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Stop ULEZ protest, London, 29 January 2023 (The Havering Daily)Bike shop owner – who owns nine cars – says ULEZ expansion will cause “chaos”
A bike shop owner in South London – who also owns nine cars – has spoken out against plans to expand the city’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which he believes will cause “chaos” for locals as well as simply creating a tax permitting paying motorists to “still poison people”.
Chris Penfold, who owns Deen’s Garage bike shop in Beckenham, Bromley, told the News Shopper that it will cost him £80,000 to upgrade three of his family’s cars to ensure they are compliant with the new extended scheme, which is set to be introduced by the end of August.
Bromley Council is one of five Conservative-controlled local authorities to publicly oppose the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s proposals to expand the ULEZ to outer London, with plans to mount a legal challenge backed earlier this month by former mayor (and Prime Minister) Boris Johnson.
Council leader Colin Smith has described the expansion as a “socially regressive tax” which “directly threatens jobs, the viability and availability of small businesses, and [will cause] significant damage to vital care networks.”
According to Khan’s plans, the ULEZ – inside which motorists will be charged £12.50 a day for driving non-compliant, high-polluting cars – will be extended to outer London from 29 August, a decision described by the Labour mayor as “not easy but necessary to reduce the capital's toxic air pollution”.
As part of the expansion, a £110m scrappage scheme will also be introduced, which aims to provide low-income Londoners with grants of up to £2,000 to replace their high-polluting vehicles.
However, Penfold – who, along with running his bike shop, repairs and races cars as a “silly hobby” – says that, under the scheme, six of the nine cars he currently owns will be non-compliant.
“Because I’m able to fix stuff, I tend to end up attracting free cars,” he told the News Shopper.
“My uncle had his catalytic converter stolen off his car, so he was going to scrap it because the car was old, so I repaired it… I’ve got nine at the minute, but I’ll compete [in races] in four of them, one of them is my wife’s car, and one of them’s a work car. But out of that, six are non-compliant [with ULEZ regulations].”
The bike shop owner continued that he and his family drive up to three cars a day as part of his business and for hobbies such as horse riding and racing, and that the cost of upgrading all three vehicles will come to £80,000.
Penfold also criticised what he regards as the “bizarre” rules concerning which cars are exempt from the charge.
“[I was given a] Nissan Micra which has done 16,000 miles, and bizarrely it’s non-compliant,” he says. “It could do another 80 or 90,000 miles. But yet you can go and buy a 50 grand Tesla, which is completely uneconomical to put on the road.”
The Bromley local did note, however, that he agrees with restricting car use in congested areas of central London, but that the expansion will disproportionately affect residents in some parts of the capital who have to “drive for miles” to get to their nearest shop.
“It’s pretty endless, the chaos it’s going to cause and the discomfort for no great effect on the air because the air is alright anyway,” he says.
“I respect the fact that they want lower emissions, but why should you be able to pay a tax to still poison people?
“Why are you paying money for that to happen? You should either have it and not pay or ban it, not be able to pay to use it.
“It’s basically saying that people are getting really ill and dying and they’ve got a poor quality of life, but if you give us £12.50 it’s actually acceptable.”
Responding to the bike shop owner’s complaints, a spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: “With around 4000 Londoners a year dying prematurely from toxic air, it is imperative that the Mayor’s decision to expand the ULEZ should be implemented without delay.
“Research by Imperial College London shows that Bromley has the highest number of premature deaths linked to air pollution of all London boroughs – with an estimated 204 lives lost every year.”
The spokesperson also noted that around 85 percent of vehicles in outer London are already compliant with ULEZ regulations.
They continued: “For those with the most polluting vehicles, the Mayor has launched his £110m vehicle scrappage scheme – the largest scheme ever launched by any city in the UK – to help low-income Londoners, disabled Londoners and small businesses and charities to replace their old, polluting vehicles.
“The Mayor is also calling on the Government to provide additional scrappage funding to London and the surrounding areas.
"The Government has provided millions of pounds for scrappage schemes in other parts of the country, but not given a single penny to London.”
Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
Latest Comments
- ktache 1 hour 13 min ago
Obviously can't be trusted, antisocial, ban motor vehicles...
- ktache 1 hour 18 min ago
But getting paid for it is the very definition of professional....
- ktache 1 hour 26 min ago
Never had a Shimano QR fail on me. They just work. And the top end ones look good too....
- Backladder 2 hours 13 min ago
If you're only looking at the guy in front of you then you're going to crash whatever brakes you have, you need to look beyond them to anticipate...
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As a woman, this works great for me! My chain broke once, and a kind guy stopped with a chain breaker and sorted it all out for me. We stopped at a...
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Same. I also have gone through a bunch of their tyres, and only the extralight disappointed (torn sidewall) but the standards are fantastic....
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Indeed - but it's no more inconsistent than our current road design - very often UK high streets are "for shopping" and also a busy through route....
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If you ask the world's leading economic commentators how many people have been rescued from abject poverty by capitalism the average answer would...
- The Larger Cyclist 7 hours 22 min ago
loads of parking
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45 comments
Am I sympathetic to his woes?
No.
I don't get the angst. £12.50 a day * 4 days a week, less holidays, about 190 days a year = £2.4kpa. You can literally drive a petrol car to work in London for 15 years for the cost of a 2nd hand Tesla. Or you could buy a good new bike every year to go in on. If anything the ULEZ fee should be higher.
We're finally getting a zone in Glasgow from June. My wife (a nurse) who can;t get public transport due shift timings, has to chnage her perfectly good car. Solution, a cheap Euro4 15yo petrol car that is compliant. And no, in spite of my cycling addiction, doesn't work for her - 24mile commute each way after a 12.5hr shift...
Chris is a nice guy. He did a great job rebuilding one of my bikes. He doesn't seem to realise though that he could trailer the old bangers he uses for automotive events outside of the charge zone and then trailer them back. Nor does he appreciate that if he traded in the non-compliant vehicles for ones 40 years old or more, they'd be exempt from the ULEZ. I'll mention that to him next time I see him.
I can't believe he doesn't do that already, if you race a car there is no guarantee that at the end of the race it will be road legal to get you home so almost all race cars are trailered to events.
Clubman motorsport stipulations are to drive to and from the event ,sometimes take 3 cars as my whole family compete I have a 45 year old car so understand ulez exemptions ,some days could cost in excess of £50 there is a degree of sensationalism in this article released without my permission and limited understanding as CNN it was stolen from my London
Thanks for the response, that is different to the events I have competed in, so what do you do if you damage the car so that it is not road legal to drive home and you can't fix it at the event?
“but why should you be able to pay a tax to still poison people?" - do you pay the same amount of Vehicle Excise Duty for each of your cars?
With VED you pay extra for the amount CO2 that's emitted, with ULEZ you pay extra for the NO2 that's emitted.
Disincentives aren't that hard to comprehend. People have been content to pay VED for decades so it's disingenuous to complain about the logic now.
Arguably this effect has been diluted for cars registered since 2017. For those, the first tax payment is geared to CO2 emissions, but in subsequent years there is a flat fee of £165 for all petrol and diesel vehicles, regardless of CO2 emissions (electric are £0). The differentiator is list price - those with cars over £40k pay a supplement.
'will disproportionately affect residents in some parts of the capital who have to “drive for miles” to get to their nearest shop'
really? What parts of London does he mean? Bromley can be very suburban but 'miles'?
Large parts of Bromley are rural or semi-rural, effectively fossilised by the green belt which accounts for most of the borough. The population of those parts would be a relatively small percentage but still a significant number.
Some parts of South East London are super-sized housing estates. In super-sized Britain many people would be incapable of a two mile round trip to pop down the shops. Add in railway lines which divide desire lines, some people are quite isolated from facilities.
What would one bet that those complaining that they must have a car because it's miles to the nearest shop are also those who oppose the tyranny of the concept of a 15 minute neighbourhood?
Inadvertantly, I may have helped retain a 15 minute neighbourhood locally. When the local shopping centre was in terminal decline, abandoned by the locals and in turn abandoned by the shop keepers, Sainsbury's bought the site and eventually after some pushing and shoving, put in a small supermarket, 130 car parking spaces, refurbed the doctors' surgery. In lockdown it was a godsend, as the drive to supermarkets had queues snaking down dual carriageways, at most we had a polite 15 minute queue.
While not the halcyon days of corner shops, greengrocers and local butchers, Dorridge at least has a place where people don't need to drive to avoid the couple of miles trip to the other local supermarket in Knowle or out across the motorway to other offerings (a 12 mile round trip to Sainsbury's, less for the 8 mile motorway round trip to Tesco).
While most will drive for the Big Shop, plenty of locals are prepared to stroll down the road for the top up shop.
I think the 15 minute neighbourhood is a chicken and egg problem. Local areas have been denuded of local amenities, so to make 15 minute neighbourhoods viable, you need to reinvigorate local offerings, but for that to happen they need the footfall, and they won't get the footfall with the large centralised offerings being apparently more attractive to the consumer.
I think also we have to remember that a large percentage of the population have become addicted to drive-thru KFC and Micky Ds and the Grauniad ideal of vegan cafes and wholefood shops on every street corner isn't going to fly. Having set foot in a Beefeater over the weekend for the first time in a couple of decades, it really was an eye-opener on what qualified as a dining experience in modern Britain.
Going back to my Sainsbury's point - at least that small supermarket was a compromise - but even then it is a brake on local shops offering a useful alternative. London's density makes it possible for all sorts of interesting businesses to thrive, where around the country, such models will struggle.
Absolutely. Let's not kid ourselves - the UK has been urbanising and centralising (with corresponding differentiation of country) for a long time. However mass motoring (and specifically - the ease and low cost of driving once you own a car) has set in process a hugely powerful feedback loop driving that much faster. That genie is even harder to re-cork than fixing our motoring-oriented infra. *
Yes, a "treat" being "let's drive to get some food" is a "thing". I guess you could even call the likes of Deliveroo / Just Eat "harm minimization" in this context!
However - I don't know if you've been to the Netherlands but they're not afraid of a takeway there. The shops are full of processed food in plastic, just like the UK. I'd bet the majority of Gouda is ready-sliced. What they do have is more local shops - although they're also struggling with the tempting convenience of super-fast delivery and its consequences.
* *Ramble* I hope we can "get back" or reimagine local communities including engineering for local transport. There are advantages apart from just nostalgia and it sounds cuddly. However Labour are repeating the "big growth" mantra and I suspect that the big government goals end up being directly opposed to "more local". I don't think this is an inevitable consequence but certainly our existing practice of growth goes along with more centralisation, more resource usage and ever faster movement of more people and things.
Most dutch would buy cheese as a segment cut from a block, and use a cheese grater or knife to cut off slices from that. Least in a family context.
I know my visits have been coloured by staying in city centres and mostly visiting convenience stores but good to know it's not single serving everywhere!
Again what is good about NL from a transport and liveability perspective is not only is it possible for the majority of people to consider cycling as a mode of transport *. In many places it's also possible for people to reach many of their regular destinations by cycling for less than 30 minutes, because there *are* local shops and other facilities rather than eg. a hypermarket which everyone drives to.
* Because of the network of routes, much on high-quality dedicated infra, which feel safe and convenient to use and where you can cycle side- by- side and/or safely cycle with your children.
I bet there's more sliced stuff around now, sure. But... especially younger cheese ("jong belegen")... it shouldn't be sliced until you want to eat it, cause the surface exposed to air hardens. If you want nice cheese, you need to buy in thicker chunks, to minimise surface area.
Nearly all supermarkets have a cheese counter, where they'll cut segments from a big cheese wheel - usually have a bunch ready cut and wrapped, and can always cut more on demand.
When I last lived there, we didn't get supermarket cheese. We went out of the village to a nearby farm, who made prize-winning cheese.
The infrastructure in NL is really good. And the freedom children have as a result is amazing. The "taxi of mum and dad" doesn't really exist in NL, because the kids and teens just cycle themselves to whereever they need to go to. They're generally cycling on their own to school at age 8 to 9 (which is older than in my day - I was cycling on my own to school 900m away at around 6.5). The 11, 12, etc. year olds cycle themselves to meet friends, go to football or hockey training, meet at the cinema, go to the swimming pool in the summer. They're much more independent as a result I think.
I cycle through Bromley and Beckenham on my commute - the pollution is so thick at rush hour you can taste it. He has option to drive 3 of his cars which produce less pollution, or you know actually use one of those things he sells called a bike to get around instead. The whole point of it is to change peoples behaviour, sadly though it won't as too many people are all for saving the enviroment provided it doesn't effect them and they don't have to change.
He has three compliant vehicles so the charge might persude him to use those rather than the vehicles upon which the charge would be applied.
Isn't that part of the point.
But he is a bit right though, it's not really a ULEZ more of a pollution charging zone.
He does have a point.
“I respect the fact that they want lower emissions, but why should you be able to pay a tax to still poison people?
“Why are you paying money for that to happen? You should either have it and not pay or ban it, not be able to pay to use it.
“It’s basically saying that people are getting really ill and dying and they’ve got a poor quality of life, but if you give us £12.50 it’s actually acceptable.”
If non ULEZ compliant cars are poisoning people why is anyone who can afford it still allowed to use them?
He does a bit - but the charge will reduce pollution as people drive non-compliant vehicles less, not at all, or change them for newer ones.
My potential sympathy is more because such a widely-applied scheme for what are likely relatively localised problems does seem incongruous. Perhaps they could ban or fine non-compliant vehicles in hotspots instead (maybe different options have been appraised, I don't know (might also be that the boroughs' support is required for local measures and they won't help)).
Scrappage schemes are problematic too - a new vehicle will emit less NOx and PM but the overall environmental cost of replacing an otherwise sound vehicle is considerable. Outer Londoners don't have the same quality of alternative transport options as inner Londoners, so cars are more important for many.
He doesnt really have a point. He's using the point below to argue for NO Change, a pre-schooler can see the flaw in that argument. Lets do nothing and poison more!
" “I respect the fact that they want lower emissions, but why should you be able to pay a tax to still poison people?"
Two points on that: firstly, contrary to what some antis have said, you don't have to buy a new car, you can buy a 2006 compliant model, many of which are available for £2000 (the maximum scrappage allowance available)– you don't even have to spend the scrappage allowance on a car at all, you can buy an ebike with it or accept a travel pass of equivalent value instead or just shove it in the bank and use it for supermarket deliveries; secondly, how many of these pre-2005 cars were going to last that long anyway before being scrapped and replaced? It's different for diesels, I realise, but for petrol cars many of them will have been scrapped and replaced with newer models in the near future anyway.
Your points are true, although I'm sceptical how many scrappers won't be replaced by other cars (which, even if used, will feed through to new car demand).
It'll be interesting to see the evidence though. It may be that second or third cars aren't replaced, or the teenagers don't get a car so soon.
In Bristol the original Clean Air Zone proposal was to ban all diesel vehicles but, rightly or wrongly, this was prohibited by Central Government.
* With the exception of buses, taxis etc which with FirstBus's aging fleet create a disgusting environment within the clean air zone. The concept was laughable. Ban them all in my view.
Including all the diesel powered boats in the harbour?
Yep. At the very least, they should be prohibited from running generators
It's a disincentive tax that works by pushing the majority to scrap non-compliant vehicles; if they actually banned non-compliant vehicles, the outrage and uproar would be monumental.
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