Highlights of the Green Party amendment to the Mayor of London’s budget include:
- £13m extra funding for home energy saving
- £25m extra for local transport spending on cycling, walking & safer roads
- £10m to create a Very Low Emission Zone to tackle central London pollution
- £15m for more new buses to be hybrids
- Congestion charge raised to £16
- Savings from press and PR through shared services across the GLA Group
- Scrapping £6.1 million on the 101 telephone number scheme
The full budget can be found here
Darren Johnson said: "My amendment to the Mayor’s budget today aims to protect neighbourhood policing, peg fare rises to rate of inflation and encourage cycling in outer London.
The Mayor’s budget relies on a steep rise in public transport fares, well above inflation, at a time when many Londoners are already facing real pay cuts or the prospect of losing their job. A typical working family would pay around £160 extra a year in fares. We are aiming to reduce the fares rise to the level of inflation and increase local borough investment on cycling and road safety, by raising the congestion charge to £16.
The Green amendment addresses London’s most serious immediate environmental problem affecting the health of thousands: air pollution. Our budget will fund a Very Low Emission Zone in central London to exclude all polluting vehicles. It will also provide extra funding to enable London to make up for lost time in insulating its homes, a vital measure to tackle both climate change and fuel poverty."