Air Quality Working Group

ACTION PLANS

The local authorities of Greater Manchester have worked together to produce an Air Quality Action Plan aimed at reducing air pollution in the Air Quality Management Areas (AQMA's). The main source of poor air quality is transport related and the action plan had to cover a wider area than the actual AQMA and therefore includes all of Greater Manchester. The Action Plan document includes a section which details Greater Manchester actions followed by an annex produced by each local authority describing actions that they will be taking within their area.

Click here to see The Greater Manchester Air Quality Action Plan.

The plan includes a number of areas of action - some of the main ones are detailed as follows:-

Click to provide further information

There were lots of options that could be included in an action plan all of which would have an affect on how we conduct our every day lives. We needed the help of those people living and working in Greater Manchester to produce the best action plan for the area and its citizens. It was therefore very important that we asked for the views of a wide range of people whilst producing the plan.

Consultation began with an information leaflet and questionnaire entitled 'Clearing the Air' (click here to see the "Clearing the Air" leaflet) circulated in November 2000. This was followed by a meeting of a Focus Group of interested stakeholders at the Lowry Centre on 6 Dec 2001. The purpose of this was to gather the views of industry, commerce, transport companies environmental groups and other interested parties, on possible actions and their practicality and acceptability. A full report of the day has been produced click here to view.

Information on the Action plan was included in 'Transport Matters' Newsletters in May 2002 and in November 2003. These newsletters were widely distributed throughout Greater Manchester requesting comments and suggestions on proposed air quality actions.

During consultation, views received were in general supportive and included comments and suggestions for actions which have been extremely valuable in the production of the plan.

With full consideration of the consultation feedback, the plan was written by a team of officers involved in a number of relevant fields including: - Environmental Health, Transport Planning, public transport provision and Planning.

A draft document was submitted to DEFRA in November 2003 and the final Greater Manchester Action Plan document was published in March 2004.

Progress Reports

Local authorities are required to produce an annual progress report which updates the review and assessment and describes the progress made with their Action Plan. As most of the pollution problems relate to road transport it has been decided to incorporate the progress report with the Local Transport Plan (LTP) reporting regime. The Greater Manchester authorities will therefore produce and submit their first progress report to the Government in July 2005 with LTP 2 documentation. Click here to see the latest Greater Manchester Air Quality Progress Report

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