Air Quality Action Plan, progress and delivery
Our road transport, planning and development strategies are now all focused on improving air quality for residents and visitors of Newham.
The Air Quality Management Area
Certain pollutants in Newham exceed the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines as well as the national air quality objectives for human exposure. In response, we issued a borough-wide Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) Order in December 2019 for particulate, and NO2 pollution and produced an action plan.
Air Quality Management Area Recourses
Map of Air Quality Management Area
Borough Wide Air Quality Management Area Order
The Air Quality Action Plan
The Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz, has launched a comprehensive five-year plan to tackle poor air quality in the borough.
Read our Air Quality Action Plan 2019 to 2024 (PDF)
Newham are in the process of refreshing their Air Quality Action Plan, to cover the next five-year period, 2024-2029. An extensive consultation, seeking responses from residents, community groups, businesses and all other relevant stakeholders within the borough, will be undertaken later on this year.
Air Quality Action Plan Consultation
A consultation process was undertaken in 2018 for six weeks on the councils Draft Air Quality Action Plan.
The following document summarises the consultation process, the responses received, and our response to suggestions and the issues raised, including the resulting changes to the plan.
Summary of Consultation Responses to the Draft Air Quality Action Plan 2019 to 2024 (PDF)
The five year Air Quality Action Plan will help us to organise and monitor our work, compare data and results from previous years.
The Mayor of Newham has established an Air Quality and Climate Change Task Force and a Commissioner has been appointed by the Mayor to support her in the delivery of the Air Quality Action Plan across all Council Services.
Annual Review and Assessment Report
Every year we review our progress in meeting the air quality actions in our plan and if air quality has improved. You can read about our progress in our Annual Review and assessment report.
Air Quality Annual Status Report 2023 (PDF)
Particularly notable measures and actions by Newham that were undertaken in 2022 include:
- The council’s fully electric fleet has increased to 53 and the existing van fleet has been replaced with 137 mild hybrid vehicles.
- 40% of all borough streets (by Km) are now within Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (historic and recently introduced), an increase of 10% since 2020;
- A new real time monitoring station measuring PM2.5 & NO2 was installed at East Ham Town Hall;
- The Clean Air and Climate Champions’ programme has launched to raise awareness in air quality, with the help of an engaging new web tool.
- Phase 1 of the Royal Docks Corridor is launched with a healthy streets approach (safe and attractive environments for pedestrians/cyclists) to improve air quality.
- Phase 3 of the ‘Healthy School Streets’ was launched at 5 schools under experimental traffic orders
- Manifesto commitment to install 1000 electric vehicle charges between 2022-2026, which is already progressing with the installation of 400 new chargers.
The MoL publishes an annual London wide Air Quality Compendium which summarises each boroughs report to facilitate sharing of air quality data and best practice air quality control, which has improved working across boroughs. The full report is available to download.
