Agenda: For&Against ALL UP IN THE AIR?

Sheffield’s Clean Air Zone will go live from Monday 27th February 2023, meaning that the city centre and inner ring road will become a chargeable zone for the most polluting heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), light goods vehicles (LGVs), vans, buses, coaches and taxis. The CAZ has divided opinion across the region: praise from those who see it as a significant step towards clean air in Sheffield, and opposition from people who feel it could negatively impact local businesses and increase traffic congestion elsewhere.

For our inaugural ‘For and Against’ feature, unLTD gets contrasting sides of the argument from two local people...

force the drivers, who are self-employed, to all buy compliant cars for when that expires.

Paul Gosney, Business Development Director at City Taxis

We do over 100,000 journeys a week in and around Sheffield. As such, most of our cars are compliant [meeting required emission standards], but some of them aren’t and not all our drivers can necessarily afford a new car. There’s been a temporary exemption on Hackney Carriages, but we can’t

Hackney carriages are an important part of our business, they carry a lot of patients to and from hospitals. Trying to get to the Children’s Hospital, Weston Park Hospital or the Hallamshire Hospital without touching the ring road is almost impossible. That’s going to have a knock-on effect: it’ll congest urban areas that will be used as a detour – places like Sharrow Vale, Endcliffe, Ecclesall, Walkley, Crookes, Fulwood – and that’s going to put more miles on the journeys, which will lead to longer waiting times and more expensive prices for people paying the fares.

You’ve also got to think about what happens to the air quality in the areas that will become congested as a result of deliberately avoiding the CAZ – isn’t it just shifting the pollution around?

Ultimately, we want a clean-air zone – but not just inside a city centre ring road, we want clean air across Sheffield’s wider region and across the whole UK. However, there’s got to be some flexibility that can accommodate some essential taxi journeys: hospital visits, patient transport, OAPS and schoolchildren who need a taxi to take them to school. So, in a nutshell, we’re all for clean air. But there needs to be provisions made for drivers so they can do their jobs without being penalised and so fares don’t increase for the customers. We also have taxi drivers who work for City Grab, a local delivery service, and they pick up orders from restaurants in the city centre. They’ll be charged for that, whereas big corporations like Deliveroo and JustEat are considered private cars so avoid a charge. That doesn’t seem fair to me and has a negative impact on local trade, as well as penalising people and customers during what is already a difficult time economically.

Sheffield's largest private hore company, City Taxis, named the sixth largest fleet in UK and Ireland by Taxi Summit, is the eighth regional hub of the Veezu group.

Jeremy Hughes, Director at RBH Properties

Firstly, I think it’s important to remember that this is not a unique idea created by Sheffield’s leaders. Sheffield is one of the biggest cities in the UK, and as such, has been instructed by Government to implement a Clean Air Zone (CAZ). Our business, RBH, is headquartered in Portsmouth, where we already have a CAZ in place. While there were some teething problems, like most things, it has very quickly become the norm and businesses and residents have now adapted. The global picture at play is well known. Millions of people suffer premature death due to air pollution levels and our environment is quickly being irreparably damaged. Here in the UK, the main source of air pollution comes directly from transport. So local authorities, businesses, and all of us as individuals, need to start making difficult decisions to protect the environment and future generations. This is exactly what we have done on Pennine Five. We made the bold decision to repurpose the existing buildings rather than razing them to the ground and starting again. Is that the easiest and most profitable thing to do? No, probably not. But this approach has saved vast amounts of embodied carbon and also mitigates the carbon dioxide that would be produced by the construction of a brandnew development.

By introducing a CAZ in Sheffield City Centre, we can reduce the health impacts of air pollution, provide a more appealing environment, and accelerate the move to electric vehicles, assisting the transition to a low carbon future.

To be clear, cars still have a role in the future of Sheffield City Centre. Indeed, we have a large car park at Pennine Five. However, we are completely modernising the infrastructure so that, over time, it can provide 100% EV facilities, as well as creating a new 280-space cycle hub –encouraging more people to make the switch to electric vehicles and bikes. Sheffield is Europe’s greenest city. That is its true USP and one of the major reasons companies like ours invest heavily in this great city. Let’s ensure we keep it that way!