Air Quality Management Area and Action Plan Consultation 2011

This consultation is now closed page for information only

All Local Authorities are required to review and assess air quality within their areas under Part IV of the Environment Act 1995. Air Quality objectives are set by government for 7 key pollutants which have the potential to harm health: carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, fine particles (PM10), benzene, 1.3-butadiene, lead and sulphur dioxide. In our district, the only pollutant that we have problems with is nitrogen dioxide, which is a traffic related pollutant.

Thanet District Council already operates an extensive network of nitrogen dioxide monitoring sites, which includes four continuous monitoring stations, analysing ambient air 24 hours a day as well as 43 diffusion tubes located all over the district. All real-time data is available to view at http://www.kentair.org.uk

Have your say!

Send us your views and comments on the proposed urban AQMA expansion and draft Air Quality Action Plan

Q1 Do you have any comments concerning the proposed extension of the AQMAs to include Thanet’s urban area?

Q2 Do you have any other suggestions for the size and shape of the AQMA(s)?

Q3 Do you have any comments or suggestion to make on the draft Air Quality Action Plan

Please make sure your comments reach us by 24 October 2011, Thank you

Draft Air Quality Action Plan

Where the targets are not likely to be met the council is legally obliged to declare an Air Quality Management Area (AQMA). The council declared its first AQMA in 2006, at The Square Birchington and a second at High Street, St Lawrence in 2010.

Birchington Air Quality Management Area (PDF 300 kb)
St Lawrence Air Quality Management Area (PDF 228 kb).

Thanet is not alone in declaring AQMAs. In Kent there are already 39 AQMAs for nitrogen dioxide with most local authorities in Kent having at least one.

Having discovered these areas the council has produced a draft Action Plan, a detailed, technical document which sets out existing and proposed actions to improve air quality through land use and transport planning, pollution control, local air quality management, healthy living initiatives and environmental promotion. We are seeking your views and comments on the draft Action Plan

Air Quality Management Area proposed extension

There is no set way to define the size and shape of an AQMA. Government guidance only requires as a minimum that an AQMA covers the areas where the objectives are not being met. The Council has already declared the two small hotspot AQMAs at Birchington and St Lawrence but practical considerations mean that it is better to declare a larger urban AQMA than the actual area of exceedence.

Keeping small hotspot areas will allow actions and measures to be targeted at each AQMA individually but in reality these areas are affected by development and traffic from elsewhere so it would not make practical sense to do this. One implication of not joining up closely linked areas may be that in future years, areas in between the smaller AQMAs may exceed the objectives and end up having to be declared as AQMAs anyway. The implications of this are significant in that assessments would have to be carried out to justify the declarations, a financial commitment that can be avoided by joining up the smaller AQMAs now.

Existing AQMAs

Click on image to enlarge

Existing Thanet AQMA

The Council would like to bring together the two existing AQMAs into one large urban area as it makes much more sense to link together all heavily trafficked areas such as around Westwood Cross, as well as ‘hot spots’ at junction like Boundary Road, Ramsgate and College Road Margate, into one AQMA than it would be to leave them as potential individual AQMAs. This would reduce the likelihood in future years that these areas in between the AQMAs would require to be declared. However properties would then be included within an AQMA where the targets are currently being met. There would be less focus on hotspot areas as a result, however the reality is that when it comes to producing an action plan to deal with the problem there would be a common series of measures that can be used everywhere.