|
Under Part IV of the Environment Act 1995, the Secretary of State had to prepare and publish a United Kingdom National Air Quality Strategy. That strategy was published in March 1997 and requires Local Authorities to review and assess air quality within their boundaries. The primary objectives of this process is to identify areas where air quality, with regard to a specific group of pollutants, is unlikely to meet the objectives prescribed in the Air Quality (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2002. within the relevant periods.
A National Air Quality Strategy which can be found on the Scottish Executive air quality webpages was published in July 2007.
The guidance to the 2002 Regulations outlines the following staged review and assessment process for local authorities:
- Stage 1 :
Establish whether there are any existing or proposed sources of the regulated pollutants either within or outside the North Lanarkshire boundary that may cause a failure to meet an air quality objective at any location within North Lanarkshire.
- Stage 2 :
If information gathered at Stage 1 indicates that there may be a failure to meet an indicator at any location within North Lanarkshire then a more detailed review and assessment should be carried out including monitoring and modelling at areas where high concentrations have been predicted. If, on the basis of information gathered, it appears that an objective will be exceeded then the Council must proceed to Stage 3.
- Stage 3 : More detailed monitoring and modelling of the pollutant(s) in question should be carried out and predictions made of possible future concentrations. If objectives will not be met then the Council must designate the location an Air Quality Management Area.
Stage 4 : Once an Air Quality Management Area has been designated then the Council must further assess the air quality at the area in question identifying the objectives that have not been met and possible reasons why. Following the designation the Council has 12 months within which it must formulate an action plan setting out the methods and time scales for meeting the objective.
The pollutants to be reviewed and assessed and the objectives that should be met are detailed in our Air Quality Objectives page.
The Stage 1 review and assessment has demonstrated that there are no major sources of Benzene or 1,3-butadiene in the North Lanarkshire Council Area and they are therefore unlikely to exceed or indeed approach the objective levels set above subsequently no monitoring is carried for those pollutants.
Monitoring is undertaken for the other elements and information is gathered from our Air Quality Monitoring Stations.
Data on national air quality trends can be found by clicking on the links to the Scottish Executive and DEFRA contained in the "External Links" box at the right of the screen.
Summary of Hyperlinks
|
Search NorthWeb
