” to ask the government for £130m while trying not to charge any members of the public.

 He called on the government to be honest: if the £130m is contingent on Greater Manchester introducing a charging zone, it should say so, and own that decision, he said: “What they can’t do is have it both ways and say these [charging zones] are terrible for car drivers and horrible things that socialists do, and then withhold the money to try and do the alternative.”

Vindication or cowardice? Andy Burnham’s clean air gamble in Manchester, Helen Pidd, The Guardian, 1 August 2023

Conclusion and Lessons

 The Manchester case provides a good example about how community action and people’s opposition can halt the authorities schemes to charge travellers on existing roads and penalise vehicle use around cities. A combination of petitions, protests, leafleting, and public questioning of politicians proved effective through the actions of many different groups and individuals. As predicted by opposition groups, the schemes charges often end up much higher than in initial proposals and the size of such schemes often expands with time. The ‘thin-end-of-the-wedge’ and the ‘slippery slope’ are real issues with these types of schemes. The Manchester case also demonstrates how city councils are very keen to install automatic number plate recognition cameras in cities and they will often change the publically stated reasons/motivations they give for installing those surveillance checkpoints. In Manchester, the cameras were proposed for reducing congestion in 2008; then large numbers of cameras were installed for reducing pollution in 2022; and then in 2023 the cameras were justified as being needed for solving crime. In New Zealand cities the script appears to be running in reverse. Automatic number plate recognition cameras have first been installed in the name of helping police with crime, with council strategies containing mentions of future congestion charges and Zero Emission Zones/Areas.

 

Further reading on this issue

New Zealand Initiative Report: Driving Change – How road pricing can improve our roads

RNZ articles on congestion charging and time of use charging (July-August 2024)