Rushanara Ali – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rushanara Ali on 2016-09-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding the Local Air Quality Management team in her Department awarded to local authorities for monitoring air quality in the last year.

Dr Thérèse Coffey

Defra monitors, models and reports on air quality at a national level in accordance with the requirements of EU and international legislation. There are 272 air quality monitoring stations in Defra’s UK national monitoring networks. Local authorities in England fund and operate approximately 720 monitoring stations, of which 59 are affiliated to the Defra networks.

Local authorities are responsible for reviewing and assessing local air quality, including decisions on local air quality monitoring. Their local knowledge and interaction with the communities that they serve mean that they know the issues on the ground in detail and the solutions that are best suited to local circumstances.

In 2015/16, Defra’s air quality grant scheme awarded £0.5m to eight local authorities to support a range of air quality related projects, including installation of pollutant monitoring stations.