Andrew Gwynne – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2016-01-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what work her Department is doing to monitor air quality standards in (a) Greater Manchester and (b) England.

Rory Stewart

Defra has eight fixed air quality monitoring sites located in Greater Manchester – at Bury Whitefield Roadside, Glazebury, Manchester Law Courts, Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester South, Salford Eccles, Shaw Crompton Way, Wigan Centre – and one hundred and seventy eight fixed monitoring sites in total across England.

Many of these sites (seven in Manchester and 111 across England) provide near real-time data on one or more of the following pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter (PM₁₀ and PM_2.5), ozone, and sulphur dioxide. Data is made available on our website.

Full details of the sites, including locations, pollutants measured and concentrations observed at each, are available on Defra’s UK Air Website: http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/.

Data from these sites is reported alongside modelling data as part of the UK’s annual national compliance reporting.

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