Air quality

This page is dedicated to monitoring and publishing air quality info in Northamptonshire. A new embedded map will be added in the future. A changelog below shows updates on the work taken in improving and monitoring the air quality.

Changelog

2025-03-30
After two decades of inaction on air quality West Northants Council finally published an Air
Quality Action Plan in September 2024. It lists 23 measures:

  1. Continue monitoring air quality
  2. Revoke Air quality Management Areas (AQMAs) on MI and A45
  3. Declare new AQMA on Bradshaw Street
  4. Add an Air Quality chapter to the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment
  5. Government grant to pay for the installation of electric charging infrastructure in Northampton
    bus depot. Stagecoach will buy 51 electric buses only to be used in Northampton.
  6. Raise awareness in schools
  7. Active travel management in AQMAs
  8. Control and public information on domestic burning
  9. Develop new Local Transport Plan
  10. Reduce congestion through road improvement
  11. Active Quarter cycling and walking network
  12. Cycling and walking corridors in Brackley, Daventry & Towcester
  13. E scooters from Voi
  14. Taxi licensing policy to promote low-emissions taxis
  15. EV infrastructure strategy (including gas fuel recharging)
  16. Inspections and enforcement to reduce industrial emissions
  17. Enforcing dust and smoke control
  18. Reduce emissions from WNCs fleet of vehicles.
  19. Planning conditions to reduce dust from demolition and construction
  20. Planning guidance to mitigate impact of all development on air quality
  21. Sustainable Heat Network Feasibility Study
  22. Replace gas boilers at leisure centres in Daventry, Moulton, Brackley & Towcester
  23. Implement the Tree Strategy

There are several measures which the plan failed to include

  1. Create a Clean Air Zone
  2. Expand Smoke Control Areas to include Northampton town centre
  3. Stop building roads and start building safe cycle lanes
  4. 20 mph limit in residential areas
  5. 60 mph limit on MI and A45
  6. Car club
  7. Lift sharing scheme

2019-01-16

Towards the end of 2018, Northampton Borough Council launched a public consultation regarding the proposed changes to the Air Quality Management Areas in Northampton. We have already fed back into this consultation.

2017-01-30

We made contact with a Residents Group in Wellingborough who were concerned about the Air Quality at the Broad Green area of the town, and who wondered if we could help them to get some measurements. On the 29th January 2017, we put up 2 diffusion tubes to start the process.

2016-06-27

In Northampton, the Low Emissions Strategy is going through the Scrutiny process at Council. Following on from our work on air quality, the Northamptonshire Green Party has been invited to provide evidence to the Scrutiny Panel, and will be preparing a report in mid-February before our appearance in March.

Northampton has an Air Quality problem. 

There are 7 Air Quality Management Areas (AQMAs) in the town, where the levels of Nitrogen Dioxide is above the legal level. The Borough Council, in conjunction with partner organisations across the County has published a Draft Low Emission Strategy, detailing how they are going to try and reduce the levels of pollution.

This strategy is going out to a public consultation, which will run from 8-12 weeks across the Summer.

The Northamptonshire Green Party, over the last couple of months, has been starting to run a targeted campaign to look at the air quality ourselves – both inside and outside the AQMAs, so that we can get a better idea as to how this is affecting health across the town.

We want to step this up during the period of the public consultation – let’s take this opportunity to start a debate about the air quality in the town, and to back it up with solid data that is open to everybody as soon as the lab returns the results.

We place a small measuring device called a diffusion tube on a lamppost next to the road. Over a period of 4 weeks, this measures the amount of Nitrogen Dioxide in the air. The tube is then sent off to a lab for testing and the figures are sent back to us around ten days later.

The more tubes we can place, the more complete our data will be. And that’s where you can help.

Can you pledge enough money to our campaign to help us place more tubes?

Every donation will help us to measure in more locations, and we have set reward levels where we will place the tube in an area of your choice.

This really is a big deal. Mortality rates due to respiratory illness in Northampton are above the national average, and they are higher than anywhere else in the County. It’s affecting the health of our citizens, and its affecting the life outcomes of our children.

Let’s start trying to fix this.

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