Improving Air Quality

Scott Mann Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh); I really enjoyed my time with her on the Environmental Audit Committee. This is a very important debate and I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in it. I also thank my west country colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), for presenting the joint report of the four Select Committees.

Pollution and poor air quality are very important issues. These are public health emergencies that need addressing. The discussion around pollution and air quality often focuses on large urban areas such as London, where there is lots of dense traffic and many large public transport systems. The issue of poor air quality in rural areas like mine is sometimes forgotten because, understandably, large urban cities have the most pollution. As a rural MP, I want to highlight an issue specific to my constituency—the case of a small town in a very rural area that suffers from poor air quality—and to state why action is needed.

Camelford is at the heart of my North Cornwall constituency, and has a population of only 3,000 people. It does not have any large factories with smoke pouring out, planes flying overhead or thousands of people swarming the pavements using buses, taxis and trains. But it does have a main arterial road running right through the town centre that is used by lots of cars, lorries and tractors, which all pass through at a constant rate. There are chicanes in the town centre, and lots of traffic lights. Whenever people drive through Camelford, they are inevitably caught in a queue of traffic that crawls through the town. The queuing cars are polluting the small and narrow town centre, where many people are walking up and down the pavements doing their day-to-day chores. We have seen traffic levels rise year on year, with many more cars and lorries, and therefore more pollution, which means an increased risk to public health.

The reason why Camelford suffers from all this congestion and pollution is that the A39 runs right through the town centre. The A39 is a busy road running down the centre of North Cornwall, connecting some of the constituency’s biggest towns, which are very popular with tourists, and the road is used heavily in the summer months. It is an important road for connecting Devon and Cornwall, heavily used by heavy goods vehicles, with lots of agricultural movements every day. The high number of local farms means that there is lots of farm traffic, as well as lorries travelling to and from the various communities dotted along the road.

In general, the road is quite free-flowing. It is a single carriageway that dips in and out of valleys, as is normal in the Cornish countryside, and around various twists and turns. The road does not encounter much congestion until we get to Camelford town. The road narrows as it reaches the town centre, and the traffic is funnelled into a very narrow high street. Anyone who has been to Cornwall will know that we built much of our housing on the side of roads, and you do not have to walk far off the pavement to be in someone’s house. Some of the buildings on the road are three or four storeys high and are very close to the cars passing in the immediate vicinity, which means the pollution cannot easily escape. That has been proven by tests conducted by Cornwall Council in pollution hotspots near the town centre. Traffic cannot flow in both directions at the same time as the town centre has a traffic light shuttle system, and there are chicanes and lights to stagger traffic. That causes queues, frustration, delays, noise and pollution, and threatens the wellbeing of my constituents and those living along the road or taking their children to the nearby school.

Because of the pollution and air quality issues, Cornwall Council has had to place Camelford in an air quality management area under the Environment Act 1995. Those management areas can be introduced when a local authority knows that levels of seven different pollutants exceed domestic or EU limits. In 2016, the council found high levels of carbon monoxide in Camelford, which are directly attributable to the motor vehicles passing along the A39. The air quality assessment found that the daily average number of vehicles passing through the town centre in 2015 was 6,028, up by almost 1,000 or 25% from 2011. With regard to pollutants, the assessment found that carbon monoxide levels were present in a variety of locations and that they exceeded the UK’s annual mean objective.

As part of the air quality management area process, the council has developed a draft action plan, which went out to consultation earlier this year. The action plan focuses on the option of a bypass, which it has concluded would be the most effective way of dealing with the congestion in the town centre. In tandem with that work, Cormac, which is part of Cornwall Council, has published an options appraisal report that lays out the options for remedying the congestion issues. The report concludes that either a HGV diversion route should be implemented or a bypass should be constructed, and it soundly recommends that the best long-term solution to the problem in the town would be a bypass.

The population of Camelford will grow substantially over the years, and it is imperative that we nip this problem in the bud as soon as possible. In the next 15 to 20 years, there will be thousands more vehicles passing along the road every week, leading to higher carbon monoxide levels and putting my constituents’ health at risk. I feel that it would be a dereliction of my duty if I did not talk about this issue and raise it in the House.

As the Minister will know, the Department for Transport is working on a new major roads network, which will map out the various major roads around England that are not part of the strategic road network. The draft MRN includes the A39 in North Cornwall, which means that the construction of a bypass could be funded through the multimillion-pound funding streams available through the MRN. A bypass would not only address the poor air quality but facilitate economic growth and unlock land for housing.

Poor air quality remains the most important issue. My constituents deserve to live in a community that does not suffer from these high levels of pollution. When debating the NHS and public health, Members and health experts often say that prevention is better than cure. Camelford is a prime example of that principle. The signs are that air quality is getting poorer and we know that traffic levels will get higher and that the town will get bigger. A bypass is the only long-term solution, and I hope that both DEFRA and the Department for Transport will make it possible for my constituents and their children to go about their day-to-day lives in a healthy environment. I fully support the Government’s manifesto commitment to leave the environment in a better state than we found it in, but it is issues such as this that will define whether we are true to our word.