Greater Manchester has created a new clean air strategy with no plans to charge drivers of polluting vehicles, despite a legal direction to reduce air pollution as quickly as possible.

The new clean air plan says air quality will not be brought within legal limits until 2026, despite a previous pledge to do so by 2025.

It comes as monitoring at 248 sites last year found that nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exceeded legal limits at 64 locations, with another 78 at risk of exceedance.

This is despite the fact that Greater Manchester’s 10 local authorities were given a legal direction in 2020 to introduce a category C clean air zone (CAZ) to bring NO2 within legal limits by 2024 at the latest.

A category C CAZ applies to buses, coaches, taxis, private hire vehicles, heavy goods vehicles, vans, and minibuses, but not private vehicles.

The proposal was met with fierce local opposition and Greater Manchester referred plans back to the Government in 2022.

That year, the Government revoked the original direction and told the region to bring NO2 down to legal levels by 2026 at the latest – but also ‘in the shortest time possible’.

Greater Manchester has now developed an ‘investment-led’ clean air plan, which involves spending £51.1m on 40 new zero emission buses, depot electrification, and 77 Euro 6 standard diesel buses, and £30.5m helping taxi drivers upgrade to cleaner vehicles.

Greater Manchester has claimed that ‘only the investment-led plan meets the legal requirement to deliver compliance in the shortest possible time’.

In line with a government request, it compared this plan to a ‘benchmark’ CAZ scheme, but only one that does not charge private vehicles.

Campaigners have accused Greater Manchester of not taking air quality seriously.

Sarah Rowe from campaign group Clean Cities said: ‘Endless delays have led to Greater Manchester suffering some of the worst air pollution in the country.

‘The Government should refuse to allow any further delay, and instead ensure Greater Manchester meets its legal obligations to clean up our air in the shortest possible time.’

Greater Manchester’s air quality administration committee is recommended to submit the revised plan to the government, which will decide what the final version includes.