UPDATE: At the full council meeting, the Liberal Democrats presented an amendment which we felt did not substantially alter the aims of our motion and which we therefore accepted.
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Stockport Labour Group has called for councillors to support tackling air pollution and to maintain air quality monitoring.
The Labour Group has tabled a motion for the next Stockport Council Meeting on 28th November 2013 which highlights the health impacts of air pollution and calls for the Government to drop plans to weaken air quality monitoring.
Under Government plans, the legal duty for Local Authorities to monitor air quality will be scrapped. This would weaken the ability of councils to collect evidence which has been used to monitor damaging pollution and to achieve improvements in transport.
Cllr Philip Harding, who is moving the motion at Full Council, commented: “Air pollution is a risk to public health. Stockport and the wider Greater Manchester area is not meeting legal limits for pollutants and we need to be taking serious action to improve the situation.
“The Government’s plans would mean losing important air quality monitoring that could not be replicated by centralised national systems. The professionals from councils in Greater Manchester have already told the Government that their plan is unlikely to achieve the air quality improvements required.
“The data gathered from the monitoring stations across Greater Manchester has led to funding for greener buses coming to us. Without this detailed evidence of the state of air pollution in Stockport, we just won’t know how bad the situation is.”
The World Health Organisation has recently decided to classify outdoor air pollution as carcinogenic to humans. Asthma UK believes that pollution plays a role in causing asthma in children and adults, and the British Heart Foundation has also stated that ‘evidence shows that air pollution can make existing heart conditions worse’.
Currently, all local authorities across Greater Manchester have sites that monitor air quality and the costs of the Greater Manchester Air Quality Network are shared between Councils. A review of the sites was undertaken recently to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
The Government has not yet responded to the consultation.