Oxford’s Congestion Charge: The Stealth Rollout of the 15-Minute City

Oxfordshire County Council’s so-called “temporary” congestion charge, is set to launch on October 29, 2025, and Councillors are said to already be celebrating that they have successfully implemented the next step in the 15 Minute City Agenda without any pushback whatsoever.  

After facing international backlash after announcing ‘roadblocks would turn Oxford into a 15 minute city’, Council officials quietly changed the name of the scheme due to it having ‘negative connotations’.    

This the public are about to learn is really a cynical bait-and-switch, claimed to be a ‘temporary congestion charge’ its will ensnare residents in a giant web of surveillance and restriction.   When they tried to bring it in previously it was roundly rejected by everyone other than a tiny group of eco-mentalists who appeared to have more say than the 36,000 residents who registered their objection to the draconian scheme.  

The ideologically driven Councillors in Oxford City and County Councils  simply planned to progress their agenda by stealth.   A law-change here, a name change there and before you know it your plan is back on track.

Don’t be fooled: it’s the same ideology at its core, peddling anti-car zealotry, pervasive tracking of movement, and the creeping integration of digital IDs to control where and how you travel.

Let’s peel-back the layers.

The council’s plan divides Oxford into the same six zones that were central to the infamous traffic filter proposals of 2023, which sparked widespread protests and claimed to be ‘conspiracy theories’—though, as we’ll see, the concerns were far from unfounded.  As with the 15minute city plan households will be issued 100 passes per year,  forcing families to ration their drives like wartime coupons.  People who live just outside the city limits will only get 20 per year, causing thousands to suffer in the pursuit of this left-wing utopia.

The congestion charge will also operate using the exact same number plate recognition cameras that were proposed for the 15 minute city plan. They’re even in exactly the same locations.  This also means that the local council will now be tracking your vehicle.   

To get a permit, local residents have to register their cars details with the council.  Meaning  the council will know exactly how many cars you own, their registration details, and even their estimated worth through linked databases. Read the small print on the website and you’ll notice an absence of any statement of intent and are said to be planning to link all your car details to the government’s One Login system, which is rapidly expanding into a Digital ID.  

Restricting your movements is supposed to be about reducing congestion; whilst two years ago, it was supposed to be about Climate Change.  Now that lie has been debunked left-wing technocrats have had to come up with some-other ‘reason’ for limiting your freedom:  Congestion is the latest MacGuffin, but, by de facto, the council will soon be dictating where its residents can and cannot go, an outrageous attack on personal freedom. Want to visit a friend across town? Better check your zone allowance first. This isn’t congestion relief; it’s social engineering disguised as environmentalism.  

The ideology underpinning this is crystal clear:  an anti-car crusade by Marxists who get elected to fix the potholes, and empty the bins, but who use the position to impose their own left-wing agenda.  Nobody voted for this, whatever it’s called this week, nobody voted to have their freedom curtailed, to have their private-life snooped on, to have their world that much smaller and more difficult.  

15-minute city concept is the vision of terrorist-turned-professor Carlos Moreno was itself sold under a giant lie.  Moreno’s Orwellian pitch claimed that it was all about ‘convenience’  and that a 15 minute city meant shops, offices, doctors, gyms, and entertainment, would all be within a 15 minute walk of your home. 

Of course this was an utter lie, not a single new business or facility was built anywhere let alone locally to anyone. The only things the council erected were the roadblocks and surveillance cameras.   Even whilst they were doing this they were still repeating the lie. 

Duncan Enright, the Marxist councillor who said the quiet part out loud, continued to claim that convenience with at the heart of the 15 minute city, yet couldn’t point to a single brick being laid for even one of these mythical facilities that were supposed to spring up.    

Oxford’s version provided no more convenience than residents already had, whilst adding enforced boundaries and mass surveillance in abundance.

Another trick that the council are fond of is 'deniability'.   They claim that the LTNs, Traffic Filters, Quickways, Quietways, Speed reductions, and now congestion charges are unrelated to each other.  Worse than that, the council continues to gaslight the public by repeating the lie they are all unrelated traffic schemes and that only a mad conspiracy theorist would think otherwise. The public have spent the last 4 years playing 'whack-a-mole', and at the moment, it looks like the Council are winning. No wonder they're celebrating.

15 Minute City Inventor Refuses to Rule Out 'Rounding Up' Those Who Don't Comply with Communist Agenda

Moreno, who was once fully prepared to stab, shoot and bomb his way to a Communist Utopia, is now designing cities based on the same ideology, unknown to the useful idiots now supporting his 15 minute city idea.