Air quality plans "unfairly shift burden" to local authorities: CIEH
The Government’s plan to tame nitrogen dioxide pollution seeks to unfairly shift the burden of solving the problem to local authorities, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Heath (CIEH) has said.
It said the Government’s consultation on the plan had failed to recognise that poor air quality is a national issue requiring action from central government rather than “offloading responsibility onto local authorities, who are being set-up for failure if the proposed plans are to go ahead”.
CIEH policy head Tony Lewis said: “The Government’s proposals are woefully inadequate to tackle air pollution and place far too much responsibility on the shoulders of our over-stretched local authorities.
“We stand on the cliff-edge of a national public health emergency and these plans are devoid of substantive proposals, timescales for addressing the key challenges, clarity around targets or even availability of resources to support necessary actions.”
The CIEH also objects to the focus in the Government’s consultation on clean air zones, only five of which have so far been designated and for insufficiently long to produce any useful results.
It also argued that the zones would simply shift pollution as drivers sought ways around them.
The Government produced an air quality plan last autumn but its adequacy was successfully challenged in court by the Client Earth environmental law charity.
Ministers were ordered to produce a better version by 24 April but by that time argued that they could not do so because of pre-election purdah.
Client Earth again challenged this and ministers were ordered to issue the consultation, which eventually appeared in May.
The CIEH said other shortcomings included the consultation’s emphasis on leaving local authorities to come up with “novel and innovative solutions”, which it said would lead to “incoherent and inconsistent approaches to a national problem”.
It said the Government should instead provide appropriate financial support to target areas where air pollution is highest, reduce the number of vehicles on the roads, remove tax incentives on diesel and transfer these incentives to ultra low emission vehicles and zero emission vehicles infrastructure development and make better provision for sustainable travel.
Ministers are due to publish a final version of the plan by the end of July.
Mark Smulian
