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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of air quality levels across the Shipley constituency.

Local authorities take the lead on monitoring levels of air pollution within their boundaries. City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (CBMDC) was one of eight local authorities directed in October 2018, as part of the supplement to the 2017 UK Plan for Tackling Roadside Nitrogen Dioxide (NO₂) Concentrations, to develop a local plan to tackle identified NO₂ exceedances, following a Government-funded targeted feasibility study conducted by the council. This study identified persistent long-term exceedances of legal NO₂ limit values in and around the city centre including the Shipley area, and that without further action CBMDC would not be compliant with legal NO₂ limits until 2027.

Following approval of its plan early this year, CBMDC was subsequently directed and funded to introduce a charging Clean Air Zone in late 2021 that will cover the city centre, Canal Road corridor, Shipley and Saltaire, enabling CBMDC to achieve compliance by 2022.