£6 million more added to Air Quality Grants

An additional £6 million will be added to the annual funding for local authorities as part of the Air Quality Grant scheme, the government has announced.

The additional funding forms part of the government's response to the Coroner’s Prevention of Future Deaths Report following the reopening of the inquest into the tragic death of Ella Kissi-Debrah in 2013.

Part of this fund will be dedicated to improving public awareness in local communities about the risks of air pollution. It will also encourage collaboration with local public health bodies to, for example, provide guidance to vulnerable groups about the health impacts from air pollution and the steps they can take to minimise their exposure. This funding sits alongside the £880 million that has already been pledged for local authorities to develop and implement local air quality plans, including Clean Air Zones.

On particulate matter limits, a public consultation on new legal targets for PM2.5 and other pollutants will launch early next year, with the aim of setting new targets in legislation by October 2022. The Government has used the World Health Organisation guidelines on PM2.5 to inform its ambitions in shaping these targets. Further to this, the new Office for Health Promotion will consider as a priority how public health benefits can be achieved through reductions in population exposure to PM2.5, taking into account the particular circumstances experienced in London and the South East.

As well as a simple concentration target on PM2.5, the Government is developing a more sophisticated population exposure reduction target. This aims to drive reductions not just in pollution “hotspots”, but in all areas. In setting these new targets, there will also be a commitment to significantly increase the monitoring network to capture more detailed air quality information across the country.