AQW 261/17-22

Mr John Blair
Alliance Party
South Antrim

Tabled Date: 14/01/2020
Answered On Date: 23/01/2020
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs whether (i) local government has control of the locations of all air quality monitors; and (ii) the information gathered is provided to the Northern Ireland Environment Agency.

Answer:

District councils must locate air quality monitors in accordance with legislation and technical guidance. There are two air quality monitoring networks; the first of these is the Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN), which is used to assess compliance with EU Air Quality legislation. The location of monitoring stations in the AURN network complies with requirements set out in EU Air Quality Directives.

The second network is a Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) network, which is operated by the district councils, and is used to assess progress towards meeting objectives contained in the UK Air Quality Strategy, as is set out in the Environment Order (NI) 2002. The location of LAQM monitoring stations in this network satisfies criteria laid out in LAQM Technical Guidance, which was published in conjunction with the UK Air Quality Strategy.

All of the data obtained from these automatic monitoring stations is uploaded to the DAERA Northern Ireland Air website which can be found at this link. Thus, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency has access to this data.