Ulez expansion: City Hall to consider hospice exemptions

Labour MP Jon Cruddas lobbied City Hall for hospice exemptions to Ulez

City Hall will "consider" an MP's request to make staff, volunteers and patients at hospices exempt from paying the London Ulez charge, Sadiq Khan's transport deputy has said.

Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham, made the plea in a letter to Seb Dance, London's deputy mayor of transport.

The charge is due to be extended to all London boroughs on 29 August.

Mr Dance said the request would be "taken on board".

In his letter, the MP specifically referred to St Francis Hospice in Havering-atte-Bower, a village just inside the Greater London boundary where buses are the only available public transport.

According to an article on the Havering Daily website - shared on social media by Mr Cruddas - the MP told Mr Dance: "We realise this is very late in the day, but we ask that urgent consideration be given to extending the Ulez exemptions granted to staff, volunteers and patients at St Francis Hospice and indeed other hospices in Greater London."

The Ulez scheme will expand to all London boroughs on Tuesday

Responding, the deputy mayor told the Standard there are already "a number of schemes" which offer "additional support" to people in certain circumstances, such as the NHS reimbursement scheme.

Under that scheme, NHS patients who have been clinically assessed as too ill to travel to an appointment on public transport are generally eligible to claim back any Ulez charge and/or congestion charge they paid from their treating hospital.

But no such measures are in place for hospices, as they are not part of the NHS.

• Ulez scrappage scheme: What you need to know

• Ulez expansion: Contested claims examined

Mr Dance said: "Of course we'll take on board Jon's comments, and any [other] suggestion - which we have done throughout this process.

"We've evolved the support structures that we've put [in place], through the scrappage scheme for example, and the mayor's been very clear that we'll continue to listen to Londoners on how we can improve the scheme."

The vehicle scrappage scheme referred to by the deputy mayor was on Monday opened up to every Londoner with a non-compliant vehicle.

Mr Cruddas is one of a few Labour MPs to have stated their opposition to the Ulez expansion, calling it "yet another unwelcome hit on working people".

The mayor says the expansion will allow five million Londoners to breathe cleaner air, and save lives in the process.

Follow BBC London on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [e-mail]