JAMES TOZER: The £100m 'clean air zone' fiasco that made Andy Burnham the most unpopular man in Manchester

By JAMES TOZER, NORTHERN CORRESPONDENT Published: 00:59, 15 June 2026 | Updated: 00:59, 15 June 2026 Supporters of Andy Burnham’s bid for No 10 insist that his nine-year stint as the first elected mayor of Greater Manchester shows he is a politician who is capable of delivering. They hail his economic vision of a ‘business-friendly socialism’ – dubbed ‘Manchesterism’ – and declare it could tackle the problems facing the country. Try telling that to Sam Nickson. Five years ago his family-owned coach company Elite Services, based in Cheadle, Greater Manchester, faced being driven out of business by one of Mr Burnham’s flagship policies. The mayor had proposed a clean air zone (CAZ) for the city that would levy charges on the most polluting vehicles – and quickly provoked widespread outrage. Non-compliant vans, taxis, lorries and buses would have to pay between £7.50 and £60 a day to drive around an area of almost 500 square miles – the largest such scheme in Europe. With a fleet of 26 coaches providing school trips, Elite Services faced financial ruin. ‘It would have cost us around £1.3 million extra just to run our services,’ Mr Nickson told the Daily Mail. ‘There’s no way we could have afforded that.’ Ultimately, Mr Burnham backed down, just weeks before the implementation of the Greater Manchester CAZ in May 2022. The U-turn came after the then prime minister Boris Johnson slammed it as ‘completely unworkable’, demanding a solution which ‘doesn’t punish local residents’. Today, the conurbation is served by a shiny new fleet of yellow buses under Mr Burnham’s much-vaunted Bee Network. And in recent days he has insisted the original objective of the CAZ – cutting air pollution – was now being achieved by the roll-out of emission-free electric buses and taxis. Andy Burnham and cyclist Chris Boardman launch the scheme However, the fiasco – which cost taxpayers well over £100 million – continues to cause resentment, not least in Makerfield. Mr Nickson for one is in no doubt. ‘Andy Burnham was completely responsible for the clean air zone proposal,’ he said. ‘This business would certainly have folded, and areas like this would have turned into ghost towns. ‘Burnham had no grip on what a disaster the clean air zone would have been for business, and I fear the consequences for Britain if he does make it to Downing Street.’ The plan to ‘clean up our air’ was a key pledge when Mr Burnham successfully stood for a second term as mayor in 2021. But businesses warned the impact would be catastrophic. As the launch date neared, hundreds of traders took part in protests, with one saying the planned charges would ‘absolutely cripple me’. A public meeting addressed by Mr Burnham descended into an angry shouting match. Black cab drivers joined in, displaying signs bearing the mayor’s face and the words: ‘Andy Burnham and the GMCA [Greater Manchester Combined Authority] – taxi trade killers.’ A sheep named Colin and a Shetland pony called Ernie were even brought onto the number 471 bus between Bolton and Bury. The eye-catching stunt had a serious message – farms, equestrian centres and animal shelters would face ruinous extra costs due to their non-compliant vehicles. With tempers fraying, Mr Burnham was accused of ‘driving blind and risking thousands of jobs’ by one Lib Dem councillor. The wave of anger shattered his reputation for standing up for the region, earned during Covid-era battles with Johnson’s government. In the words of one critic, he had gone from being ‘King in the North to the most unpopular person in Greater Manchester’. In the Commons, the Conservative MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester, James Grundy, branded the scheme ‘a job-destroying tax’ and ‘economically devastating’. It marked the beginning of the end for the hated plan, which was finally shelved by Mr Burnham at the end of 2023. Instead, a further £86 million of public money was pumped into cleaner buses and taxis across Greater Manchester. Burnham hailed the U-turn as a victory, saying charging polluting vehicles had been a ‘pre-pandemic solution for a post-pandemic world’. His critics accused him of having ‘bottled’ his plan when its unpopularity became unclear. Worse was to come when the cost of the abandoned CAZ was revealed. It is now forecast to reach an eye-watering £115 million, according to the latest figures presented to councillors. Money that could have been used to build five state-of-the-art new secondary schools, or pay for almost 3,000 newly qualified nurses for a year. The figure awarded to Mr Burnham’s authority by central government to fund the scrapped CAZ and its successor scheme was even higher, a total of £211 million – although £22.5million was paid back last year. This tendency to U-turn would come at a much higher political price should Mr Burnham’s ambition to enter No 10 ever be fulfilled. James Daly, the former Conservative MP for Bury North, told the Mail: ‘It’s nothing short of scandalous that more than £100 million of taxpayers’ money was wasted on the clean air zone due to the actions of Andy Burnham. ‘He was the architect of the scheme, telling everyone the air across Greater Manchester was unsafe to breathe, and he was responsible for trying to push it through. ‘But as soon as it became clear that it was a terrible idea which would impose massive costs on local businesses, he suddenly found a different way out that enabled him to say he could still improve air quality by spending yet more millions of public money on a fleet of electric buses.’ More than 2,000 signs informing motorists they were entering the CAZ – installed under a £3million contract – served as a nasty reminder of what might have been. Most have finally now been pulled down, at a cost of £600,000 – paid by the Government. In addition, 863 enforcement cameras were purchased for the CAZ as part of a £48million deal. Barely half had been set up before the plan was abandoned. Meanwhile, the extra millions pledged for emission-free buses has boosted what is arguably Mr Burnham’s biggest success story – the Bee Network. Since its launch, the number of areas where nitrogen oxide levels exceed legal limits has dropped by 41 per cent, according to a GMCA report. On the campaign trail he claimed the credit for areas like Makerfield reaching legally compliant levels of air quality without charging polluting vehicles. ‘And this just finally shows you what I do as a politician,’ he said in a video for social media. ‘I listen to people.’ Peter Tate, who chairs the Rethink The Clean Air Zone group, which amassed 80,000 members on Facebook, told the Daily Mail that the CAZ fiasco shatters Mr Burnham’s pitch of being ‘a man of the people’. ‘He chose to attack the poorest and sickest before considering the ramifications of such actions,’ he added. Mr Tate insists that air quality in Wigan – where the constituency Mr Burnham hopes to win is situated – was never as bad as the mayor claimed. And he argues that cleaner air is a natural consequence of people buying newer, less-polluting cars and vans. ‘Many vehicles are on lease or get replaced every five years, meaning that limits will fall below thresholds naturally,’ he says. If Mr Burnham triumphs on Thursday, it could be a stepping stone to No 10 and his long-held ambitions for far greater power. Should that happen, he can ill-afford slip-ups on the scale of the clean air zone. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. 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