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The budget for local councils in England to tackle air pollution in their areas has plummeted from a high of £225 million a year to just £1.5 million in the last five years, according to new figures obtained by campaigners.
Mums for Lungs, a group of parent campaigners, had questioned a statement often repeated by Government figures – that they have provided £575m to local authorities to clean up the air.
A Government spokesperson told the Guardian in June: “We have already provided £575m to support local authorities to improve air quality and are developing a series of interventions to reduce emissions so that everyone’s exposure to air pollution is reduced.”
But the department has now revealed that this refers to Government grants to councils to tackle air pollution since 2016 – in other words, the Labour Government is taking credit for spending under the Conservatives, going back to the start of Theresa May’s term.
The funding package came from Defra and the Department for Transport, via the ‘Joint Air Quality Unit’, to support the development and delivery of local plans for addressing toxic nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution.
But the funding allocated has collapsed over the past year. Mums for Lungs say it means it will take far longer for areas to meet requirements to cut emissions to within World Health Organisation guidelines.
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Mums for Lungs founder Jemima Hartshorn told this outlet: “Every time air pollution comes up [Government officials] say: ‘we are spending £575m’.
“We wanted to understand what this number actually is. [It is] the Defra air quality fund that used to exist for local authorities was suspended in April 2024 and not replaced with any other fund.”
While councils will be spending some of their own cash to tackle air pollution locally, she added: “Local authorities are scraping from their own reduced budgets.”
Stark Numbers Revealed
Data received under the Freedom of Information Act from the environment department Defra shows the average grant provided to councils in England, under eight years of a Conservative Government to tackle air pollution from 2016/17 to 2023/24 was £71.8 million.
But this has now fallen to just £1.5 million under the Labour Government in 2024/25 – representing a 99.4% reduction in funding from a high of £225 million in 2020/21, suggesting the funding has run dry.
It could also suggest a move away from Government support for ‘Clean Air Zones’ which have been rolled out by some local authorities, including – most notably – by Sadiq Khan in Greater London. Labour leader Keir Starmer was critical of the plans to expand London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone, but it has since proven to be a public health success.
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A Defra spokesperson did not dispute the figures but told Byline Times: “Air pollution is a public health issue, and we are taking action to tackle it across the country.
“We have provided Local Authorities with £575 million since 2018 [sic] to improve air quality, and we continue to work with them to cut harmful emissions and reduce everyone’s exposure to air pollution.” (The 2018 figure actually appears to actually refer to 2016, according to the disclosures from the department seen by Byline Times.)
The department was asked via the Freedom of Information Act: “How much funding for local authorities [in England] to address air pollution has been made available since 5 July 2024?”
Defra responded: “£1,451,052 (of the £575m total) has been provided to local authorities since 5 July 2024.”
The Royal College of Physicians recently estimated that air pollution is costing Britain’s economy upwards of £27 billion per year in core healthcare costs and productivity losses, and it is killing up to 36,000 people every year.
Scientists have found links between air pollution and almost every organ system in the body and the major diseases that affect them. This includes stunted growth in the brain and lungs, and risks to the cardiovascular system, metabolism, kidneys, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bones and skin. Even diabetes and worsening mental health conditions have been linked to air pollution.
Mums for Lungs’ Jemima Hartshorn said the apparent drastic reduction in air pollution funding “when children are still breathing illegal and toxic levels of dirty air” was “indefensible.”
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Promises to Fulfil
In opposition, the Labour Party promised to introduce a legal right to clean air through a Clean Air Act but this was dropped from the party’s manifesto last year.
Labour also appears to have dropped its commitment to introduce Clean Air Zones across England, similar to that in London. But London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone has reduced air pollution in the capital significantly since its introduction in 2019, and NO2 fell to legal levels for the first time last year.
“Parents across the country expected Labour to deliver on its promise of a Clean Air Act and a legal right to breathe safe air, but instead, commitments have been dropped and funding slashed. Failing to address air pollution and invest in solutions to clean up our air is a short-term financial fallacy and a moral failure. It is setting up another generation of children for a lifetime of ill health,” Hartshorn added.
Recently-strengthened World Health Organisation air quality standards for both tiny particulates (PM2.5) and NO2 mean the UK is now lagging significantly behind its neighbours.
Greater Manchester has received the most air pollution funding of any local area in recent years – a total of £211 million since 2016, but still has illegal levels of pollution.
It was recently revealed that Greater Manchester spent over £100 million on creating a Clean Air Zone that was later scrapped by Mayor Andy Burnham in 2023, following stern local opposition.
Afzal Khan, Labour MP, Manchester Rusholme said: “I cannot overstate the importance of everyone in our community being able to breathe clean air. In Manchester, we see over 1,200 people per year die prematurely from this toxic air and we have some of the highest rates of childhood asthma.” He calls clean air a “human right”.
Children are particularly vulnerable to air pollution because they breathe more rapidly and closer to the ground, where pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5 are more concentrated.
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Real Life Impact
Alba De Toro Nozal, the mother of a seven-year-old boy, Eliot, believes his health is being made worse by pollution in South Manchester. Alba said: “[Eliot] had several admissions to hospital when he was very little. He had viral induced wheezing, he couldn’t breathe at home even with inhalers so we had to constantly go to A&E to put him on a nebuliser. In hindsight, I know this was caused by pollution in the air in our local area.”
Dr Katie Knight, a Paediatric Emergency Medicine Consultant, said: “Every year we see thousands of children coming to London A&E departments with severe breathing difficulties. Many of these children have symptoms which are exacerbated by toxic air pollution.
“This is a public health emergency which the government needs to take seriously, by providing the leadership and funding to protect children from preventable sickness and long term damage to their health. Cutting the budget for essential air quality work is extremely short-sighted and a false economy, which will end up costing us all more in the long term.”
Dr Elizabeth Wan, resident doctor in North London, added: “As the mum of a child with asthma, and an NHS doctor, I find it truly shocking how air pollution is being deprioritised, both on a local and national level.
Birmingham received the second highest amount of funding and has significantly reduced NO2 pollution with its Clean Air Zone. However, the West Midlands Urban Area remains one of five in England that are still not compliant with legal air pollution levels.
According to official Government figures, 10.9 million people live in major areas of England which still exceed the legal levels of nitrogen dioxide – the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, Bristol City Region and Coventry / Bedworth.
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Clean Up Operation
A spokesperson for the Local Government Association noted that councils do not hold the important levers to tackle air quality. While they can issue civil penalty notices – for example, for dangerous wood-burning – they face significant funding challenges that will make monitoring and enforcing breaches of limits very challenging.
Mums for Lungs is calling for the Labour Government to update clean air legal protections at least in line with Governments across Europe and interim WHO targets, and “finally take decisive action to clean up our air and protect children’s health with adequate funding.”
The group is calling for, among other changes, the phasing out of domestic wood burning for those who have other options. They also want traffic-free ‘School Streets’ to be expanded across the country to protect children from toxic pollution at the school gate. And they are calling for restrictions on large, high-polluting SUVs, especially in major towns and cities.
Mums for Lungs has written to the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves and the Environment Secretary, Emma Reynolds calling for them to restore the funding and ensure air pollution levels are brought to safer levels.
In 2017 the German Government put together a fund of around €1bn to improve air quality, including €250m from car manufacturers like VW and BMW after the Dieselgate scandal emerged. No similar scheme now exists in England.
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