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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what criteria the Joint Air Quality Unit uses to allocate air quality grant funding.

The assessment criteria used by the Joint Air Quality Unit to allocate funding from the Air Quality Grant are set out in the Invitation to Apply which was provided to all eligible authorities on its launch.

All applications for grant funding are subject to two stages of assessment. Applications are first assessed against six criteria: delivering air quality benefits, strategic alignment, value for money, deliverability, monitoring and evaluation, and knowledge transfer. Applications which pass the first stage are then referred to a Grant board which reviews the projects against further criteria: portfolio delivery against the grant objective, balance between immediate action and strengthening the evidence base, and geographic diversity.