Air Pollution

(asked on 7th September 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to ensure that local authorities have the (a) knowledge and (b) capacity to tackle local air pollution.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 15th September 2020

Under the Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) framework, local authorities are responsible for mitigation of air pollution hot spots in areas where people may be exposed. Defra provides technical and policy guidance to local authorities to assist them in meeting these LAQM responsibilities. Defra also provides technical support to local authorities via a dedicated local air quality management Helpdesk (phone, email and webpage) and calculation tools to support local authorities in their monitoring and modelling efforts.

Through the Environment Bill we are improving the LAQM framework to enable greater local action on air pollution by widening the range of bodies that play a role in improving local air quality, including neighbouring local authorities and relevant public bodies, ensuring action is taken by all key players to tackle local pollution sources and to improve air quality locally.

We have also committed to a review of the National Air Quality Strategy, which will look to build the capacity of local delivery partners to effectively tackle localised air quality issues.

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