Conference to look at council air monitoring funding

A presentation on how planning agreements can help local authorities fund air quality monitoring will take place at the Air Quality and Emissions Show in March

A presentation on how local authorities can use planning agreements to fund air quality monitoring will be given at the Air Quality and Emissions show in Telford in March.

Senior environmental scientist at consultancy Golder Associates, Ruth Fain, will explain how local authorities can use Section 106 planning agreements to ensure planned developments do not negatively affect air quality.

The Air Quality and Emissions Show will take place in Telford in March

Achieving planning consent for developments can sometimes require additional commitments from the developer in the form of Section 106 (Section 75 in Scotland) planning obligations, under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

These agreements enable a local planning authority to enter into a legally-binding agreement with a developer to fund the monitoring of air quality in the affected area.

According to Ms Fain, who specialises in air quality and industrial regulation, these obligations can represent a vital element of air pollution mitigation and can be very important in gaining funding for air quality monitoring schemes on development sites.

Her presentation will look at why planning obligations are so important to local authorities, and explain how Section 106/75 agreements have successfully enabled air quality monitoring programmes to ensure that development does not have a detrimental effect on air quality.

The Institute of Air Quality Management (IAQM) has said it will recognise attendance of the ambient air monitoring conference at the show on Wednesday March 13 as valuable Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for its members and other air quality professionals.

Formerly known as ‘MCERTS’, the Air Quality and Emissions Show 2013 (AQE 2013) will hold two optional conferences on ambient air quality monitoring and industrial emissions to air.

As well as the conferences and more than 50 workshops, there will be an international exhibition of the latest technologies in air quality and emissions.

The event is being organised by science news publication International Labmate and the Source Testing Association (STA) and will take place at the Telford International Centre in Shropshire.

Topics covered in the event will include: Ambient Monitoring; CEMS; Dioxin Monitoring; Mcerts; Regulation; Calibration; Air Treatment; Discontinuous Monitoring; Gas Analysis; Data Acquisition; Workplace Monitoring; Fence Line Monitoring; Manual Stack Monitoring; Abatement Technologies; Fugitive Emissions; and Operator Monitoring Assessment.

More information is available on the AQE show website.