Public Accounts Committee report: Local residents left in the dark about dangerous air pollution

In a report today the Public Accounts Committee says it is too difficult for the public to find information about air quality in their local area or what is being done by central and local government to address persistent breaches of legal air pollution limits, leaving them less able to take action to protect themselves. Poor air quality can cause significant damage to people’s health and harms the environment, but progress to address illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution in 64 local authorities is slow, and current policy measures are insufficient to meet 4 out of 5 of the 2030 emissions ceiling targets set for the UK as a whole.

Issues of poor air quality are often highly localised: breaches of legal limits on the strategic road network are estimated to directly affect 240 to 250 houses or properties across the country, with levels of pollution dropping off quickly away from the road. But there is a high level of uncertainty in government’s model for assessing pollution levels, which may mean that further areas of poor air quality are missed.The lack of good, accessible information on air quality risks leaving residents with limited ability to adapt their behaviour to protect their health and may impact public acceptance of air quality measures such as the potentially “extremely intrusive” nine-metre-high barriers mooted for the centre of Guildford.

Tackling local air quality issues requires local and national government to work together, but “central government has not always got the balance right”, being “prescriptive in some respects while seeming to avoid responsibilities that naturally sit at a national level in others”.

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “A coroner who found air pollution was material in the death of a little girl who lived near London’s South Circular Road called for legal limits to be lowered, saying there is "no safe level of particulate matter" in the air. But current legal limits are regularly being exceeded and the public are not getting enough information about these dangerous breaches to adapt their behaviour in order to protect their health.  

“Government doesn’t actually know how much public money is being spent addressing air quality across all departments - which does not suggest the integrated approach necessary to tackle this potentially deadly issue.”

 PAC report conclusions and recommendations: 

6. It is far too difficult for the public to find information about the air quality in their local area and what is being done about it. Issues of poor air quality are often highly localised: breaches of legal limits on the strategic road network are estimated to directly affect 240 to 250 houses or properties across the country, with levels of pollution dropping off quickly away from the road. The Government’s main source of public information on air quality is the UK Air website, but this is impenetrable for the average user looking to find information about their local area, as it does not clearly present information on the legal limits for each pollutant, actions taken to date by the UK government and the progress being made, to put the overall air quality data it gives in context. Without easily accessible information about air quality, local residents are limited in their ability to adapt their behaviour in order to protect their health. They are also less likely to see the need to change the way they travel to help resolve air quality problems, potentially creating issues with public acceptance of air quality measures once they are implemented. This is especially important as some measures, such as the possible installation of nine-metre-high barriers in the centre of Guildford, are likely to be extremely intrusive for local residents.  

Recommendation: The government should, as part of its Treasury Minute response, set out a timetable for improving the accessibility of public information about local air quality. This should include making it easy for people to find out if they live near a site that breaches legal air quality limits, and if so, what progress is being made on bringing it into compliance. 

7. There is a high level of uncertainty in government’s model for assessing pollution levels, which may mean that further areas of poor air quality might be missed by the programme. Government uses a national model to identify areas that are likely to be breaching air quality limits, and uses this to direct local authorities to take action. The national model does not directly use the results of monitoring by local authorities; instead, it uses a national network of monitoring stations. The model is regularly updated to take account of differences to local modelling, however government estimates that overall uncertainty in the model remains at the ‘allowable limit’ of +/- 30%. There is no formal margin of tolerance to identify local authorities for inclusion in the programme, and some local authorities are concerned this may result in an unfair situation whereby areas with high levels of NO2 pollution are not required to take action due to the national model not predicting a breach. 

Recommendation: As part of the Treasury Minute response, the government should set out how it will satisfy itself that all areas in exceedance of pollution limits have been identified and included in the programme, taking into account the high levels of uncertainty associated with the national model. 

8. Central government has not always got the balance right in how it works in partnership with local government, having been prescriptive in some respects, while seeming to avoid responsibilities that naturally sit at a national level in others. The best approach to addressing air quality issues varies between areas according to local circumstances.  Although Local Authorities have had the freedom to set different exemption criteria and different charging levels for Clean Air Zones, some feel that JAQU has been inflexible and lacks understanding of local politics, with too much emphasis placed on CAZs as the default option, instead of other measures that may be more suited to the area. On the other hand, government has not taken the responsibility it should for national messaging on the need for air quality measures, saying that local places were best placed to judge how to communicate with their residents, and so not introducing a national campaign. The experience of the Covid-19 pandemic shows that local communications need to be supported by a strong national message about why specific local actions are necessary. 

Recommendation: The government should review its approach to working with local authorities on air quality, to make it a more effective partnership. In particular, it should: 

• introduce a national communications campaign on air quality to provide a strong national message about the purpose of air quality measures that supports locally-tailored communications. 
• Ensure that local authorities have sufficient flexibility to determine the approach to be taken in their local area.  

In addition, government should provide a further update to the committee by the end of this year outlining what further steps are being taken to improve its working relationship with local authorities.  

9. Although calculating an exact figure may be difficult, with Departments claiming it would be a great deal of effort to produce something not necessarily precise, Government could do more to improve the transparency of cross-government public spending that has an impact on air pollution. While Defra tracks spend on its own air quality initiatives, it could not provide the National Audit Office with a breakdown of spend across all the cross-government initiatives it expects to contribute to air quality improvements, such as from programmes within BEIS and DLUHC. Government says that disaggregating the air quality impact of these programmes from other outcomes is a difficult technical challenge. It is important for government to be transparent with the public and Parliament about how much taxpayer’s money is going towards meeting air quality targets. Without this information the benefits and risks for air quality of wider programmes across government are not be as clear as they need to be. A lack of cross-government transparency also makes it harder for government to reprioritise when necessary and judge value-for-money. 

Recommendation: Although calculating an exact level of spend on air quality across government may be too difficult, there is value in improving transparency through higher level estimates. Government should, by the end of the year, develop options for improving the transparency of cross-government air quality spend and inform the Committee of its preferred approach.  

10. Government is not yet taking a sufficiently integrated approach to tackling the problem of poor air quality.  Measures to tackle air pollution on the strategic road network risk displacing heavy vehicle traffic onto local roads. Although government is aware of this risk, we are not clear what specific actions are being taken to work with local authorities to manage this risk, and National Highways has not published criteria that set out the point at which this possibility renders a particular measure non-viable. In addition to working with local authorities, central government is starting to develop opportunities to work with local health and education providers to support air quality communications campaigns, such as through a pilot project working with around 40 GPs and awards through the local air quality grants programme. The Departments for Business, Energy, Innovation and Skills (BEIS) and for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) are also important partners for addressing issues of air quality. 

Recommendation: The update to the National Air Pollution Control Programme should set out how government will ensure full integration between the different areas of responsibility with an impact on air quality. 

11. There is a lot resting on the updated plan that government expects to publish if 2030 air quality targets are to be met. The UK may have missed its target for national ammonia emissions in 2020, and existing policy measures will not be sufficient to achieve the 2030 emissions ceilings set for the UK for a further three pollutants. At the time we took evidence Government planned to publish in September 2022 an update to the National Air Pollution Control Programme, and this must be robust and realistic enough to ensure that targets are met. Past action to tackle local breaches of air quality limits has fallen significantly behind schedule, and similar delays at the national level would mean targets being missed. Meeting these targets will require action beyond the transport sector, such as by reducing domestic wood-burning (which accounts for a quarter of fine particulate matter emissions) and addressing ammonia use in farming (around 87% of ammonia emissions). 

Recommendation: The government must ensure that the plan it publishes includes robust, actionable measures that will result in compliance with the 2030 targets for all air pollutants, and ensure it has strong governance arrangements to monitor progress against its plan and take decisive action if progress falls behind expectations.