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The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone today confirmed the controversial congestion charge is to rise from £5 to £8 in July.
The move follows a public consultation but London Assembly members and business leaders have already warned it could be bad for the capital.

The congestion charge for vehicles on the fleet scheme will also rise from £5.50 to £7.

Those paying monthly and yearly installments will be entitled to discounts.

The Mayor said: "Congestion charging has been in place for just over two years. It has achieved its key objective of reducing congestion and has also provided an additional stream of revenue to help the funding of other transport measures within my Transport Strategy."

However, a spokesman for the London Retail Consortium said: "Despite overwhelming opposition to this, the Mayor has ignored the voice of business. Increasing the charge has little to do with reducing congestion, and more to do with trying to make the weak business case for a Western Extension financially viable.

"The current scheme has already surpassed the congestion reduction target set out at its inception; so further reductions are unwarranted."

Mr Livingstone said requests from businesses had been weighed.

He added: "In response to requests from business and fleet operators to make the charge easier to pay and to reduce the impact of the charge on business, the daily charge for vehicles on the fleet scheme will be set at £7.

"In addition, large discounts on monthly and annual payments will make the charge easier to pay for regular users and should lead to fewer penalty charge notices being incurred by drivers who forget to pay the charge."

Lynne Featherstone, chair of the London Assembly's Transport Committee, said: "Londoners, many of whom are opposed to congestion charging anyway, do not want to pay more for driving through central London.

"Today's news signals that the Mayor is pushing ahead with this increase even if many Londoners are opposed to it.

"It is also very surprising that the Mayor is adopting higher charges when there is no rationale for such a sharp rise. Levels of traffic and congestion in the charging zone have fallen by up to 30 percent since the introduction of the scheme.

"London is working with the present level of reduction, Mayor Livingstone should not be raising money under false pretentions."



1:56pm today :ThisisLondon

Why are people so surprised ?

There is no doubt that eventually, by 2010/11, the charge will be around £20 a day just to enter/cross over the UK's capital. Maybe as higher as £23/£25, depending on economic factors.
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RED KEN sure loves his taxes....ahhh.. yes...a last glimpse of communism.

Calrissian: A fan of livingston, in only that he is quite entertaining at times.

Gerbilgranny has always liked Red Ken!

I like him, he annoys the usual dull 'suits', and that has got to be a good thing.

Ken was saying that the congestion charge constitutes just 2% of London revenue, which is interesting.
I would indeed certainly see that increasing to around 5-6% within 5-7 yrs.

After all, its 'easy money'. The systems are all done now, they have the excuse of 'the environment/congestion', so they can charge about as high as they like.

It is certainly one way to get the poor people off the roads, and back onto the cattle trucks...aka the public transport network.
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Calrissian: Dreaming of LOMASEL (yet another of his pet transport concepts)

From my experience - i.e. visiting London for a few days every summer - public transport there is wonderful. With tubes and train connections, buses. trams and the DLR, it seems that it's possible to go practically anywhere easily. In Dublin, things are quite different because we only have buses, one fast rail line which goes along the coast, and since last year, two tram lines (which don't connect). My mother in law lives 10 miles from us, 3 miles from the city centre. She's near a bus route, and so are we. But it would take over 2 hours to get to her, as the only public transport route means going into the city centre, and travelling out again. And we don't have signs at bus stops telling us how long it will take for a bus to arrive - probably because it would say 'nothing for a half and hour, and then two will come together'!