Policy information sourced from The London Plan 2021
SI 1 Improving air quality
Development Plans, through relevant strategic, site-specific and areabased policies, should seek opportunities to identify and deliver further improvements to air quality and should not reduce air quality benefits that result from the Mayor’s or boroughs’ activities to improve air quality.
To tackle poor air quality, protect health and meet legal obligations the following criteria should be addressed:
- Development proposals should not:
- lead to further deterioration of existing poor air quality
- create any new areas that exceed air quality limits, or delay the date at which compliance will be achieved in areas that are currently in exceedance of legal limits
- create unacceptable risk of high levels of exposure to poor air quality.
- In order to meet the requirements in Part 1, as a minimum:
- development proposals must be at least Air Quality Neutral
- development proposals should use design solutions to prevent or minimise increased exposure to existing air pollution and make provision to address local problems of air quality in preference to post-design or retro-fitted mitigation measures
- major development proposals must be submitted with an Air Quality Assessment. Air quality assessments should show how the development will meet the requirements of B1
- development proposals in Air Quality Focus Areas or that are likely to be used by large numbers of people particularly vulnerable to poor air quality, such as children or older people should demonstrate that design measures have been used to minimise exposure.
Masterplans and development briefs for large-scale development proposals subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment should consider how local air quality can be improved across the area of the proposal as part of an air quality positive approach. To achieve this a statement should be submitted demonstrating:
- how proposals have considered ways to maximise benefits to local air quality, and
- what measures or design features will be put in place to reduce exposure to pollution, and how they will achieve this.
In order to reduce the impact on air quality during the construction and demolition phase development proposals must demonstrate how they plan to comply with the Non-Road Mobile Machinery Low Emission Zone and reduce emissions from the demolition and construction of buildings following best practice guidance.
Development proposals should ensure that where emissions need to be reduced to meet the requirements of Air Quality Neutral or to make the impact of development on local air quality acceptable, this is done on-site. Where it can be demonstrated that emissions cannot be further reduced by on-site measures, off-site measures to improve local air quality may be acceptable, provided that equivalent air quality benefits can be demonstrated within the area affected by the development.
For more information please see The London Plan 2021