Is Toxic Air Pollution Here to Stay?

Despite a new air quality action plan announced by the government in December, it appears that many of the UK’s cities will still suffer from unsafe levels of pollution for at least the next five years. A handful of British cities, including London, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Liverpool have consistently fallen below levels of safe air quality demanded by the EU and as a result, the UK has been hit with sizable economic sanctions.

In a bid to improve air quality and reduce transport-related pollution, the government announced its blueprint for curbing emissions in December (as it was ordered to do by the Supreme Court), but it appears the measures involved fall short of making any real short-term impact.

The Government’s Plan

The plan issued by the government is in response to a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year. In September, a draft of the plans were issued and now a concrete outline has been announced. Clean air zones will be introduced in the cities of Birmingham, Derby, Leeds, Nottingham and Southampton by 2020.

These zones will charge a fee for all of the most polluting larger vehicles, including buses, lorries, coaches and taxis. Hopefully, this will incentivise the owners of such vehicles to upgrade their fleet to more environmentally-friendly models. However, the charge will not apply to privately-owned passenger vehicles, which make up a whopping 88% of all vehicles on our roads.

Every year, the presence of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the atmosphere claims the lives of as many as 9,500 people in London alone. More recently, air pollution has also been linked to serious ailments such as brain damage, coronary complications and respiratory problems. Failure to conform to EU regulations every year since 2010 (the original target for compliance) has led to a Supreme Court case being lodged against the UK, which was won unanimously by the prosecuting environmental NGO, ClientEarth.

The Problems with the Plan

Firstly, the plan is limited in its scope due to the fact that it only applies to five cities in the UK. This leaves other pollution hotspots, such as Edinburgh, Manchester and Cardiff, with no measures and no improvement on the projected compliance date.

Secondly, the plan is not due to be implemented until 2020, meaning that air pollution in the cities listed is likely to linger until at least 2025. This is a full 15 years behind the original target date, meaning the UK will incur millions more pounds’ worth of fines and thousands of lives will be lost and ruined by the continued air pollution in the meantime.

Finally, and most crucially, the plan does not apply to the biggest offender on our streets. How the government hopes that only policing 12% of our national vehicular fleet will result in a major change in emissions is anyone’s guess.

“These are better than the draft plans [published in September] but they’re still not good enough. They need to go much further and much faster, and we’ll be going back to court.” explained Alan Andrews, a lawyer for ClientEarth. “The original deadline for compliance was 2010. The Supreme Court ordered plans to achieve compliance as soon as possible, yet the government is acting as if 2020 is somehow okay. Every year that goes by, thousands more people will die or be made seriously ill.”