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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve air quality in the East Midlands.

We have consulted on our new world-leading Clean Air Strategy, which includes new and ambitious goals, legislation, investment and policies to help us to clean up our air faster and more effectively. The Government has put in place a £3.5 billion plan to improve air quality and reduce harmful emissions. The £3.5 billion plan to improve air quality does not set allocations by areas and future funding awards cannot be prejudged. But some examples of spending under this plan in the East Midlands are as follows:

£495m of this funding is focused on supporting local authorities across England with the most significant air quality challenges; including Derby City Council, Bolsover District Council, Nottingham City Council, and Leicester City Council, all of which are developing local plans to ensure compliance with NO₂ limits in the shortest possible time.

On 20 November, we approved Nottingham’s plan to bring forward compliance with NO₂ concentration limits and issued a Ministerial Direction requiring the council to implement the plan, accompanied by £1 million of funding from the Clean Air Fund. Nottingham City Council has received further funding from the Government to retrofit 171 buses and to convert its own fleet. Derby City Council and Nottingham City Council been awarded grants totalling £3.1 million to support the implementation of early measures to improve air quality.