I am very concerned about the Labour Mayor of London’s plans to expand ULEZ to the Greater London Boroughs, which will see it border Dartford and Swanley, and the effect this will have on the Medway’s drivers.
The scheme is a £12.50 a day tax on drivers – and Medway motorists are among the worst affected. This is clearly an attempt by London’s Labour Mayor to extract cash from hardworking local people. Anyone travelling to Greater London, whether it be for hospital appointments, work or visiting family, will be impacted by this charge, that is why I am determined to work with colleagues to put a stop to it. Medway residents are already affected significantly by the current scheme and the expansion would be even worse. This becomes even more serious with his plans to also scrap the travelcard train ticket scheme for residents like us in Medway.
Improving air quality in our towns is extremely important, but this is a cynical scheme as the Mayor's own independent assessment concludes that the expansion will have a negligible impact on air quality. A scheme for residents to subsidise an already heavily publicly subsidised TFL.
