Mayor ignored advisers

Ken Livingstone defied his transport advisers when he imposed the £8 congestion charge, it can be revealed today.

They were so concerned at the scale of the opposition they recommended the Mayor consider a smaller increase.

But he pressed ahead and announced the 60 per cent increase would come into force on 4 July, raising an extra £35-£45 million a year.

The warning to the Mayor emerges in documents drawn up on his behalf by Transport for London analysing the results of a three-month public consultation.

Seventy-five per cent of residents and 89 per cent of firms and "stakeholders" - such as local authorities - said they were against the £3-a-day increase.

Businesses such as Royal Mail, Tesco, Boots and BT said such an increase was unjustified at a time when traffic was falling and the zone had exceeded its original targets for cutting congestion.

TfL's report to the Mayor states: "Given the extent of the opposition to the proposed increases in the charge, the Mayor may wish to consider whether a lower increase in the charge may be more appropriate."

The Evening Standard can reveal that an extra 16,000 a day may be deterred from entering the zone - on top of the 70,000 already put off by the £5 charge. This will add to traders' fears about lost business and the potential switch of customers to outof-town shopping centres.

Jo Valentine, chief executive of London First, which represents the capital's top 300 firms, said: "What is the point of going out to consultation, receiving strong opposition and making no adjustments to address perfectly reasonable suggestions from customers - and indeed his own TfL?

"For a 60 per cent rise we expect something in return - and see no sign of it to date."

Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat chairwoman of the London Assembly transport committee, accused the Mayor of "arrogance and contempt" for ignoring the concerns of TfL, residents and businesses. She said he should use the forthcoming general election to "pause for thought".

She said: "Mr Livingstone's second term as Mayor has already been littered with numerous occasions where he has left himself increasingly cut off from what people in London really want. Now he is even isolated from the opinion of his own transport body."

But a TfL spokesman said its report concluded that the £8 levy would meet the Mayor's key aims of reducing congestion and increasing funds for public transport. "It would have been wrong of us not to have raised it with figures such as those," he said.

The Mayor said a rise to £7 would have been the "easy option", would have had a less dramatic effect on gridlock and would have required a further increase to £8 before 2008.

He has vowed not to increase the levy again before the end of his second term, which has three more years to run. The new charge includes "sweeteners" for regular users. Firms registering 10 or more vehicles get a discounted £7 rate, while drivers paying a month or year in advance get a 15 per cent discount.