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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the number of children at (a) school, (b) nursery and (c) public playgrounds exposed to levels of nitrogen dioxide which are illegal under the Air Quality Standards Regulations 2010 in each of the last three years.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility to review and assess local ambient air quality, and are responsible for mitigation of air pollution where people are likely to be exposed, such as at schools. Defra does not hold information on the number of schools, nurseries or public playgrounds close to areas which breach legal concentration limits.

Defra provides guidance and support to local authorities on monitoring; positioning of monitors is expected to be in line with national and local priorities, and may include schools and other locations where there is high risk of public exposure. There are 539 current Air Quality Management Areas (AQMAs) for Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), and 66 for Particulate Matter (PM 10) in England. A breakdown of AQMAs by Local Authority and pollutant is available on the UK Air site, which also includes an interactive map showing the boundaries of AQMAs: https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/aqma/summary.

We committed in our consultation on our Clean Air Strategy to give local Government new legal powers to take decisive action to improve air quality in the most polluted areas. Through the 2017 NO2 plan, we are working with those local authorities where exceedances in NO2 concentrations have been identified, in order to achieve compliance with legal limits as soon as possible. This is supported by almost £500 million funding for councils as part of a wider commitment to invest £3.5 billion in transport and air quality.