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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has to plant protective hedges around schools to reduce air pollution in schools.

To support local authorities in their work to tackle air pollution hotspots, this Government has given a great deal of thought to the role that vegetation might play in improving air quality. The Air Quality Expert Group published a report named Impacts of Vegetation on Urban Air Pollution which is available to read here:

https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat09/1807251306_180509_Effects_of_vegetation_on_urban_air_pollution_v12_final.pdf

The key conclusion is that while vegetation might bring some highly localised benefits to air quality, it will not be a solution at a city scale. In the context of a school perimeter, there is little evidence to support vegetation reducing nitrogen oxides from exhausts and while significant amounts of foliage might provide a localised barrier effect to reduce particulate levels from the roadside, the effectiveness of these measures is unclear.

This is why the emphasis of our Clean Air Strategy is to tackle the sources of pollution levels as the most effective way to improve air quality for all.