Edinburgh Low Emission Zone: Latest figures show air quality improving, but LEZ still needed says Scott Arthur

Edinburgh’s air quality is improving, according to latest council monitoring – but the Low Emission Zone due to be introduced later this year is still needed, says city transport convener Scott Arthur.

Figures for 2022 – the first year when there were no travel restrictions after Covid – show that most of the legally-required standards were met. But Councillor Arthur pointed to new, much stricter guidelines on air quality issued by the World Health Organisation, which were not met.

He said: “The figures show things are continuing to improve. There were a couple of technical breaches, but overall we’re in a good place with the air quality in terms of the legal minimums set by the Scottish Government.

“But we are way short of the World Health Organisation’s guidelines for air quality, which the Scottish Government is being encouraged to adopt in some shape or form. It did take us about 15 years to meet the current minimum guidelines, so maybe a similar long-term plan is needed around the new guidelines. We’re about three time over them just now, so it would be a big step to move towards them. It’s more about long-term aspiration, rather than something that coud be done in a few years.”

The latest figures, published in a report to the council’s transport and environment committee, show there was only one breach of the annual mean nitrogen dioxide (NO2) air quality target in 2022, at a monitoring site on Queensferry Road, but it was not close to residential properties and when adjusted to take that into account the concentration was within the statutory limit.

And on particulates, there were no breaches except for St John’s Road, Corstorphine, which the report said exceeded the PM10 24-hour mean objective, partly due to a one-off event during road surface dressing works. Across the city, the report notes, “trend analysis of particulate matter shows a slight decreasing pattern, except at St John’s Road”.

Edinburgh’s Low Emission Zone (LEZ) will be enforced from June 1 this year, banning vehicles which do not meet the strict pollution limits from a 1.2 square mile area of the city centre. Opponents of the Glasgow LEZ mounted a court challenge last year, arguing it was unnecessary since readings showed that air pollution in the city had recently dropped. But the Court of Session found the scheme was proportionate and represented a fair balance of interests.

Cllr Arthur said: “The way I look at it, the legal standards set by the Scottish Government are just a legal minimum. But when you speak to the NHS and the charities involved in this, they don’t see the legal minimum as really acceptable. If you’re an older person – or a younger person – you probably feel the impact of the relatively good air quality we have in Edinburgh now, compared to the past. It’s about seeing this as a legal minimum and thinking about what more we can do.”