City firms 'could fund transport'

The plan was to reduce congestion in and out of Manchester

Businesses in Greater Manchester could be asked to pay extra tax to pay for public transport improvements.

Council leaders are meeting to discuss an increase in business rates and a levy on city centre companies for each parking space they own.

An Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) report said the scheme could raise an annual �38m.

The idea was raised after the failure of the congestion charge, which was voted out in a referendum.

Nearly two million people were asked to vote last year on a peak-time road charge to open up a �2.8bn transport investment.

A majority of voters in all of the region's 10 boroughs voted against the plans, with 812,815 (79%) no votes and 218,860 (21%) in favour of the charge.

I can't think of a worse time to do it

Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley

It meant AGMA's application for government Transport Innovation Fund (TiF) cash could not go ahead, and left officials searching for other ways of raising cash for public transport improvements.

But Lord Peter Smith, chairman of AGMA, told the BBC: "It isn't a plan B - it's a new plan A.

"Obviously we recognise we need to do something to improve transport across Greater Manchester, but we were planning through the TiF bid to spend �3bn.

"At best, these schemes would give us about one tenth of that so clearly the scale of everything would be much less."

Leaders meeting

Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley who was a prominent critic of the congestion charge scheme, said he doubted the idea would get beyond the discussion stage.

"I can't think of a worse time to do it," he said.

"Business is having a hard time, people are being made redundant, businesses are reducing their size because times are hard.

"It's worth a discussion but I wouldn't imagine that the discussions would be very fruitful given the fact we're at the start of what may be a long and deep recession."

AGMA leaders will discuss the proposals on Friday.