Mayor may face legal action

Ken Livingstone may face legal action from advertising agencies in a row over his £16 million publicity campaign for congestion charging.

The firms are furious because they were encouraged by Transport for London to pitch for a congestion charge advertising contract, that was then withdrawn.

TfL has offered the four agencies £2,000 each, but the companies say the pitches cost around £30,000 to prepare and two have consulted lawyers. One agency source said TfL had conducted itself in "an amateurish and unethical" way. The work was eventually given to M&C Saatchi as part of a wider contract to handle advertising for TfL and London Transport.

A TfL spokesman said: "We realised we would get economies of scale if we rolled the two accounts together, so we stopped the congestion charging pitch. I agree it would have been better if we had done this before the agencies started work."

He said the body is now considering how best to proceed with the contract for the congestion charging work.