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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the report of the Air Quality Expert Group, Particulate Matter in the United Kingdom whether he has plans to (a) set a limit on the emission of fine particulates and (b) require them to be monitored.

Emissions of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) have reduced by 8% since 2005 when this Air Quality Expert Group report was published and 47% since 1990. This is in part due to emissions limits placed on key polluting activities and fuels.

The Government is firmly committed to improving the UK’s air quality and cutting harmful emissions and has signed up to further ambitious emissions reduction targets for 2020 and 2030. This will require additional action beyond what has already been achieved and to that end, as a first step, we are supporting the Ready to Burn initiative to reduce emissions from our biggest primary source, domestic wood burning.

Monitoring is important to ensure emissions limits are adhered to as well as ensuring suitable environmental performance of, for example, appliances and fuels. Monitoring is also used (alongside modelling) to assess the ambient concentrations of PM_2.5 in the UK. We have a network comprising 163 monitoring sites providing near-real-time data to our UK air website https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/; of these 77 monitor PM_2.5.