Birmingham’s self-inflicted penalty raises an important question: Where does the clean air zone money actually go, and is it making any difference?

Like many people, I read with amused interest the news that Birmingham City Council fined itself almost £500,000 for breaches of its own clean air zone. As yet another story throwing our city into a bad light, it was picked up by all of the major national newspapers and radio stations, too. No surprise there.

But I didn’t see much comment on the likely consequential detail: the cost of “sending the money around in a circle” – the inevitable squabbling over which internal budget the payment came out of; and likewise, which internal budget was boosted by the fines. The cost of the administration would perhaps have made a better story.

So where does the money go?

But it got me thinking: where do these emissions charges and fines actually go? What do they actually fund? The eventual destination of the money raised needs further scrutiny, especially as it is clearly an additional tax on people and businesses that cannot afford shiny new vehicles.

From the lunar landscape that these days passes for our main roads, it doesn’t seem to go on mending potholes. So just where does it go?

Is the money making things worse?

If the funds are being used to continue successively narrowing the roads into and out of our regional centres, then this is surely a false attempt at cleaning our air. I fear it is a continuation of the mantra pumped out by the “Birmingham Breathes” policy, launched back in 2020, where it was believed that most people would use up to three travel methods per commute, and preferably that none of these would be a car. That was ill-founded back then, and it seems even more naïve now, in the post-lockdown era.

There are not enough train stations near where people live; buses continue to be unreliable, often because they are stuck in the same jams as the cars, regardless of the bus lanes. The tram is a great experience if you live on the tramline or are travelling across the region for meetings that fit the route, but it is pretty useless otherwise, at the moment.

Covid anxiety continues to discourage communal travel for many, as do three-day in-office working patterns, which make season tickets less financially viable. Whatever the reason, there seem to be more cars on the road than ever, and that surely isn’t going away. The very existence of a clean air zone would support that point.

Queuing cars are not clean cars

I am not saying that clean air zones are wrong; simply that the revenues from them, including the fines, should be directed towards measures to get traffic flowing in and out of pinch points more quickly. Faster-moving traffic means cleaner air; that has to be the logical aim.

My own commute along the Aldridge Road onto the Birmingham Road from the north of Birmingham is a case in point. A series of pinch points caused by carriageway narrowing, traffic lights, and bus lanes has turned the road into a slow-moving car snake. Even the most modern, compliant vehicle will be pumping out emissions in those queues while crawling forward at 2mph. And the constant braking deploys brake dust and tyre debris, which is more polluting to air quality than petrochemicals, for all vehicles, and even more so for heavier electric vehicles.

New homes need clean air

Along this same route, the space for new homes planned in the Perry Barr area, on the old dog track, on the adjacent land, and in the notorious former Commonwealth Games Village, which at last appears to have some residents, means that in the near future, many people will be living and breathing the air alongside this metal car snake.

We are rightly proud to have a young and diverse city region. Let us not put our young people and families in affordable but toxic housing.

What should happen next

I remain convinced that removing the Perry Barr flyover was a mistake, but we cannot go back. If we want people to move into the new homes and to remain healthy, we need to ensure that the air they breathe is clean. Surely that is the whole point of a clean air zone.

The confluence of the A34 and the Aldridge Road needs remodelling and putting right. Better still, open up more stations in the north of Birmingham to commuters, as has been achieved to the east and south of the city. What better use for clean air zone revenues, and a genuine way to help Birmingham breathe?

I am sure there are other examples across Birmingham and the West Midlands, and further afield, too.

Perhaps that is the story the national media should be running. By all means, have rules and punish their breach, but make sure that the income generated is visibly spent on improving the very thing the rules were designed to protect, not on making things worse.