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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to make funding available for local authorities to monitor particulate matter PM2.5 and PM10.

Local authorities have a duty to review and assess air quality. They make decisions on local air quality monitoring and, take consideration of Defra’s Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) Technical Guidance in siting air quality monitors. Positioning of local monitors is expected to be in line with national and local priorities, which may include locations where there is high risk of public exposure to air pollutants. Local authorities in England operate over 700 local monitoring stations.

Since it began in 1997, Defra’s air quality grant scheme has awarded over £55 million in funding, to a variety of projects to help local authorities make improvements to local air quality. For the 2017/18 round a total of at least £2 million is being made available to successful bidding local authorities.