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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of traffic noise on (a) physical and (b) mental health.

The Government has not made a direct assessment of the effect of traffic noise on physical and mental health.

Government economists recently used published research on the potential health impacts of noise to develop a methodology to estimate the possible costs of noise pollution. Based on the existing evidence, illustrative estimates suggest that adverse health costs are valued at around £2 - £3 billion per annum. The report of this work is published on the Defra website: https://www.gov.uk/noise-pollution-economic-analysis.