The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has confirmed that he will not be opening the ULEZ scrappage scheme to retrospective applications.
The Mayor confirmed his stance following questions submitted by Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon this month.
The Mayor’s £160 million scrappage scheme was supposed to provide financial assistance to those seeking to scrap vehicles not compliant with the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) as the Mayor expanded the zone to outer London.
However, the original scheme that opened in January 2023 was only available to a select group of people including those in receipt of some benefits and some disabled Londoners.
Although the scheme was later opened up to all Londoners this August, it was only done eight days before the ULEZ was extended.
According to the Liberal Democrats’ Caroline Pidgeon, this means that between January and August, many financially strapped Londoners had already had to scrape the money together to replace their vehicles with no financial assistance.
Commenting Caroline Pidgeon AM said:
“This is the wrong choice by Sadiq Khan. We told him at the start of this year that his ULEZ scrappage scheme wasn’t wide enough, yet he chose to ignore our calls to open up the scheme to all Londoners until the very last moment.
“His dither and delay has now resulted in many families, who are strapped for cash during a cost of living crisis, having to scrape together the cash for a new vehicle without financial support, only then to find out if they had waited a few more months they would have received help.
“I will continue to call on the Mayor to rectify the unfair consequences resulting from the way he has managed the scrappage scheme and to allow retrospective applications for funding from the scheme.”
