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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what information his Department holds on the average reading for an air quality sample in (a) the UK, (b) Hampshire and (c) Portsmouth.

Defra’s national network of air quality monitors currently comprises 272 sites across the UK and is managed by the Environment Agency. Sites are organised into networks that gather information for a wide range of pollutants in towns, cities as well as in rural areas. Some monitoring sites are focused on measuring specific sources – e.g. road traffic or industry whilst others are focused on background concentrations.

All monitoring data is made available on our UK-AIR website. Data from the Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN) is reported in near-real-time and is updated every hour. The website URL is: https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/.

In addition, National Statistics are produced annually which analyse trends and levels of air pollution for the UK AURN. The website URL is: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/air-quality-statistics.

On the AURN there are 5 sites within Hampshire (including Southampton and Portsmouth) and 2 sites in Portsmouth. The annual statistics tool on UK-AIR can be used to determine annual mean concentrations of the measured air pollutants.

In addition, local authorities submit their monitoring data and local actions to Defra in their Annual Status Reports. This is a requirement under the Local Air Quality Management process, underpinned by the Environment Act 1995.

Annual mean concentrations of air pollutants in 2003 and 2018 from the Portsmouth sites on the AURN are shown in the table below: