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Maidstone Borough Council 2020 Air Quality Annual Status Report (ASR)

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Maidstone Borough Council 2020 Air Quality Annual Status Report (ASR) Maidstone Borough Council i Maidstone Borough Council 2020 Air Quality Annual Status Report (ASR) In fulfilment of Part IV of the Environment Act 1995 Local Air Quality Management June 2020 ii Maidstone Borough Council Local Authority Dr Stuart Maxwell Officer Environmental Protection Department Maidstone House, King St, Maidstone ME15 6JQ Address 01622602216 Telephone [email protected] E-mail Report Reference ASR 2020 number June 2020 Date iii Maidstone Borough Council Executive Summary: Air Quality in Our Area Air Quality in Maidstone Air pollution is associated with a number of adverse health impacts. It is recognised as a contributing factor in the onset of heart disease and cancer. Additionally, air pollution particularly affects the most vulnerable in society: children and older people, and those with heart and lung conditions. There is also often a strong correlation with equalities issues, because areas with poor air quality are also often the less affluent areas1,2. The annual health cost to society of the impacts of particulate matter alone in the UK is estimated to be around £16 billion3. Maidstone is the county town of Kent. The mid year population of the borough in 2018 was 170,000 people, based on figures from Kent County Council, making it the largest population of any Local Authority in Kent. Its population is expected to increase to 188,600 by 2026. Around 11,080 new homes are to be provided within the planning period 2006 to 2026. The Borough is home to 10.8 per cent of the population of the Kent County Council area (2018 estimate from KCC website) and borders Swale, Ashford, Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge and Malling Boroughs, as well as Medway Unitary Authority. The Borough of Maidstone includes the large urban area of Maidstone as well as several small rural settlements. Its countryside, set within 'the Garden of England', is of a high landscape quality and includes the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The main source of air pollution in the Borough is traffic emissions from major roads, notably the M2, M20, A20, A229, A249, A26 and A274. An Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) was declared in August 2008 which incorporates the whole Maidstone urban area and the M20 corridor, where exceedances of the annual mean objective for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and 24-hour mean objective for fine particulate matter (PM10) were predicted. 1 Environmental equity, air quality, socioeconomic status and respiratory health, 2010 2 Air quality and social deprivation in the UK: an environmental inequalities analysis, 2006 3 Defra. Abatement cost guidance for valuing changes in air quality, May 2013 iv Maidstone Borough Council In December 2017, MBC adopted a new Low Emission Strategy incorporating an updated Air Quality Action Plan. One of the actions included in the plan was a review of the air quality monitoring provision in Maidstone. The main emphasis of this action was to consider whether it was necessary to continue with continuous monitoring in Maidstone town centre. The conclusion was that it is necessary, and a continuous monitor was installed in Upper Stone Street, which is monitoring PM2.5 for the first time in Maidstone, as well as NO2 and PM10. We were particularly interested to find out if there are exceedances of the PM10 objective and the hourly mean NO2 objective, but early indications are that there are not. As expected, both the annual mean objective and the 1-hour objective for NO2 were met at the automatic rural background monitoring station in Detling, as were the objectives for PM10. Figure 1: Upper Stone Street Air Quality Monitoring Station Data from 2019 show the continuation of a trend of improving air quality in Maidstone which has been happening for several years now. Upper Stone Street remains the main area of concern, but even here, most of the monitoring locations have shown a v Maidstone Borough Council small improvement over 2018 data. Having monitored NO2 in more than 150 different locations in the Borough, we believe that outside of Upper Stone Street, the Wheatsheaf public house is probably the only residential property where the annual mean objective for NO2 is exceeded. In 2019, Maidstone Borough Council undertook some additional monitoring on behalf of local Parish Councils who had identified particular areas of concern based on their own local knowledge. Ten additional diffusion tubes were deployed primarily in the more rural areas of the Borough, but no exceedances of the NO2 annual mean were found. In addition, MBC was contracted by WS Atkins limited to undertake additional monitoring on behalf of Highways England. Five triplicate sites were established on or near the A20, but again, no exceedances of the NO2 annual mean objective were recorded. Most of the Highways England sites were not near relevant exposure. During 2019, exceedances of the NO2 annual mean AQ objective were recorded at eight non-automatic monitoring sites within the AQMA and one site outside the AQMA: Inside the AQMA Maid 53 at The Wheatsheaf Public Health Maid 81 at The Pilot on Upper Stone Street; Maid 96 at Lashings Sports Club on Upper Stone Street. Maid 116 at 37 Forstal Road Cottages Maid 122 at Papermakers Arms PH, Upper Stone Street Maid 123 at Upper Stone Street Opposite Maid 122 Maid 127 at Wrens Cross Maid 128 triplicate site co-located with new continuous monitor in Upper Stone Street Outside the AQMA Maid 113 at 1 Ashford Road, Bearstead All of these sites exceeded the NO2 annual mean objective in previous years. Where appropriate, NO2 concentrations have been distance corrected to estimate concentrations at the nearest location of relevant exposure (some of the tubes are already sited at the façade of residential properties). Following distance correction, vi Maidstone Borough Council the annual mean NO2 concentration remains above the annual mean NO2 AQS objective at four tube sites, namely, Maid 53, Maid 81, Maid 96, Maid 122, all of which are inside the AQMA. No tubes outside of the AQMA recorded an exceedance of the objective when distance corrected back to the nearest relevant exposure. Annual mean concentrations of NO2 at the sites, Maid 81, Maid 96, Maid 122, and Maid 128, all in Upper Stone Street, are greater than 60µg/m3, which indicates that there is also a potential exceedance of the 1-hour mean objective at these sites. The automatic monitoring station at Upper Stone Street did indicate an exceedance of the hourly mean objective objective for NO2, although we think this was due to an instrument fault. More explanation of this is given later. There was one exceedance of the annual mean NO2 AQS objective in the non- automatic monitoring sites outside the existing AQMA (Maid 113, Ashford Road), but following distance corrrection there was shown to be no exceedance of the objective at the nearest relevant receptors. As expected, both the annual mean objective and the 1-hour objective for NO2 were met at the automatic rural background monitoring station in Detling. Maidstone Borough Council has previously identified a number of biomass installations which are over the 50kW criteria for assessment. The details for these biomass installations are presented in Appendix C. No new installations were identified in 2019. Actions to Improve Air Quality During 2017 a new Air Quality Action Plan was introduced, linked to a new Air Quality Management Area which came into effect in May 2018, The new plan was based on the principles of a low emission strategy. Good progress has been made on many of the actions included in the Action Plan, incluing adopting new Air Quality Planning Guidance, and undertaking a feasibility study into a Low Emission Zone. The review of the Park and Ride service has also been completed and has resulted in a new service using Euro VI buses. A lot of progress has also been made on our ‘Clean Air for Schools’ programme. In 2019, MBC commissioned a project to review options for improving air quality in Upper Stone Street. This was a development of an action to undertake a feasibility study into a Low Emsission Zone. The project was originally envisaged as being vii Maidstone Borough Council centred on the High Street but in the last coupls of years, we have not measured any exceedances of any AQ objectives in the High Street. The focus of the project was therefore shifted to Upper Stone Street, where despite recent improvements and a continuing downward trend, significant exceedances of the NO2 annual mean objective remain. The project was also broadened out to include consideration of a large number of other measures to improve air quality in the area. Unfortunately the measures studied were considered to be too expensive, too impractical, or would have been likely to simply shift the problem away from Upper Stone Street to another location. The impacts of three of the more promising measures were modelled but none was predicted to bring compliance with the objectives forward by more than about a year. Full details of progress on the action plan measures are given in Table 2.2. Figure 2: Upper Stone Street viii Maidstone Borough Council Conclusions and Priorities The 2019 monitoring results show that the annual mean NO2 AQS objective has been met in majority of the monitoring locations. Also, in the vast majority of monitoring locations, NO2 levels had decreased from the 2018 levels, continuing the general trend of air quality improvements which has been ongoing in Maidstone in the last four or five years. There were six locations within the AQMA where NO2 levels were observed to exceed the annual mean objective for NO2 in 2019, when distance corrected to the nearest relevant exposure.
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