“Dear Petitioners
Thank you for the petition submitted on the change.org website about air quality in London.
The Mayor agrees that air quality is the most pressing environmental threat to the future health of Londoners and has made it a priority for his Mayoral term. He also welcomes your campaign.
As you will know, we need to do more to tackle air pollution, not only in the capital but across the UK. Every year in Britain thousands of people die early as a result of air pollution with other health impacts over the course of our lives, from impacts on lung development when we are young to increased risk of dementia and stroke as we get older. Concerningly, research demonstrates these health effects disproportionately impact the most deprived communities.
The impact on London’s children is severe, with over 400 schools in London located in areas with illegal levels of pollution and one in ten Londoners under the age of 18 with asthma. We estimate that a London child born in 2010 (exposed to the same level of pollution over the course of his or her life) would lose around two years of life expectancy due to pollution. This is unacceptable, which is why last year the Mayor announced the first of 50 ‘air quality audits’ for primary schools in the worst polluted areas in London to identify hard-hitting measures to protect pupils’ health from toxic air.
The Mayor has also significantly increased the amount of money committed to tackling the capital’s air quality crisis over five years. Transport for London’s (TfL) Business Plan includes around £800m to deliver far-reaching programmes to tackle the threat to health from poor air quality.
You will be pleased to know the Mayor has published a draft Environment Strategy for London, which aims to make sure we have the best air quality of any major world city by going beyond the legal requirements and achieving World Health Organization recommended guidelines. Key objectives include:
1. Supporting London and its communities, particularly the most vulnerable and those in priority locations, to help empower people to reduce their exposure to poor air quality;
2. Achieving legal compliance with UK and EU limits as soon as possible, including mobilising action from London boroughs, Government and other partners.
3. Establishing and achieving new, tighter air quality targets for a cleaner London by transitioning to a zero emission London by 2050, meeting World Health Organization health-based guidelines for air quality.
The Mayor is doing all he can to achieve legal compliance as quickly as possible. Measures being delivered include introducing the T-charge in October last year to deter older polluting vehicles from central London, cleaning up the bus and taxi fleets, and confirming the earlier introduction of the central London Ultra Low Emission Zone in April 2019. The Mayor is now consulting on expanding the ULEZ standards up to the north/south circular for all vehicles and Londonwide for buses, coaches and lorries, and I would encourage you to respond to this at: https://tfl.gov.uk/airquality-consultation.
However, air pollution is not a problem the Mayor can solve alone. As the Mayor does not have powers over non-transport sources of air pollution and he has a limited budget, it requires far stronger support and leadership from national government to reach legal compliance sooner. That is why the Mayor was so disappointed that the Government’s National NO2 Air Quality Plan fails to include sufficient additional committed national measures or other support to help achieve compliance in London as quickly as possible. He believes London’s air quality could achieve EU limits much sooner if the measures requested had been included. He is also shocked that new Government funding, including a new Clean Air Fund and money to implement air quality improvement schemes, will not be available to London on the same basis as to other parts of the country, even though London contains around 40 per cent of the road length in the UK which exceed legal pollution limits.
The Mayor welcomes your support as he continues to lobby Government to match his ambition and introduce a national diesel scrappage fund, implement a 21st century Clean Air Act and securing London the additional funding and powers it needs to tackle the public health crisis.
Yours sincerely
Shirley Rodrigues
Deputy Mayor, Environment and Energy”
