Air Quality Reports for Government
Since the implementation of Part IV of the Environment Act 1995 all local authorities have been under a duty to review air quality within their district. The current objectives that have to be met are prescribed under the Air Quality (England) Regulations 2010 . It is a requirement that each local authority conducts a formal staged review of air quality within its district in accordance with a comprehensive set of revised guidance documents. These reports are then sent to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) for approval. All these reports can be downloaded from the right of this page.
Where compliance with such objectives is unlikely then the local authority has to declare an Air Quality Management Area (AQMA). Further information on this procedure, including all the guidance documents, can be found on the DEFRA air quality management web page.
Having completed these assessment an AQMA was declared in November 2003 for Winchester Town Centre for both the nitrogen dioxide annual mean and the particles 24 hour mean air quality objectives. Each AQMA requires the production of an Air Quality Action Plan (AQAP), which was published in 2006 following feedback from DEFRA on the final draft.
It was acknowledged that this initial plan was out of date, so Winchester City Council, in consultation with key stakeholders and the assistance of a leading UK air quality consultancy, published a revised AQAP in 2017. This targets the remaining nitrogen dioxide issue with new/revised proposed actions. This new plan can be downloaded from this web page. A Steering group has been set up to monitor progress in implementing the actions proposed within this plan and the recent minutes of such meetings are also on this page (older minutes can be provided upon request).