Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support his Department provides to local authorities to (a) monitor and (b) tackle issues relating to (i) air quality and (ii) odour caused by landfill emissions.

Landfill sites are regulated under Environmental Permitting Regulations by the Environment Agency (EA). The EA operates a national network of air quality monitoring sites on behalf of Defra. These are designed to provide a representative sample of air quality across the UK, and will not be specific to individual regulated sites. In addition to its statutory air quality activities, the EA can use air quality monitoring equipment in some circumstances to monitor for certain trace gases that form odorous compounds. This is carried out using the EA’s mobile monitoring facilities.