Air Quality continues to improve in the Rochford District

Date: 
Monday, April 8, 2019
 
 
Rochford District Council is delighted to confirm that the air quality across the district has improved again over the past year thanks mainly to reductions in vehicle emissions.
 
The Council, which has a statutory duty to monitor air quality across the district, monitors harmful emissions, including nitrogen dioxide, through a range of methods at air quality hot spots – areas with high levels of road traffic which is then reported to Defra. If new concerns are raised the report is required to make recommendations to tackle the issue.
 
No new concerns have been raised this year and the majority of areas have seen a reduction from the previous year.
 
Rochford District Council’s Assistant Director for People and Communities, Louisa Moss said: “We are pleased to confirm that all nitrogen dioxide monitoring locations within the Air Quality Management Area in Rayleigh are compliant with national targets for a second year running. We are especially pleased that these levels are more than 10% below permitted levels and improvements are predicted to continue. We have been successful in securing significant grants in the past year and are working hard to ensure public health continues to be protected as we invest these in targeted measures.”
 
Location 2017 2018 Location Type
Hollytree Gardens, Rayleigh 17.68 16.44 Background
Hockley Road, Rayleigh 36.53 34.78 Door step
Crown Hill, Rayleigh 28.87 27.62 Door step
Eastwood Road, Rayleigh 26.43 23.41 Door step
High Road A, Rayleigh 25.65 23.73 Door step
High Road B, Rayleigh 26.27 26.29 Door step
High Road C, Rayleigh 26.19 24.28 Door Step
High Road D, Rayleigh 28.57 28.86 Door Step
South Street, Rochford 30.75 30.93 Street
Anne Boleyn Pub, Rochford 42.44* 40.08* Street
 
*The data for Rochford shows the limit being exceeded in the vicinity of the Anne Boleyn pub, but this data was collected at the roadside and it must be adjusted to reflect the distance from there to areas of ‘relevant’ exposure, such as front doors of houses. This site will therefore be compliant by a significant margin, as it was in 2017.
 
Raw monitoring data must be ‘corrected’ using data from Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) to provide robust, credible figures. The table above gives figures which have been ‘corrected’. These data are available at:  https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/assets/databasediffusiontubebiasfactorsv0319fi... 
 
Monitoring data obtained at street locations will be calculated back to points of relevant exposure (e.g. front doors, etc.) and reported to Defra in June 2019.
 
More background information is available at https://essexair.org.uk/