Businessman with nine cars says new 'clean air' tax will cost him £80,000
A bike shop owner who owns nine cars says the plans to extend the London's ultra low emission zone will cost him £80,000 to replace three of them and fears "endless chaos" for locals.
Chris Penfold has owned Deen’s Garage bike shop in Beckenham, Bromley, since 1999 and alongside selling and fixing bikes, the business owner repairs and races cars, calling it a “silly hobby”.
From August London Mayor Sadiq Khan wants to push the zone out towards the M25 taking in all of the capital leaving those with older or higher polluting cars to pay £12.50 a day if they want to move around.
Mr Penfold, 50, said: “Because I'm able to fix stuff, I tend to end up attracting free cars.
"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.
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"But out of that, six are non compliant [to ULEZ regulations].”
London mayor Sadiq Khan (Getty Images)Mr Penfold told MyLondon he and his family drive up to three cars a day for both the bike shop and hobbies such as horse riding and racing, with the cost to upgrade all three vehicles being around £80,000.
For the shop owner, he feels the low mileage on the cars he repairs means he can get more use out of them than if he were to spend money upgrading his vehicles to ULEZ regulations.
He said: “[I was given a] Nissan Micra which has done 16,000 miles, and bizarrely it’s non-compliant.
"It could do another 80 or 90,000 miles. But yet you can go and buy a 50 grand Tesla, which is completely uneconomic to put on the road.”
Mr Penfold said he agrees with restricting car use in congested areas of central London, but that locals in towns such as Biggin Hill have to drive for miles to get to their nearest shop.
He said: “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 all right anyway.”
He added: “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.
The darker green is the current zone and the lighter green will be the ULEZ from August (TFL)"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.”
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A Mayor of London spokeswoman said: “With around 4,000 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."
Bromley Council announced on February 16 that it would be legally challenging the Mayor of London’s plan to expand the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), in a joint statement with Bexley, Harrow, Hillingdon and Surrey County councils.
Conservative Councillor Colin Smith, leader of Bromley Council, said in a statement: “We have been sounding the alarm about Mayor Khan’s attempted tax raid on the outer ‘London’ suburbs for many months now.
"The fundamental truth as to his true intention is now increasingly plain for all to see.
“In Bromley, this socially regressive tax directly threatens jobs, the viability and availability of small businesses, and causing significant damage to vital care networks, as well as creating a completely avoidable spike in the cost of living locally, at a time when some households are already struggling to make ends meet.”
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