Local Air Quality Management
(asked on 2nd September 2016) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the use of air quality management areas by local authorities.
Air quality has improved significantly in recent decades and we are working at local, national and international levels to continue those improvements. The UK currently meets legal limits for almost all pollutants; however, reducing levels for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) remains the most challenging.
Local authorities (LAs) have opportunities to improve air quality for the protection of public health and the environment through decisions they make on land use planning, permitting, roads and air quality management areas (AQMAs).
Across the UK, 259 LAs declared 715 AQMAs since 1999. Most AQMAs in the UK are in urban areas and have been established to address the contribution to air pollution from traffic emissions of NO2 or particulate matter (PM10). Details of the current AQMAs declared by LAs, broken down by region and pollutant, are set out in the table below.
Region | Total LAs | Number of LAs with AQMAs | For NO2 | For PM10 | For SO2 |
England (outside London) | 294 | 193 | 497 | 38 | 6 |
London | 33 | 33 | 33 | 29 | 0 |
Scotland | 32 | 14 | 25 | 21 | 1 |
Wales | 22 | 10 | 37 | 1 | 0 |
N. Ireland | 11 | 9 | 20 | 7 | 0 |
TOTAL | 393 | 259 | 612 | 96 | 7 |