The most polluting cars, taxis, HGVs and buses could soon be charged to enter Manchester city centre under efforts to radically improve air quality across the region, the Manchester Evening News can reveal.

Council bosses are considering the measure as a way to urgently cut pollution - linked to at least 1,000 premature deaths in Manchester each year - to legal levels by 2021.

A private meeting of town hall leaders ten days ago discussed a series of options aimed at radically improving air quality.

They included charging the most polluting vehicles – including, it is understood, around 20pc of cars, most of them diesel cars older than three years, plus most HGVs and buses – to drive into the city centre, along with potential charging or restrictions on some vehicles entering other outlying dirty air blackspots.

Insiders admitted to considerable nervousness among town hall chiefs about the sugggestion.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

However government rules mean they have only until the end of December to decide how they intend to cut the region's illegally high nitrogen dioxide levels, which are linked to diesel emissions, within just over two years.

It comes almost exactly a year after the region’s mayor, Andy Burnham, promised there would ‘never be any charge on individual motorists’ on his watch to tackle the air pollution crisis, while insisting any charging on HGVs and buses would be 'a long way down the line'.

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He told the Manchester Evening News this week that he remains opposed to charging private individual motorists.

However Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester council, said it remained a possibility.

He said a full consultation would be held with the public on the overall issue in the near future, adding that he had not personally come to a conclusion about whether charging should be introduced.

But he added: “If you’ve got something costing 1,000 premature deaths a year in Manchester, you’ve got to do something about it. I don’t think it’s not an option.”

If some kind of charging or penalty system was brought in, he said, there would need to be strict measures – probably including a diesel scrappage scheme provided by government – to ensure the region’s poorest drivers did not end up footing the bill.

“In terms of dealing with air quality, most of it is caused by diesel engines,” he said.

“Clearly dirty air is a killer, but also poverty is a killer and the older cars tend to be driven by people on lower incomes who need that car to be able to work.

“Whatever we bring in needs to ensure the people at the bottom end of the chart don’t have to pay for it, either a scrappage scheme or an exemption scheme for people on low incomes – probably a combination of both.”

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

While stressing no decision had yet been taken, he said the government's orders meant councils had to consider a 'penalty system of some sort'.

Asked whether he personally had a preferred option to deal with the situation, he said: “No. There are some difficult questions to address and quite a lot of hard and serious discussions to have over the next few months.

“Something that’s killing a thousand people a year, we have to do something about.”

Councillors across the region would be discussing the situation over the next month, he said, followed by a full consultation with the public.

“The intention is to begin a public discussion in the next few weeks, almost," he added.

“Really, that’s to have a conversation with the public saying 'this is what the problem is', but even then, we’re not going to jump to any conclusions.

“We need to get a really broad understanding of the nature of the problem and how serious it is.

“Even though there isn’t that much time, we have to take that time to make sure we are sharing as much as possible about the options and what the options are for tackling it.”

Council leaders are working to a very tight timetable on the issue, due to rules imposed by government. They must present a draft clean air plan to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by December 31, demonstrating what measures they plan to take in order to radically and urgently slash illegal levels of nitrogen oxide in the air.

It is understood September 28's private meeting was the first time they had collectively sat down to discuss detailed findings on the situation from Transport for Greater Manchester experts, who have spent months analysing the scale of the problem and potential solutions.

(Image: PA)

Officials found every borough in the region has at least one area with illegally high levels of nitrogen dioxide, partly due to the large number of motorways criss-crossing the conurbation, over which councils have no control.

One potential option would see city centre charging brought in for a raft of vehicles that breach specific EU emissions standards, including most HGVs and LGVs, around 70pc of the region’s bus fleet, many taxis and about 20pc of private cars, most of them diesel vehicles registered before 2015, but also most petrol cars registered before 2006.

Additional restrictions could also apply to some outlying areas.

That idea bears similarities to a new charges due to be introduced in central London from April, as well as TfGM proposals leaked to the M.E.N. in 2017 that suggested charging the dirtiest private cars should be charged £7.50 a day to drive into the city centre and parts of Bury and Bolton, alongside £100 for HGVs and £20 for LGVs.

It suggested doing so using 66 number plate recognition cameras in a ‘rings of steel’ around those areas.

Private vehicle charging was then repeatedly ruled out by Andy Burnham, however, although legal responsibility for the plan currently lies with individual councils rather than the mayor.

“If it [charging] ever is to happen here, you are talking a long way down the line and even if it did I would go to restricting buses and HGVs,” he told the M.E.N. a year ago .

“I’m not going to implement that charge on car users. I want to make this really clear – there will never be any charge on individual motorists.”

Asked by the Manchester Evening News about his current position, a spokesman for the mayor's office said: “The government has required the Greater Manchester Combined Authority to consider a clean air zone and this is why leaders were discussing this matter last Friday.

“However, the mayor has already reached a clear view, consistent with his previous statements, that he will not support any new charges on individual motorists.

(Image: PA)

“What is under consideration is the possibility of restrictions on the most polluting vehicles such as Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs), Light Goods Vehicles (LGVs), buses and taxis.

“Decisions on this will be reached by the end of the year.

“What is certain is that, in any event, the mayor will be calling on the government to grant to Greater Manchester the same powers as London over the running of our roads, trains, buses and taxis.

"Traffic congestion is the biggest cause of polluted air and, without greater control of the levers over local transport, a Clean Air Zone will be set up to fail and we will not be able to clean up our air.”

Multiple senior sources confirmed to the Manchester Evening News that despite the mayor's stance, charging the most polluting private cars – which has already been announced in Birmingham, as well as central London – remains an option if the region is to hit its targets, however, due to the scale of the crisis.

Parts of the conurbation have some of the highest levels of air pollution in the country, including Manchester and Salford, both of which feature towards the top of the World Health Organisation's latest league table of Britain's worst dirty air blackspots.

A report by the think-tank IPPR warned this summer that on some measures the region's crisis was even worse than London's, due in part to the age of its bus fleet. Central Manchester has the highest rates of hospital admissions for asthma in the country, it noted, linking that to tiny particles emitted by diesel vehicles.

It said either a restriction on city centre traffic or some kind of charging scheme would have to be introduced 'in the immediate future' in order to cut pollution to legal levels.

Local leaders would need to do something far more drastic than they have done to date if the region is to hit legal limits by the government's deadline of 2021, it warned.

A senior figure present at last Friday’s meeting admitted to considerable nervousness among leaders about the issue of charging individual drivers, although they said it had not been rejected outright.

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“The concept of charging for a clean air zone did not go down well, including the fact that it would affect the poorest people the hardest,” they said.

“It landed a bit like ‘oh sh*t, some of us don’t know about this’ and ‘oh sh*t, we’re talking about charging’, with Andy fudging it somewhere in the middle.

“But I don’t think anyone was going ‘absolutely this must not happen’. There was a lot of reluctance and ‘it won’t be popular, we must make clear this isn’t a congestion charge’, but I wouldn’t say anyone was banging on the table going ‘no, no, no’.

“What you don’t want is a legal challenge for not having a compliant plan, and we’ve only got a couple of months to do it.

“We need a clean air plan that will get us to the point of compliance over the next few years. The problem is that the professionals at TfGM are saying we can’t get a compliant plan without charging non-compliant vehicles.”

The dilemma facing Greater Manchester leaders is the direct result of several court rulings against the government in recent years after environmental campaigners CleanEarth took legal action over air pollution levels.

Ministers then issued directives to a string of councils across the country ordering them to slash nitrogen dioxide levels to legal limits as soon as possible, placing the responsibility firmly with town halls. That directive lists a range of possible measures that can be looked at by authorities. Charging must be considered, unless local leaders can find an alternative way to cut pollution as quickly and as effectively.

Regardless of its final detail, Greater Manchester's clean air plan is likely to come with a series of requests for funding from government, such as a targeted scrappage scheme, money to install cameras, if necessary, and investment into public transport.

However it remains unclear how much money the government will be prepared to provide.

Town hall leaders will be keen to stress that any new clean air charge as part of that plan would not amount to a congestion charge via the back door, a concern that has lingered among some people ever since the proposal was blocked in a referendum 10 years ago.

Sir Richard, who at the time led the campaign for a congestion charge, said: “There’s always a danger of comparisons with congestion charging, but the thing with air quality is that the aim is to collect nothing.

"If the aim is to have clean air, the aim is to have all vehicles compliant – so the aim is to collect nothing.

“The point is not to collect money, it’s to get clean air.”

A spokesman for TfGM said: "Greater Manchester is following a strictly defined process set out by Government for local authorities to run feasibility studies on potential NO2 air pollution compliance measures ahead of a Greater Manchester Clean Air Plan being finalised, approved and implemented.

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“This work is ongoing and no decisions have yet been taken by Greater Manchester local authorities on the most effective way to clean up the air we breathe as quickly as possible.

“In line with Government timescales, Greater Manchester is due to submit the Clean Air Plan Outline Business Case, which will include a preferred package of measures to reduce air pollution, to government by the end of this year.”