Air Quality Strategy

Air pollution is associated with a number of adverse health impacts and it is recognised as a contributing factor in the onset of heart disease and cancer. Additionally, air pollution particularly affects the most vulnerable in society and often has a strong correlation with equalities issues because less affluent areas are often those with poorest air quality.

Air pollution comes from many sources and pollutants can travel long distances and combine with each other to create different pollutants. Emissions from distant and local sources can build up into high local concentrations of pollution.

Officers from the Environmental Protection Team monitor air pollution in the Borough in order to:

• fulfil the Council’s statutory duties under the Environmental Act 1995 (Part IV Local Air Quality Management)
• check compliance against current UK air quality objectives, guidelines and limits
• assess trends in air quality and thereby the effectiveness of policies and local interventions to improve air quality.

Monitoring results across the Borough are very good and are consistently below objective levels set by Government.

Annual Air Quality Status Reports (ASRs) are produced and, once approved by the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), are published on the Council’s website to raise awareness and provide re-assurance to the public of local air quality.

Draft Air Quality Strategy

The Draft Air Quality Strategy lays out how the Council will monitor air quality in the Borough as well as how we will raise awareness of air quality issues.

We would like your views on the draft strategy. Please download and read the draft strategy and then complete this short survey.

The closing date for the survey is Friday 26th May.