Local Air Quality Management: Local Authority Reports

To see a summary of the review and assessment for a local authority in Sussex, click on the local authority of interest on the map below:

Over the past years, local authorities across the country have been engaged in a process of review and assessment of local air quality. This process was set in motion by Central Government through its National Air Quality Strategy (revised in the year 2000), which set targets for eight pollutants, seven of which fall to local authorities to control.

The review and assessment of air quality forms the first stage of the air quality management process and has two principal objectives:

• To identify local areas where the air quality objectives will not be met
• To ensure that air quality considerations are integrated into local authorities' decision making processes, such as land use planning and traffic management

FIRST ROUND OF REVIEW AND ASSESSMENT

The first review and assessment round was completed by local authorities by the end of 2002. The main conclusion was that the national air quality objectives were not likely to be exceeded at any locations in Sussex. In the light of this first round of review and assessment, a number of authorities installed additional air quality monitoring equipment to confirm the results of their modelling exercises.

SECOND ROUND OF REVIEW AND ASSESSMENT

This is carried out in two steps:

• An Updating and Screening Assessment for identifying those aspects that have changed since the first round of reviews and assessments. The Updating and Screening Assessment should reach a conclusion as to whether local authorities should proceed to a Detailed Assessment or not.
• A Detailed Assessment of those pollutants and specific locations that have been identified as requiring further work - i.e. where members of the public are likely to be exposed over the averaging period of the Air Quality Objective.

Local authorities have to designate those parts of their areas where the prescribed objectives are not likely to be met by, or at any point beyond the relevant deadline, as Air Quality Management Areas (AQMA). This applies only to those locations where members of the public might reasonably be exposed. Where local authorities have designated AQMAs, they have a duty to produce an action plan. This plan must set out what measures the authority intends to introduce in pursuit of the Air Quality Objectives.

FUTURE AIR QUALITY REVIEWS AND ASSESSMENTS

DEFRA requires that local authorities undertake reviews and assessments of air quality every three years. This means that all local authorities in Sussex will have to undertake an Updating and Screening Assessment during the first four months of 2006 and 2009. Those authorities that need to carry out a Detailed Assessment will have to submit their more detailed review and assessment reports by end of April 2007 and 2010.

Local authorities are also required to produce Review and Assessment Progress Reports in between the next rounds of reviews and assessments. All local authorities are expected to submit these Progress Reports by end of April 2005 and end of April 2008. Those authorities that do not have to carry out a Detailed Assessment following the Updating and Screening Assessments in April 2003, 2006 and 2009, will be expected to submit review and assessment Progress Reports by end of April 2004, 2007 and 2010 as well as in 2005 and 2008.

Review and assessment reports are available by individual local authorities.