Find your local councillor, MP or GLA member’s email addresses using one of the following services: WriteToThem.com, TheyWorkForYou.com
Please use the following email as a basis for your own, personalising it as much a possible:
Dear [Councillor/ local MP/ GLA Member]
I am writing to ask you to join the widespread opposition to the Silvertown Tunnel.
Two of our MPs have recently written to Sadiq Khan and I would like to see you take this step too, and call for its immediate cancellation.
The tunnel is a PFI project costing £2BN and has no place in a time of climate emergency when there is growing evidence of the dangers of traffic air pollution. It is funded by future tolling both the existing Blackwall Tunnel and the new Silvertown Tunnel, and is opposed by the adjacent boroughs of Lewisham, Southwark, Newham, Hackney, and some Greenwich councillors. It is also opposed by top environmental health, transport and climate policy experts, air quality campaigners, active travel NGOs, Extinction Rebellion climate activists, politicians from all parties across East and South East London, local residents, local headteachers, and cycle logistics companies.
Because the proposed Silvertown Tunnel has HGV lanes, and is bigger than the Blackwall tunnel, it will be used by larger HGVs and this new traffic will use existing already saturated approach roads, causing yet more congestion and air pollution near over 16,000 children on each side of the river at local schools within 500m of feeder and approach roads, many of which are already suffering illegal or damaging levels of dirty air. HGV logistics centres are planned near the tunnel mouths on both sides of the river.
The decision to allow Transport for London to move forward was Mayor Sadiq Khan’s alone. He was told that TfL made serious mistakes in their evaluation of options. And that the economic, environmental, and public health viability of the project had not been re-assessed in light of:
(a) the carbon emissions reductions that London must make to meet a Paris Agreement compliant carbon budget;
(b) recent findings on serious health impacts of air pollution including harmful particulates from “zero emission” vehicles, and research showing that Covid19 may be carried by particulates;
(c) the implications of Covid on the financial viability and future of transport for London.
The scheme will lock East & South-East London into high levels of heavy motor traffic, air pollution and carbon emissions for decades, and make already illegal air quality worse for many. Environmental justice demands that the health of those in Newham, a borough with a high BAME population, must not be sacrificed for the benefit of “growth” for other Londoners.
I ask you to call for the project to be cancelled immediately.
Please write on my behalf, copying me in, to:
Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London: mayor@london.gov.uk
Heidi Alexander, Deputy Mayor: heidi.alexander@london.gov.uk
Len Duvall, London Assembly Member for Greenwich & Lewisham, leader of the LA’s Labour Group: len.duvall@london.gov.uk
Yours sincerely
[Your name and address]
Stop the Silvertown Tunnel 