West Northamptonshire Council - Have your say on plans to improve Air Quality

Posted 8 months ago in West Northamptonshire Council

Overview

We have put together a new draft Air Quality Action Plan that provides the actions we will take to improve air quality in West Northamptonshire.

Background

Reducing air pollution is vitally important to our health and environment. All councils have a duty to monitor local air quality to make sure it meets certain standards; we monitor air quality in several locations across West Northamptonshire. Regular monitoring shows that air quality does not meet UK national government levels in some of our areas, so there is a duty for us to produce an Air Quality Action Plan (or AQAP) which outlines the steps we will take to work towards improving air quality and reducing air pollution, so that it helps to positively affect our health, wellbeing, and the environment.

The draft AQAP replaces existing plans from our former sovereign councils which have produced positive improvements in air quality and builds on them further. Some of the actions producing positive effects include:

• More effective use of the planning control system to ensure air quality is fully considered, including the successful adoption of a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) on air quality in the South Northamptonshire Area and via Northampton's Low Emission Strategy,
• Completing road improvement schemes to ease congestion and therefore improve emissions,
• Delivering public electric vehicle infrastructure and,  
• Continuing with the statutory Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) process of monitoring and reporting.

Key proposals

This consultation focuses on our commitment to reduce exposure for people and the environment to poor air quality.  As well as our legal duty to review, and in some cases take action in respect of air quality, the following provides a summary of the key areas of the draft AQAP:

• Transport planning that supports improving air quality,
• Encouraging active travel for example: walking or cycling,
• Promotion of low emission vehicles, and providing the infrastructure,
• Further guidance and controls around planning and building development that supports improving air quality,
• Helping people to make informed travel, health and lifestyle choices by providing information,
• Traffic management to reduce congestion in our Air Quality Management Areas in Northampton,
• Reducing pollution from the Council’s fleet of vehicles, our contractors' vehicles, and other vehicle controls,
• Education and regulation around burning solid fuels to heat homes,
• Further regulations around industrial emissions, smoke and dust.

For more information and to have your say visit the WNC website: https://westnorthants.citizenspace.com/public-health/have-your-say-on-our-plans-to-improve-air-quality/