Birmingham wasted £2.1M on cars that don't comply with clean air zone

Bankrupt Birmingham Council wasted £2.1M on vehicles that don’t comply with its own clean air zone – despite more than 110,000 drivers being fined thousands by draconian green scheme

  • EXCLUSIVE: Birmingham spent £2.1m on cars that can be used in clean air zone

Labour-run Birmingham Council spent a staggering £2.1million on hiring vehicles which did not comply with its own clean air zone just before being declared bankrupt.

This comes despite more than 110,000 drivers being fined thousands of pounds by the draconian green scheme. 

The cash-strapped council is one of several in the country, and the first outside London, to introduce a scheme which charges drivers if their vehicles did not meet certain emissions standards.

It was introduced in June 2021 to help tackle traffic pollution and brought in £79 million since then.

But now the authority – the biggest in the country – faces making massive cuts which experts have warned will take years to rectify. It was effectively plunged into bankruptcy

A Freedom of Information Request by MailOnline today exposes the ‘stupid’ expenditure of spending £1.7million in two years hiring vehicles which did not meet the air zone standards.

Money spent hiring clean air zone compliant and non-compliant vehicles by Birmingham City Council

Labour-run Birmingham Council spent a staggering £2.1million on hiring vehicles which did not comply with its own clean air zone just before being declared bankrupt

Figures show that the authority owns 146 vehicles which do not meet the requirements for its clean air zone.

READ MORE: Birmingham’s version of Ulez is in chaos: Drivers get nearly 70,000 clean air zone fines overturned in road scheme that will net council £50m profit

In total, £4,054,699.94 was spent in 2022 and £3,524,473.32 so far in 2023 hiring vehicles which do comply with the charge. This in total is £7,579,173.26.

Figures show more than £2.1million was spent on hiring vehicles that do not comply with the clean air rules.

Conor Holohan, media campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘As Birmingham residents prepare for huge cuts to services and council tax rises, news of this waste will only compound their misery.’

The council raked in close to £90million from its controversial Clean Air Zone – only to pump more than £50million back into hydrogen buses and cycle lanes.

But it was revealed in March this year nearly 70,000 clean air fines were written off by Birmingham City council.

Nearly 50,000 Clean Air Zone (CAZ) fines have been successfully challenged by drivers since the launch of Birmingham’s controversial scheme which will net the council a whopping £50million profit by the end of this year.

The city council has backed down and overturned a huge 48,256 penalty charge notices after motorists refused to pay because they believed them to be unfair – the council have given up on chasing around another 20,000.

A financial report published last month laid bare the scale of the problems facing the council.

It showed the council has an expected budget shortfall of £164.8million in 2024/25 – rising to £177.1million in 2025/26.

The council must make £165 million of savings in the next financial year.

One major challenge has been implementing a new IT system, the first big IT upgrade since 1999.

It is costing them a tens of millions  and according to inspectors means the council will not have coherent accounts for two years. They currently do not know who has paid their council tax and business rates entirely.

This also comes after questions were raised a more than £100million black hole in the council’s school taxi budget after MailOnline revealed that all the contracts were exactly the same value on public records.

Council records showed the values for all 163 four-year school transport contracts were exactly £64,938.27, around £10.5million in total (plus £1.5m for recently published contracts), around ten times less than the £128million the council paid out from 2020 to July this year, according to MailOnline analysis of invoices data.

Birmingham City Council also said earlier this year that it lacks sufficient resources to pay a £760million bill related to an equality claim, which is currently accruing at a rate of £5million to £14million a month.

Councilors from the local authority blamed the situation on ‘huge increases in adult social care demand… dramatic reductions in business rates’ and ‘rampant inflation.’

A spokesperson for Birmingham City Council said: ‘Vehicles owned or leased by the council often need to be replaced or upgraded due to operational needs.

‘When the time arises to add to our fleet, we always seek where possible to ensure that new additions are compliant with city’s Clean Air Zone.’

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