According to a leading clean air charity, recent funding claims by Downing Street don’t add up.
Local council air quality and anti-air pollution budgets have been slashed from £225 million per year to just £1.5 million since 2020. This is despite spokesperson for the Labour Party suggesting Downing Street had shelled out around £575 million to authorities across the country.
Speaking to the Guardian in June, the government representative stated: ‘we have already provided £575m to support local authorities to improve air quality and are developing a series of interventions to reduce emissions so that everyone’s exposure to air pollution is reduced.’
However, further investigation has since revealed this figure relates to clean air funding sine 2016, when Theresa May was still in power. Successive changes of Conservative leader have taken place since, while the current Labour administration only took power last summer. According to Byline Times, just before the election the money available plummeted by 99%.
UK clean air charity Mums For Lungs was the first to question the funding statement. Founder Jemima Hartshorn explained that the repeated claims of £575 million in resources led the non-profit to begin trying to work out where this figure was coming from.
‘[It is] the Defra air quality fund that used to exist for local authorities was suspended in April 2024 and not replaced with any other fund,’ she said. ‘Local authorities are scraping from their own reduced budgets.’
A Freedom of Information Act request lays bare the rapid decline, with 2023/2024 funding at £71.8 million compared with 2024/25, which plummeted to just £1.5 million.
Image: Tuna Ekici / Unsplash
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