James Grundy MP: Waiting to see revised CAZ model

Last week at Prime Ministers’ Questions, I raised the issue of the controversial Greater Manchester Mayoral Clean Air Zone Charging Scheme, or CAZ.
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This is the proposed charging scheme that would cover all 500 square miles of Greater Manchester, ostensibly to deal with clean air issues, but looking suspiciously like the Congestion Charge that Greater Manchester overwhelmingly rejected in a local referendum in 2008.

As many of you will know from other articles in this newspaper, some of which I have written myself, the CAZ scheme was drawn up by the mayor and GM local authorities, and was due to be implemeted later this year.

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Since the New Year, however, public concern had been growing about the affordability of the scheme and a Facebook group had been set up by concerned local residents and businesses to raise awareness of the massive charges and increased costs ordinary people would be facing just by trying to travel or engage in business activity.

Leigh MP James GrundyLeigh MP James Grundy
Leigh MP James Grundy

This ‘ReThink the GM CAZ’ Facebook group deserves a lot of praise for the work they did in ensuring that residents and businesses knew about the impending imposition of this mayoral charge, which ranged from £7.50 a day for taxis up to £60 per day per HGV lorry driver.

The group was also a great source of information for those campaigning against the charge, providing evidence that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that this scheme had indeed originated in Greater Manchester, and had not been forced on the mayor by central Government, as some had tried to claim.

The group helpfully pointed out how other cities like Birmingham were dealing with issues like the ones the CAZ were supposed to deal with in GM, without recourse to a scheme with massive charges that covered all 500 square miles of Greater Manchester.

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I was very pleased that the Prime Minister responded to my question on the GM CAZ by stating it was ‘clearly unworkable’, as this was something ordinary people in places like my constituency of Leigh had known for quite some time.

The Prime Minister furthermore effectively stated that the scheme could not go ahead in its current form and the CAZ plans would have to be heavily revised by the mayor before he would be allowed to continue with them and that further information would be available shortly.

I was pleased to see that later that same week, mayor Burnham was instructed that he would have six months to revise his CAZ plans into a workable model.

I can safely say that I think just about everyone in GM is glad that the PM intervened to prevent the mayor from going ahead with the scheme in its current form!

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This job, however, is not over yet, grateful though I am to the PM for intervening.

We need to see what model mayor Burnham comes up with to replace the CAZ before we can put this one to bed.

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