ULEZ Advert Probed After Hundreds Complained Over ‘Misleading’ Claims

A sign at the expanded boundary of London’s ULEZ pollution charge zone for older vehicles on Oct. 25, 2021. (Yui Mok/PA)

A TV advert about the upcoming expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) is under investigation following hundreds of complaints that the ad was “misleading,” the advertisement watchdog has confirmed.

A spokesman for the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the regulator had received 370 complaints about the ad.

“Complainants argue that the ad is misleading,” the spokesman confirmed in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times on Friday.

“We’re currently investigating to determine whether there are grounds for further action,” he said, adding that no further details can be provided to avoid impacting the investigation.

The regulator didn’t specify when the Transport for London (TfL) ad was broadcast or what claims were alleged to be misleading. According to local media reports, the ad claimed that “London has an urgent air quality problem and it’s impacting the health of Londoners.”

In an statement emailed to The Epoch Times, a TfL spokesperson said: “Each year, around 4,000 people die prematurely because of air pollution and the ULEZ will help tackle this health crisis.

“We know that tackling air quality is an emotive issue and that the ASA has been contacted by some members of the public. As is standard practice for the ASA, they have asked for additional information and we are now providing them with evidence that clearly demonstrates how the ULEZ expansion will help clean up poor quality air across the capital.”

Air Quality

The ULEZ is an area in which vehicles that do not meet certain emissions standards must pay a daily charge of £12.50 to drive or face fines.

The scheme currently covers the areas within London’s North and South Circular roads. It is set to expand to the whole of Greater London from Aug. 29, 2023, under plans from Mayor Sadiq Khan.

The Ultra Low Emission Zone is to expand to the North and South circulars from 2021. (Transport for London)

Promoting the expansion last month, Khan also said he was making the move because toxic air was “causing the premature death of more than 4,000 Londoners.”

The figure came from a TfL-commissioned study (pdf) published in January 2021 by Imperial College London (ICL)’s Environmental Research Group.

The Study said the equivalent of between 3,600 to 4,100 deaths in Greater London in 2019 were “estimated to be attributable to human-made PM2.5 and NO2,” counting “all causes including respiratory, lung cancer, and cardiovascular deaths.”

It also calculated that a child born in London in 2013 would on average live 5 to 6 months longer with Khan’s air quality policies.

A separated observational study (pdf) by ICL’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Centre for Transport Studies, that was published in November 2021, said the ULEZ “caused only small improvements in air quality” and is not on its own “an effective strategy in the sense that the marginal causal effects were small.”

Oppositions

The planned ULEZ expansion was announced after the TfL ran a ten-week consultation last year despite the fact that the published consultation report said 59 percent of the respondents opposed the expansion. The plan was since met with resistance from campaigners, local councils, and Westminster.

Greater London Authority (GLA) Conservatives in January published around 200 pages of emails and documents obtained through freedom of information requests, which they said prove that interventions by the mayor’s office and the TfL have skewed the result of the consultation, likely reducing opposition percentage by between 3 to 6 percent.

THE GLA Conservatives also accused the Labour mayor of lying to the London Assembly about the consultation.

Howard Cox, founder of FairfuelUK, a pro-drivers campaign group whose supporters’ responses to the consultation were allegedly excluded from a key question, labelled the ULEZ expansion as being “purely a cash grab hidden behind a virtual signalling emotive approach to allegedly improving air quality.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan at City Hall as Transport for London (TfL) launch their consultation on expanding the ULEZ London-wide on May 20, 2022. (Karis Pearson/PA Media)

Khan’s spokesman denied the allegations, saying, “The real scandal is that toxic air leads to the deaths of thousands of Londoners every year.”

The spokesman also said Khan had considered TfL’s report on the TfL’s consultation responses, adding that the consultation “was not a referendum.”

But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urged Khan to “properly reconsider” the plans to expand ULEZ and “respond to these serious concerns.”

The expansion was also opposed by Conservative-led councils.

In a joint statement released on Feb. 16, the outer London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Harrow, Hillingdon, and Surrey County Council said they have launched a judicial review to challenge the decision.

The councils said they will challenge the ULEZ expansion in the High Court on the grounds that “relevant statutory requirements” were not complied with, expected compliance rates in outer London were not considered, and the proposed scrappage scheme was not consulted on.

They will also argue that the overall consultation process was not properly conducted and there was a failure to carry out a cost-benefit analysis of the plan.

Alexander Zhang contributed to this report.