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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many and what proportion of (a) special areas of conservation, (b) special protected areas and (c) sites of special scientific interest in England did not meet the favourable condition status because of air pollution in the latest period for which data is available.

Our recently published Environmental Improvement Plan recognises that air pollution, in particular ammonia, harms biodiversity through nitrogen deposition. The Plan sets out action that Defra has taken including publication of guidance, delivery of advice through Catchment Sensitive Farming and funding for low emissions farm equipment. It also includes ambitious further measures to drive down emissions of ammonia from farming, including new rules to reduce emissions from organic manures and extension of environmental permitting to dairy and intensive beef farms.

The Trends report published by Defra indicates the proportion of SACs, SPAs and SSSIs that are in exceedance of critical loads and levels for atmospheric nitrogen pollution and can be found here: Trends Report 2022: Trends in critical load and critical level exceedances in the UK.

According to the 2022 report, over 90% of sensitive SACs, SPAs and SSSIs are predicted to exceed their site-relevant critical loads for nutrient nitrogen deposition for at least one of their features:
a) 90.9% of sensitive SACs or approx. 78% of all SACs
b) 91.7% of sensitive SPAs or approx. 85% of all SPAs

c) 91.1% of sensitive SSSIs or approx. 65% of all SSSIs

Exceedance of acidity critical loads is predicted for 73.3% of sensitive SACs, 85.7% SPAs and 55.7% of sensitive SSSIs

Information on air quality for individual protected sites can be found on the Air Pollution Information System (www.apis.ac.uk).