Air pollution is an invisible killer, linked to thousands of deaths a year, with increasing amounts of evidence showing it to be most harmful to the developing lungs of children, young people and the vulnerable.

Why then is planning permission being given for primary and secondary schools to be built in some of our most polluted areas, exposing our children and teachers to toxic air?

The Harris Academy chain has recently opened a primary school alongside a congested four-lane highway in Croydon, and now wants to build a secondary school in one of South Wimbledon's air quality blackspots.

The site, in High Path, is squeezed between three of the borough's busiest roads, opposite a huge housing estate regeneration scheme that will bring industrial levels of dust and other airborne poisons to these streets for the next 12 years.

It sits beside a primary school that the Mayor of London recently identified as one of the capital's worst for air quality. Instead of making every effort to improve conditions for that school's pupils, Merton Council instead wants to take part of its green space for the proposed new secondary school next door, condemning the primary children to even worse pollution as building works and HGV deliveries go on just metres from their playing field.

The 1000+ students attending the proposed new secondary school, whose cramped site measures less than 8,000sq metres, will be expected to cross a busy five-lane highway in order to use a single-pitch sports field for PE lessons.

An air quality assessment for the proposed new school fails to mention the unsafe air quality readings from the periphery of the site, the neighbouring estate regeneration works, or the fact that the primary school already on the site has been identified as an air quality disaster zone.

Given the growing awareness of the dangers of pollution, and the fact that children are highly susceptible to long-term health risks from early and prolonged exposure, we believe that planners should be legally bound to ensure schools are sited in areas of low traffic and low pollution.

Don't build schools in pollution hotspots!