News / Society

Govt. issues pollution guidelines in compliance with Supreme Court ruling

Thursday, 17 December 2015 7:31 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 17 December 2015 7:31 PM ]

London air pollution dangerously high, campaigners warn.

The British government has unveiled an air quality action plan to meet European limits of harmful NOx gases.

The plan is a response to a Supreme Court ruling in April that called on the government to deal with pollution caused by diesel vehicles and blamed for thousands of premature deaths across the country.

Experts say people in dozens of cities across Britain including London, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Cardiff and Edinburgh would continue breathing toxic air for at least five years despite the new plan issued on Thursday.

The traffic pollution caused some 9,500 premature deaths in the capital, London alone. But the blueprint for cutting NOx puts privately-owned passenger cars off the hook by making them exempt.

“They’re still not good enough. They need to go much further and much faster, and we’ll be going back to court.” Alan Andrews, a lawyer for ClientEarth, the NGO which won the Supreme Court case, said.

“The original deadline for compliance was 2010. The Supreme Court ordered plans to achieve compliance as soon as possible, yet the government is acting as if 2020 is somehow okay. Every year that goes by, thousands more people will die or be made seriously ill,” Andrew added.

Under the plan, so-called clean air zones will be introduced in Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby and Southampton by 2020. The owners of the dirtiest buses, coaches, lorries and taxis will have to pay a charge to enter the zones, but newer and cleaner models will be exempt.

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