News, Manchester
The process of removing 1,300 signs for the now cancelled Greater Manchester Clean Air Zone has begun, at the cost of about £600,000 paid for by the government.
The signs were installed alongside cameras as part of the scheme which aimed to charge drivers of high polluting vehicles up to £60 a day.
It was dropped after a backlash in 2022, and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham put forward an alternative proposal to invest in cleaner buses and taxis that was signed off by the government earlier this year.
Leader of Manchester City Council Bev Craig said the signs had been “totemic” of the scheme’s failure and “a thing that everyone has been really annoyed by”.
But she said she wanted the community to be reassured that the cameras, as well as the new bus and taxi scheme, would help improve air quality.
Craig told Radio Manchester: “The reality is our air is not clean enough, and it’s often the poorest communities that suffer.
“Once those signs come down, hopefully we’ll all be able to move on, but move on knowing that the air is going to be cleaner.”
Stockport CouncilClean air zones (CAZ), which are in operation in many cities across the UK, aim to improve air quality by cutting the number of high polluting vehicles on the road.
Since the scheme in Greater Manchester was scrapped, the region’s 10 councils had been considering whether the signs put up to notify drivers about the zones could be repurposed.
But Transport for Greater Manchester said a decision had been made to remove them at a cost of about £600,000, to be paid for by the government.
“One National Highway sign will be repurposed,” it said.
A spokesperson for Stockport Council said work to take the signs down started last week, while Wigan Council said it was aiming to have all the signs taken down “within the next three weeks”.
Craig said each council had taken a different approach to the removal, with Manchester City Council using it as a chance to “clean up messy signs”.
“It’s just being done in phases according to capacity,” she added.
