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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to improve co-ordination between national, regional and local authorities on improving (a) indoor and (b) outdoor air quality.

The Government has put in place a range of measures to improve coordination of actions to improve air quality, including creating Air Quality Partners, specific public bodies who are required to contribute solutions to air quality problems within their control. This includes neighbouring local authorities, upper tier authorities in areas with both district and county councils, the Environment Agency and National Highways. We have published a new Air Quality Strategy setting out our expectations of how local authorities should deliver air quality improvement, and issued extensive policy and technical guidance for local authority practitioners. This year we will continue to offer training and guidance to local authority officers, including workshops and template enforcement materials, in addition to providing funding through our Local Air Quality Grant programme, enabling high-quality locally-led air quality improvement schemes.

On indoor quality, we have set out ventilation requirements to maintain air quality as part of amendments to the Building Regulations. In our Air Quality Strategy, we highlighted guidance published by the UK Health Security Agency, in partnership with the National Institute of Clinical Excellence on indoor air quality and directed relevant local authority staff to this national guidance. We have also committed to reviewing our existing guidance on the health impacts of damp and mould in homes, and issuing new consolidated guidance tailored to the housing sector this year.