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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of Government funding for local authorities on improving air quality.

To enable local authorities to perform their statutory functions in local air quality management, Defra run an annual air quality grant whereby local authorities can bid for funding to take forward air quality initiatives in their area. Through this grant we have awarded more than £42 million across almost 500 projects since 2010, and this year will award at least £7m.

As part of our NO2 programme, we also manage a budget of £883m, held jointly across DfT and Defra.

Funding provided to local authorities is split between Implementation funding and our Clean Air Fund. To date (June 2022) the programme has spent £237m on implementation funding for air quality measures and £284m through its Clean Air Fund.