The Coalition Government has rejected calls to introduce extra protection for schoolchildren in pollution hotspots, it has emerged.
Despite mounting pressure from influential MPs and campaigners, a swathe of recommendations including new planning guidance to ban new schools, care homes or health clinics near pollution hotspots has now been rejected by the Government.
MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee last year called on ministers to better protect members of the public through planning amendments and new levies.
With over a thousand schools across the country 150 metres away from major roads, fears have been raised that children growing up near regions of high NO2 and particle emissions are suffering from stunted growth and impaired lung development.
Yet the Government has now outlined that it sees ‘effective ventilation’ of buildings and schools as ‘a preferable strategy’ to reforming the National Planning Policy Framework. Ministers said they did not consider ‘there is a need for additional planning guidance or building regulations given the current level of protection’.
Environmental Audit Committee chair, Joan Walley, said Coalition ministers had ‘once again failed to face up to the problem’ of air pollution ‘and instead passed the buck on to the next Government’.
‘We have been warning that urgent action is needed for the last five years and while this Government has accepted that there is a problem it has repeatedly failed to take the tough decisions necessary to sort it out,’ Ms Walley added.
‘It remains unacceptable that a whole generation of children growing up in our polluted cities will have their health and development impaired by the illegal levels of air pollution.’
Commenting on the Government announcements, Sustrans health director Philip Insall, said: ‘With over 28,000 deaths attributed to air pollution every year, this half-hearted response completely fails to deal with this hidden health crisis.
‘Local toxic air pollution, causing all those premature deaths, is primarily due to emissions from motor traffic. It is clear that we can only address this by reducing reliance on motor vehicles and by scrapping the perverse incentives that have encouraged more people to use diesel instead of petrol.’
