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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding his Department has allocated to support public health campaigns on air pollution in each of the last three years.

A total of £539,120 was provided to Southampton City Council (with Birmingham City Council, Derby City Council, Leeds City Council, Manchester City Council and Nottingham City Council) through the Air Quality Grant in 2016/17. The purpose of this funding was to run an air quality public awareness and engagement campaign. The campaign was in collaboration with Global Action Plan.

A further £90,000 was provided to the Global Action Plan in support of Clean Air Day in 2018.

The government already provides information on local and national air quality. A multi-day air quality forecast service is available to the public on the government’s UK-Air website. It provides up-to-date information on air pollution and has a postcode search facility to enable information to be provided at a local level. We will work with media outlets to improve public access to the air quality forecast and continue working with our technical partners to improve the accuracy and availability of localised air quality data and forecasts.

The government also provides health advice to support vulnerable individuals during episodes of poor air quality and we also work closely with a network of key health stakeholders to provide alerts during high pollution episodes. In addition, Public Health England has published updated information about air pollution and health impacts:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-air-pollution/health-matters-air-pollution.

In the Clean Air Strategy, which will be published in due course, we commit to improving the information we provide about air pollution, health impacts and the simple actions people can take to reduce their exposure and improve air quality. We will also work in partnership with health organisations to review where improvements can be made to the Daily Air Quality Index (DAQI) and associated health advice, for periods when pollution levels might be elevated.