 Rwy'n fawr i'w meddwl am o lawer o phobl yn FFWN i gweithio cyffredinol i'r buddus Cyfryd Fawr 2023. Mae'r ystafin ythydig yw'r ystafin fyddai i gael ei atwm 3 o'n ffrifat hwnnw i fawr i'w fawr. Fawr 3 o'n ffrifat hwnnw i fawr yn gwzfyrd y flwyddyn i Gweldu Cymru. Felly mae'n gwneud o aggledion ffawr o ffawr. Felly, we will move on to a gender item 2, which is a round-table discussion as part of our consideration of air quality in Scotland. I refer members to the papers for this item. The committee has a role in scrutinising the Scottish Government's air quality improvement plan, which was prepared in response to a report by Environmental Standards Scotland looking at nitrogen dioxide levels in Scotland. As part of our formal consideration of the improvement plan, the committee has also agreed to examine wider issues in relation to air quality policy. We have launched a targeted call for written-in views in February, and we also agreed to invite a panel of stakeholders to give evidence on this issue. I am therefore pleased to welcome Stuart Hay, the director of Living Street Scotland, Craig McLaren, the director of the Royal Town Planning Institute Scotland, Gavin Thomson, Air Pollution Campaigner, Friends of the Earth Scotland and Paul White, director of the Confederation of Passenger Transport Scotland. Joining us remotely is Dr Gary Fuller, UK research and innovation clean air champion and senior lecturer in air quality measurement at Imperial College London. Good morning to you all, and thank you for accepting our invitation, and thanks also to those people who provided a mass of written evidence in relation to this. We are delighted to have you, the panel, here this morning. We've allocated about an hour for questions. We'll see how we go. What I would say is to those members of the committee, could you try and direct the questions at the person you want to answer them? You won't all get a chance to answer every single question, but if you feel you're being left out, you can indicate to me and I will try and bring you in to make sure that everyone gets a fair chance to answer all the questions. The first question is this morning to you, come from the deputy convener, Fiona Hyslop. Good morning, thank you for joining us. I'd like to direct my first question, which is really an introductory one, to Dr Gary Fuller and then to Gavin Thomson. I really want to get an understanding of what you consider to be the main sources of air pollution, their impact on human health and the environment, and how concentrations of pollutants have changed in recent decades. I'm sure that Dr Fuller could probably have a whole lecture on that, but if you could maybe just give us a brief introduction, that would be very, very helpful. Thank you very much. Starting with the main air pollutants of concern, a lot of the function of this committee and the meeting today focuses on nitrogen and dioxide, and the reason for this is partly because of the limit values and targets that we use to govern our policy. In terms of the health impact, we talk less about polluting particles, mainly PM 2.5, but if we look away from the legal limits that we have in Scotland, in the UK and in Europe, and look towards the World Health Organization, we should be paying a lot of attention to both pollutants. Also, there's a lot of evidence. I think that it's fair to say that the way in which we view air pollution through limit values is set very much on the science of the 20th century and hasn't really caught up with what was found in the 21st century. What we've found more recently is that the harm from air pollution extends below these limit values that we've set, and this raises an important question of should we be framing our work differently to be able to bring about changes. Let's take taking the example of Canada, where they have a system of continuous improvement rather than just focusing on the most polluted places, and also a commitment to keep clean areas that all would enjoy good air quality clean. I think that that hopefully is some context as to what we're talking about. In terms of the health impact of air pollution, these have also advanced a great deal in the last 10 years. It's been 70 years, actually, since London's 1952 smog. That taught us the bad incidents of air pollution killing people. Through the 1990s and the end of the 20th century, we learned that it was exposed over a kind of decadal periods that are affecting people's health, and now the latest research really focuses on a life course evidence that air pollution is affecting our health before people are born, as children are maturing and growing up and then through adulthood into the end of our lives. That extends beyond things that we think about, such as asthma, for instance, or just early deaths. We are getting new evidence appearing, for instance, on air pollution and dementia, and that is developing. I emphasise that, but it then changes our perspective that we must think about the times when people are exposed to the original air pollution that affects their health or harms them, and then perhaps later when air pollution exacerbates the sort of harm that's already been done. Changing our policies in this way of thinking about it differently might lead to different emphasis, so rather than just trying to tidy up the most polluted places—so the city centres, for instance—perhaps we should also think about focusing on where vulnerable people are. For instance, children and their times at school, children and their roots at school could be one example. You asked me about three or four questions. I'm not sure that I've covered them all, so please ask again if I've missed one out. That was a very helpful introduction, and I saw Gavin Thomson nodding to agree to that, so you don't need to repeat what you agree with, but if there's anything else that you might want to add to give us that perspective and context. Yeah, great. Thanks very much. Good morning, everyone. I'll just make a couple of quick points, I think. I would refer to, in the environmental standard Scotland report, if anyone's got that in front of them, on item 3.7. It says, increasing studies suggest that NO2 and other pollutants are non-theshowed pollutants. In other words, what Dr Fuller is saying is, we're seeing health impacts at every level, so far below sometimes the legal limit values that have been set. Dr Fuller talked about the nitrogen dioxide, which cities across Scotland have been breaching the legal standard for NO2 for a really long time, but we also want to think about particulate pollution. NO2 is diesel vehicles, diesel exhausts. We've got an excess of older diesel vehicles in particular, but particulate matter, which comes from a much wider variety of sources, but in terms of traffic, we should be thinking not just about the exhausts, but also tyre wear and brake wear. That might become relevant later on if we start thinking about the shift to EVs. If we've got loads of EVs, we're still going to have a fair bit of particulate pollution from tyres and brakes. Electric cars, sorry. I've already slipped into jargon, but I can only apologise. Those are the main points that I would say. Nitrogen dioxide, diesel fumes and particulate matter come to the exhaust sure, but also tyres and brakes. Thank you very much, Gavin. I might move to a short hay and ask you about where you think Scotland's current performance is in meeting international air quality limit values and which pollutants you are or take as being the most challenging that we're facing. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee. We are obviously making progress, but we're making progress to a certain extent by default down a technological route. We are setting cordons, we're restricting vehicles, and I think that the challenge is what more are we doing? How do we want those areas? What does an LEZ look like for the people that live in it? It's a very technocratic approach, and we're treating one symptom, which is air quality issues. There's a whole lot of other things that come mainly about too many cars in that specific area around road casualties, the issues around particulates as well. We might be making progress on knocks, but we don't know long term if we're going to tackle the PM problem. We have an approach, we are making progress, but we could be doing so much more in terms of a holistic approach to that in terms of people's lifestyles, and I think about how communities work rather than setting certain thresholds to the people that live in those areas. I don't think that they really understand them, so there's a big communication problem. Okay, thank you. If I may move to Craig McLaren and then to Paul White. We've obviously gone through a period of Covid-19 lockdowns that changed behaviours, and we've got an energy cost crisis. You might have a view on places and people in streets and et cetera, but more widely, how do you think that this has affected trends in air pollution more recently, Craig? During Covid, things were very different. It brought a new way of thinking for people and the appreciation of what other places were like and how there could be nice places to live in, to work in and to spend time in as well. I'm hopeful that there's a greater appreciation of how a place-based approach can be made to work on this. As Stuart's touched on, there's probably a need to try to embed more the thinking around place-based approaches to this, which are much more holistic in how we take things forward, which people can relate to more easily, because they're more worried about or concerned or interested in how their place will develop over time. I think that there's a bit about how we can embed that within how we do things. I would argue that planning and planners and place-based approaches are a key way of doing that. The LEZ sits in one realm in some ways. How it relates to the broader place-making principles and how that place is more attractive to people is a question, to be honest with you. I think that I need to take a much more integrated holistic approach, and it's part of that, trying to make sure that the approach that we take makes our places either attractive to people or stops them from doing things. That behaviour changed things, I think, really important in this. If you take a place-based approach, you can put in place measures that encourage people to do things, encourage them to walk, encourage them to cycle and wheel rather than take their car anywhere, or I can discourage them from doing things as well. I'm trying to negate the need for unneeded journeys in the car, for example, which can lead to pollution. That broader approach is a really important strand of how we should be taking things forward. If we can come to you, Paul, why, obviously, lockdowns had a major issue on transport and passenger transport levels haven't gone up to pre-COVID levels as yet. How do you think that's affected trends in air pollution, what's happened over the past few years? Obviously, there's been a shift to more electric vehicles as well. Perhaps you can give us a context as to what you think that is doing to improve air quality. Yes, thanks for the opportunity to speak. I think that we saw some trends through Covid and through the pandemic in lockdowns where you didn't have the same level of car traffic. Cars were off the road, people were in lockdown, but there was essentially a bus network still running for lifeline services to get key workers to the places of work. We saw how bus can operate in the absence of congestion. You had improved running times, lower operating costs, and as lockdowns were removed and people started to come back, they returned to their car. There's still remnant of fear about public transport remaining from some of the messaging that we had around avoiding and closed spaces through the pandemic. Congestion bounces back, and we see a real return to vehicles, even more modern vehicles. We should take a place-based approach, but if you look at a technology approach, where if you look at replacing an older vehicle with a Euro 6, the newest version of diesel or a zero-emission bus, you're still limiting its ability, its capacity to operate cleanly if you're stuck in traffic. I think that a major trend has been the bounce back from congestion. As a sector, yes, we still have the impact of the pandemic limiting patches just down below where it was pre-pandemic and clearly across the living crisis. It costs our up, and we're struggling to get that balance right between providing a network of services that are attractive to people. We will leave the car at home and use public transport. In funds such as the bus partnership fund, where we can invest in bus priority measures and free bus from congestion, we will hopefully return to that sort of, maybe not the exact freedom that we saw through the pandemic, but freeing bus from congestion will lower emissions and improve the offering that people look for when they're making their travel choices. Can I just ask how closely your organisation monitors and the emission changes by shift from older vehicles to more modern carbon reduction energy uses? If you look at the different Euro standards of engine, you can look at how the pollutants associated with those Euro standards go from older vehicles, Euro 3 vehicles down to the Euro 6, so a much more cleaner engine. I can't talk with any degree of certainty about the performance of those engines as it is somewhat linked to their ability to perform, so a vehicle that's running at a set speed and is not having the stop-start that you might associate with urban travel will have a different emissions performance, so I can't. That's finally one final question to Dr Fuller again. Has there been anything in terms of the energy price crisis that you think might have impacted on air quality or anything on this agenda that you're aware of? I think that that's a really good question, and so many people have been, you know, struggling to keep warm in their homes and met so many challenges through this year. I think that the short answer is we're yet to analyse the data. The slightly longer answer is at the start of winter we were concerned that the fuel price pressures were going to encourage people to turn towards a lot more solid fuel burning, and we already know that this is one of the, in many places, you know, this is the largest source of primary particles in an area. We've seen in other places like the Greek financial crisis that people turn to burning wood. I think we haven't yet analysed all of the data that will tell us whether the last winter that we've had has been different to the winters before, but I rather fear it has been based on the anecdotal evidence and data from stove sails and wood sails. Thank you very much. I'll just hand back to the convener now. Sorry, I just wanted to ask Paul. There was a question there that you were talking about, Ellie Zed's and Euro 6 engines on buses. Is there a fear that Ellie Zed's in major conurbations, which require Euro 6 bus engines, will push those buses that don't meet the Euro 6 bus engines into rural settings where there aren't Ellie Zed's, or is that nothing to be worried about? I think some of the evidence suggests that areas outwith an urban centre will actually benefit from the Ellie Zed's given that bus routes tend to be from the outskirts into a city centre rather than operation within the city centre, but there is a degree of cascading within operation, so if you are a larger bus operator that operates in urban centres and maybe rural centres, you may move some vehicles that I don't qualify for the Ellie Zed to another area. I would say that we are in the midst of a real accelerated fleet renewal to meet Government targets for zero emission vehicles, and those vehicles that might be leaving would be the ones that would be being replaced. There is another aspect to that in a very rural area, rural setting. It might be a supported network where it is based on the local authority tendering service that operates in that area, and on the basis of a low-cost tender, having a minimal vehicle cost and an older vehicle running that, it may be more likely to win that tender. There are aspects like that to consider, but I do not have set evidence that vehicles that are operated within an urban centre will then appear in rural areas. That is interesting. I do not think that all buses that work in rural settings go into Ellie Zed. There is not an Ellie Zed, for example, in the highlands proposed, so maybe we will see, I am not suggesting we are, that we might see more non-euro-six engines up there, maybe not. Mark, you had some questions. I could go back to Gary Fuller and just ask you about the WHO limits and whether you think that the Scottish Government should be adopting those limits and what we would need to do, what would be required if we were to really step up to that limit. Thank you. It is an excellent question. The legislation that we have across UK, Europe, Scotland at the moment owes a lot of its provenance to the 2005 WHO guidelines, and the ones that came out last year really radically changed this, so NO2 reduces from 40 to 10 and PM2.5 drops from 10 to 5. I think it presents many challenges meeting these. For instance, the NO2-1, even if we were to do completely electrify our vehicle fleets, is what we do about space heating that will be really important going forward. If we are going to burn hydrogen in our gas grid, it creates a NO2 in a similar way to burning fossil gas, so that will be a problem for the attainment of that. When it comes to PM2.5, there are a lot of sources that we do not currently regulate or really seek to control that would have to come under that umbrella. However, if I can respond by thinking what would be a good policy response would be to rather than focus on setting new limits, it would be to map out the possible pathways to attain them. We are just not doing that at the moment. Internationally, people have just seen this document from WHO and they are saying, oh, there it is, but the rational response will be to start to say, okay, what new sources, what sources will we have to bring under control that we don't do so already and prepare those pathways and think about how to do it and then think about, there's been some wonderful talk about how urban areas should look in the future and we must make sure we don't focus on now but also in the future and it could be part of that type of thinking as well. So I would encourage you to start really mapping out pathways towards the attainment of WHO guidelines. Okay, that's useful. Do others want to come in specifically on how you think it could be delivered, what might those pathways look like? Gavin, you're nodding. In discussing the WHO limits, you will find skepticism within councils and government that they're achievable at any time ever and I think we, like Dr Fuller said, we do need to change our mindset into what would need to happen to make those achievable but I think returning to an earlier point that was made that we probably need to think in terms of continuous improvement rather than legal compliance on air quality for that exact reason that I said that we find health impacts even at very low levels of air pollution far below legal limit values and then if any policy instrument that we're looking at or any legislation, a lot of them only talk about legal compliance as very little in terms of continuous improvement who's assessing for example local air quality plans or a low emission zone plan in terms of improving air quality year on year and that could be from quite a high level to moderate level the following year or moderate level to lower levels of pollution and I think we've got to stuck on on legal compliance and the issues around that for some good reasons you know um yeah I'll leave it there. Okay I think back to you. Okay Fiona. I just also wanted to to ask and I'll come to Stuart Heave first then maybe to Gavin is whether you think there's sufficient powers available to local authorities in SEPA to ensure compliance with the existing rules and regulations and whether there's been adequate enforcement action to meet um uh legal air quality limit values or do you also agree that actually continuous improvement might be better than a complete focus on whether or not we're enforcing compliance with existing rules. Stuart and then maybe back to Gavin and anybody else can indicate if they want to come in. Stuart. Thank you. I'll let Gavin answer the more technical aspects of this. The area I think I'm most concerned to is living streets as we do at work beside schools and actually the amount of data that's available to know if we are actually achieving the targets there is is missing and I think there's also an enforcement issue around about those areas for idling and generally I would say that's down to councils and they don't have the the staff to go out and check and to enforce and I think this is a these are the sort of easy wins low hanging fruit that you could go out and do that most sensible parents would support not having cars outside the schools polluting there that the children brave so I think there is sort of easy wins we can do on enforcement. Gavin do you want to say anything on that? I would completely echo the point about the resources that councils have available is certainly a big issue a big part of the the issues that we've been looking at. The environmental standard Scotland report identified a number of gaps in reporting and accountability. I think a lot of that and you'll find out more perhaps when you speak to air quality officers later on is about the resources that councils have available to report and to develop ambitious plans rather than plans when they are even are submitted and many aren't merely restate the status quo and talk about just monitoring situations there's very little interventions actually happening. I think as an aside that's one of the reasons why I think low emission zones is such an exciting prospect it's one of the few things we've actually done on air quality um measure the blame. Yeah so I think in terms of councils being accountable and reporting on actions that they're taking there are huge gaps as was identified by the ESS report. As far as I'm aware that's due to resource constraints rather than any kind of policy deprioritisation that we might have seen and I'm sure you can hear more about that later on. Okay I think I'm unconscious other members about questions so I'll pass back to you. Okay thank you. Stuart sorry just picking up on a point you made there about parking outside schools absolutely understand that in an urban conurbation I'm going to ask you the same question in rural settings when there are no buses probably the only place to park outside the school it's outside the school and a lot of people rely on private transport to get their children to school so how do you solve it there is it one size fits all? It's not going to be one size fits all I think LEZs are generally urban but for rural areas I think you'd be surprised about the amount of traffic outside schools and there is solutions available one of them is a sort of park and stride area where you can disperse the vehicles you find a safe area for people to park and then you put in routes that are safe to walk in and you get a little bit of a benefit in our programs working with schools and teachers and pupils show that actually that's pretty popular with parents where it's put in but again it comes down to local authority resources to find the sites for safe parking to improve the routes and then to work with organisations like Living Streets to actually promote these things to parents. I see all sorts of problems that the timber lorry running down the rural road being one of them with the safe route down the edge of that road but I'm sure there are solutions Liam you've got some questions. Yes thank you convener, good morning panel. I would like to move the topic on to the Cleaner Air for Scotland 2 strategy and I'll direct a question first of all to Stuart Hay. Now obviously the Scottish Government published this strategy in July 2021 which sets out various policy commitments on air quality The ESS investigation suggests that it's somewhat flawed in its timescales and it's detailed modelling or there is insufficiently detailed modelling and suggests that in that respect it might need revised so Stuart Hay do you agree with that and more widely can CAFs 2 deliver compliance as drafted and if not what needs revised? I'm probably going to pass over to Gavin I mean to give you a quick thought that some quick thoughts and what comes back to the point that I made earlier there is a set of measures there which focus on cordons, focus on vehicles but there's not a lot more in terms of the path setting out the pathway that Dr Fowler has set out that says this is where the solutions are and we can see things that you could be doing, the schools as the example I'd come back to where there isn't a lot of activity so we need all those building blocks and CAFs too that says it goes from policy really to specific local projects and say you will have a list of local projects but Gavin's looked at this a lot more than me so I defer to him. I think in terms of issues with CAFs one of the things that we encounter quite often in terms of their Scotland is how separate it seems to be as a programme of work within government from just transport policy in general and transport Scotland activities and I think that that doesn't seem joined up at all and over and over when we talk about air pollution we are talking about transport and the lack of connection between these two programmes I think is a big issue so we find CAFs was published but didn't take stock of transport policy that had recently emerged or was published shortly thereafter and it feels like they're inhabiting two separate worlds and so CAFs is really good on things like updating the health evidence that the Scottish Government is working to on air pollution and including different groups of stakeholders but on taking stock of the transport policy and working at where do we need to get to for example with Dr Fuller's suggestion of our road map to meeting the WHO limits what that might look like what we need to change that's absent from CAFs and I think we could do more in bringing those two programmes together. I'm very grateful Paul White you won't be surprised at following that answer I'm going to come to you with the next question which is that the confederation of passenger transport have highlighted in your submission that CAFs 2 recognises the importance of the modal shift that we've been hearing about but in your view first of all are the timescales and the modelling that I put to Stuart Hay earlier sufficient to achieve what you would like to see or what the CPT would like to see and do you recognise given the answer we've just heard from Gavin Thompson that lack of joined up thinking and if so what needs to happen? I think as Gavin pointed out I won't go over Gavin's answer but I think within CAFs 2 and the actions in the strategy I do recognise that there are a number there that haven't seen enough progress since the publication of the document that I would like progress on I'd like Transcript Scotland to be more aligned to achieving those goals and we do have a bus partnership fund which would deliver bus priority measures as I previously stated that would hopefully deliver patronage growth that kind of modal shifts to bus which is a key part of providing an attractive transport network for people to consider. We've spent I think £25 million of the £500 million budget since well I think the scheme's initially launched 2019 and then relaunched in 2021 so we've not really got far enough in delivering that scheme. I haven't seen much progress on the managed motorway project which should be prioritising high occupancy vehicles in the trunk road network and that falls under the remit of Transport Scotland so you would think that would be an exemplar project. Public sector buildings and their travel plans for employees to encourage public transport solutions again is one where we're struggling to get data from what progress there has been on that so there are a number of things within CAS too which I think could really help shift the dial in making people consider their transport options more carefully and also to improve the bus and just the general public transport offering so I'm not sure does that answer your question. I'm very grateful Paul, thank you. I was going to move to Craig McLaren but Stuart you would like to come back in. It's just a very quick point I think what on the joined upness of the route map I think one area is the target to reduce car kilometres by 20 per cent and I think we need to be much more specific about how much that of that will be delivered in urban areas. I would suggest that that is the place to deliver it because that's where the pollution is rather than it's easier in some ways to do it in a rural area which is because there's more miles delivered but actually the miles in urban areas are much more harmful so I think that's somewhere where CAS needs to look at what contribution is traffic reduction going to make to this as well as vehicle switching. I'm very grateful. Craig McLaren you've heard the previous answers particularly around a lack of alignment to wider transport policy so the question beg then given your own area is is in your view CAS to sufficiently aligned to wider Scottish Government policy in relation to things like the national planning framework for and if not given recent developments what can be done? I think one of the important things to remember about CAS is it's actually quite dependent upon a number of other strategies to deliver it. It itself mentions stuff around the infrastructure investment plan, the environment strategy, climate change plan, land use strategy and the national planning framework so there's a need to see how that picture comes together in some ways I'm not quite sure that's there yet to be honest with you. Interestingly CAS2 was published before MPF4 if I can use laws, vacanums and the one sentence but we've now MPF4 has now been in place for two months. I think there is a joint up there. I think if you look at MPF4 and it talks a bit a lot about places, it talks in Metcalf specifically mentioned within it. The issue with for me is I think the policy context we have there is probably a good one. The big issue for me around the national planning framework is how is it going to be delivered and that's delivered both in terms of are the policies how they're going to be tested and it's too early to tell how much of that has happened yet not a lot of decisions have been made on the back of it as you'll know the national planning framework policies are now part of every local development plan so we're trying to see how that plays out but similarly how it works in terms of the capital investment that should go behind some of the projects which we try to work towards stuff around for example air quality. At the RTPI we've been saying for a number of years that there's a need for a better link up between the vision of a national planning framework for your country and the capital resources to deliver that and that's still not quite there yet. The next iteration of the infrastructure investment plan are way interesting to see how that plays out and how it works with the national planning framework. Very grateful to you all. Thanks Liam. Just before I could come to Jackie Gary, I wasn't sure if you were trying to catch my eye to say something to add something in there or whether I misinterpreted it. Yeah thank you thank you for the opportunity I tend to fidget quite a bit. One thing I will say and I was in Scotland for some of the early developments in your clean air strategies going forward and I was really excited by the level of integration between the different parts of the Scottish Government that were just utterly apparent when so many people were working in the same direction. So it's interesting to see where you've got to since our last visit which was some years ago. The other thing that we also need to consider in a framework and a strategy going forward of course is the challenges of meeting our climate commitments and there are many actions that have been taken on climate that have been quite adverse for air pollution. We can think of the dieselisation of our vehicle fleets that we've experienced this century and also we can think of some things like the increased burning of wood in people's homes and these are as well as urban combined heat and power and these are two things that are part of a climate perspective but have been adverse for air pollution. So I would encourage you going forward to think about things on a sort of three-way access and find the sweet spot that we have policies that are good for air pollution, good for climate but also good for health. We can think about things like active travel, you know the opportunities to combat urban noise and rural noise from roads, air pollution from traffic, climate challenges as well as the issues with just the lack of everyday exercise in people's lives and the health impact that creates. So I think it will be good and I would encourage you to put those considerations into your future plans as well. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm going to come to Jackie Dunbar next, Jackie. Thank you. Good morning, panel. I'd like to discuss the LAZs, if you don't mind, and I would like to find out how effective you think the current and forthcoming LAZs that are coming to our cities are or are going to be. If I can come to Craig McLaren first and then I think it's going to either be Stewart-Gavin, I'm not sure which one may be best placed for the first set of questions, but can I ask what your opinion is on the location of the LAZs, how they're set out? Do you think they're effective or effective enough? What do you think needs to be done to monitor how they are being effective? Do we need to do more, do we need to do less, and also your views on the length of the grace periods, if you don't mind? The location-wise, I see a lot of sense in focusing on the cities first or to biggest sites first as well. It makes a lot of sense that they are the places where they take most action to the most impact, so I absolutely see that. My slight concern about the LAZs is that I live in Glasgow and I travel in from the south side to the city centre quite a lot. Talking to friends, colleagues and others is a bit of confusion as to what it all means when it kicks off in June. I think that there has to be a bit of work done, and there has been work done in terms of trying to engage people to understand what it means for them and what they need to do, but I still think that that has to continue to be amplified a bit, because there's still a bit of confusion. There's just big signs as you enter into different parts of the city centre just now, but the educational side of it and the public awareness of it is something that needs to be enhanced as well. I forgot your other parts of the question. Sorry, before I go on to that, so what you mean is just to make it simpler for folk. I'm speaking on my own, by myself putting up a sign saying that you need to have X amount of this, means nothing to me to be fair. It's an understanding of what it actually means for people, what type of vehicles can be used in the area, what can't, but also that part of a brother can pay that with a margin to just try and encourage people not to use their cars at all in the city centre. There's bits of it trying to stop people from doing it, but also putting in place things that make it more attractive not to use your car. In Glasgow, if you use that as the example, it's a very good public transport system that's well used, but it's trying to see whether that can be used to best effect. I was asking about what your thoughts were on the length of the grace periods that are going to be put in place and also the monitoring of it. I've got no real comment on the grace periods. One thing that I'd like to bring in, I don't know the science behind it, I think that there is a need for us to get better at how we collate and share data much more effectively. One thing that I was wanting to mention is that in the planning side, which I've got most involvement in, there's a lot of work going on just now on digital planning initiatives. One key aspect of that is spatial data. There's a £35 million programme in digital planning going ahead just now. I think that the bit that can give most added value is how we gather and how we share and how we can access spatial data and how we can make it consistent across the field. There's a bit about trying to make sure that we can link in that digital planning aspect, where there's a bit of money, with all the other stuff that's going on in monitoring this. We've got almost a one-place where we can look at how that works spatially, and that gives us a more grounded evidence base to take decisions forward. Stewart or Gavin, do you have anything that you'd like to add? You might have a different view. On the grace periods, I think that that comes down to what we're going to do during the grace periods in terms of winning over communities and communicating to people. What's going to change in that period? I think that we don't really know, and do we have enough time to sell what I would say should be a positive vision about whether we're going to get cleaner air and change things? I don't think that we're selling a positive vision. What we're saying is that we're bringing a whole lot of restrictions in because we have to for health grounds, and that's one dimension of doing that. We should say that this is part of a journey that we're on as a community to change how we live our lives, and that's quite a difficult message, but a powerful message, and that's going to take time. Just before we go to Gavin, I think that Gary's got his hand up, I'm worried that it might drop off before we've noted it. Sorry, back to you, Jackie. I just wanted Gary to know that we've noted it. I've actually got a question for Gary, so I was going to— It's your question, sorry. I just didn't want his arm to have fallen off. Then I would ask him a question, sorry. My next question is to Paul. It's regarding the alignment with the wider transport policies with the investment in public transport and active travel. How effective is that in regard to the LEZs? You're right to point. It was our view that there was a slight misalignment in terms of the LEZ introduced standards based on a Euro 6 diesel engine, which operators have now worked strides to comply with, and we are in a good position across the four LEZs to meet those targets. That was with the help to degree from Scottish Government through what's called the bus emission abatement retrofit fund, so the Government did cover the cost of fitting emission abatement equipment to some buses and some have been replaced. Then, quite quickly following that, we have hit a programme for government target to decarbonise half the bus fleet by the end of this year, which is not a target that we will hit, but it's good to have an ambitious target. However, you have a sector that has maybe invested to a degree in new diesel vehicles to meet LEZ standards and is then faced with meeting targets for zero emission vehicles, where the average lifespan of a bus is 13 years. If you are curtailing that, if you are asking for operators to invest twice, that's a degree of misalignment that we are having to deal with. I'll take you in now. Thank you. I just wanted to say a couple of words on the ultra-low emission zone in London while we're talking about low emission zones. It's actually been astonishingly successful in the central area. I've reviewed a lot of the work that's been done by Transport for London in assessing this, and it's reduced nitrogen dioxide next to roads in central London by about 44 per cent compared with another scenario, and this is important for how you should assess these things. You should also think of another scenario whereby you didn't have the LEZ in place to just look at the additional changes that have been done, but 44 per cent reduction in NO2 in central London. We have roads in central London that had nitrogen dioxide concentrations of more than 100 micrograms per cubic metre and were around three times the legal limit, and it's made a huge impact on those. If you know, the ultra-low emission zone started really just in that congestion-charging area in Westminster, the city of London, and then extended out to the north and south circulars, or what you might think of, is in London, and the impact there was around 20 per cent. Once again, this is really good progress, and now what we're finding is some of the areas where we have the most difficult problems in terms of nitrogen dioxide are actually out in the suburbs, and so hence this is the mayor's argument to take it out a bit further. Whilst this has been really successful, I'd also be cautionary that low emission zones are different in different places, and a colleague around the table was talking about the individual bus fleets and the fleets in different areas, so I think you really have to be careful to design a low emission zone to match the fleets that are on the roads at the time. In terms of winning over the hearts and minds, the London one was very well supported in the city centre and was fairly well supported when it moved out into in London, but in the last month or so, the London mayor is facing a lot of pushback in terms of some very vocal quarters, let's say, about the introduction of the eules into the suburban areas, but it's been astonishingly successful in the centre and also really surprisingly successful in London as well. You had a question for me as well? Yes, and it actually follows on from what you were just saying, so thank you very much for that. It was just to ask what lessons could be learned from the research that's already been done, but also from, as you said, central London in regards to what lessons can be learned that we can take from what central London has done or from other UK cities? I think you talked about a grace period by which I think you mean the time between announcing the scheme and it actually coming in and I think that's really important, that's where a lot of the work has done. Many people look for the change from a low emission zone as to what happens on day one of it, but we've seen from the ultra-low emission zone in central London that the changes began around two years before as the fleets that used the city centre were upgraded. So doing work in this time and the work that's done is really, really important in this sort of like grace or build-up period. I would encourage you to also try to think about how you're going to measure the impacts. Some of that should be through measuring air pollution, but some of that also should be just thinking about the vehicle fleets that are on the roads because on some roads you may not get, it may be hard to see the difference, whereas many roads it will be really easy to see the concentration difference. Also in your analysis, if you can think about a way to be able to, let's say, compare a low emission zone to the area around it that's not a low emission zone or one city wither zone to another, I think it's really good to think about the sort of counterfactual and the additional improvement that you're achieving. But winning the hearts and minds is a really important one and I think we're all learning together here. Okay, thank you very much. That's all I have. Thank you. I've got a couple of questions on Ellie Zedz, if I may. Having sat through the rec committee in the last sessions transport bill examination of Ellie Zedz, one of the things that we were told as Gary has just indicated that winning people across to them was really important, but my question is what we were also told is that the money that was collected from Ellie Zedz should be based and invested on the infrastructure to make the Ellie Zedz work more effectively. It's kind of difficult comparing London to Aberdeen. London has a very integrated transport policy with buses and tubes that are all in to connect. Maybe Glasgow can claim some of that. I'm not sure Aberdeen can claim all of it. So my question is, do you believe that the money raised from Ellie Zedz should be ring-fenced and put straight back into improving the transport infrastructure so you don't disadvantage people who no longer can take their cars into cities? So Gary, I don't know if you want to start off on that and then I'll come to you, Gavin. It had been my understanding and okay, the local government finances is a bit outside what I do, but it had been my understanding that all of the revenue that's raised from these is invested back into transport. Where you would like to put that, whether it should be a focus on the disadvantaged communities or whether it should be a focus that's on improving city centres to help businesses and so forth, I don't know. I mean, that's much more a political decision and I don't think I've got the evidence to steer myself there. I can certainly speak from the London experience, I don't live in London, but my dad who now cannot drive is hugely advantaged and his life is only really made possible in his independence by the very good local bus services that he has that were originally funded by congestion charging, if you remember that when it was bought into central London, otherwise he'd be housebound. Which is interesting and I'll come to you, Gavin, because there's the argument, isn't it? Should the Elizets be the people that benefit from the money or should it be the rural communities who are paying it because they don't have the ability to get in? Gavin, do you want to answer that and the wider question? Yeah, absolutely. I remember those evidence sessions fondly for the transport bill and one of the things that I'm pretty sure the Transport Act came to say within the enabling legislation for low emission zones. Okay, let me pull back. The low emission zones in the four cities in Scotland are designed differently than London's lez and then later you lez as I understand because the you lez is a congestion charge model you pay to enter where the low emission zones in Scotland are penalties, it's like a parking fine or a speeding fine. If your vehicle isn't compliant, basically you shouldn't enter. In other words, in the design of the scheme, they're designed to be revenue neutral, they don't want to raise money, they just want compliance. I think this goes back some earlier issues we discussed around legal compliance being the objective or if not the primary objective among the top ones. So then you've got the London one which is designed to raise revenue which you can then spend on improving transport options which can benefit people in social isolation, people in other groups but the ones in Scotland are designed to not raise money and I think the enabling legislation sets out that any penalties paid. First of all, they're to service the zone itself and then additional monies to be paid into this sustainable transport plan I think for a local authority level but it's unclear and you can perhaps talk to the local authority officers later how much money do we even think that will raise because it might be relatively little and then so far it wouldn't pay for for example an infrastructure project or or expanding the fleet or anything like that, maybe it will and we might hear other voices about that but I just want to be clear it's fundamentally designed differently and I think this is where we need to do a little bit of work in public understanding around these zones because people's sole reference point might be a time when they went to London and interacted with the congestion charge right and so we do need to make some big strides in public awareness of this works quite differently in Scottish cities. I think the nuance between a penalty and a charge would be lost on most people or it's certainly lost on me if I'm paying to go into an lez it's a charge it's not a penalty it's a charge that I'm being put and it was always my view that on transport when the transport pill came because I have to pay to go in because I have no other way of getting in therefore it's a charge rather than the penalty. Sorry Fiona, do you want to ask a specific question? Just a quick supplementary to Paul White, Dr Fuller said that Ellie's Eds should be designed with reference to the buses that would be using the area. Do you think Scotland's Ellie's Eds have been designed adequately to reflect the buses that would use the Ellie's Eds? Well buses were first targeted so for example if we look at the Glasgow scheme the target of compliance has moved up in bands of 20 per cent over a number of years to reach 100 per cent and that is helpful for the operator because I think if you are faced with a situation where you are told you have a target to reach and you have a grace period of two years three years whatever you would have to think about how do I how do I meet this new target if I have a whole fleet that has to change or a part of the fleet that has to change the levers I can pull are removed the non-compliant vehicles from that and then reduced services that may be very important for people to enter the Ellie's Eds area or do I have to increase fares to generate the revenue to invest in the fleet renewal that has to take place so a scaled approach over a number of years has been helpful in allowing operators to meet the target in Glasgow and we've had a good number of years notice of the other schemes and a good idea if maybe not full clarity about what they would look like so all prayers have managed to adjust in a good position for the four Ellie's Eds what I would maybe add is that if you are seen to the public that there's going to be these these areas where you may not be able to access through your car and you want to make the public transport options as attractive as possible and I would have liked to have seen rather than ring fencing investment that's generated from the scheme to improve public transport or road space allocation a degree of that coming in at the same time as you're imposing those limits on bus so that by the start of the scheme you have a public transport network that is reliable punctual more reliable more punctual more affordable rather than hoping to maybe get there through revenue generated from the scheme at later stage. Thank you. Thanks Fiona. Mark, I think you've got a question and then we're going to go on to Monica. Okay so I'd like to turn to the system that we have in Scotland local air quality management within local authorities and we've had you know quite a lot of written evidence on this we've obviously had the SS report which talks about the kind of timescales for how plans are developed how they're reviewed and published there's been comments from Gary earlier on about monitoring in terms of monitoring vulnerable people particularly outside of schools and we had comments from Campbell Gamble as well about who provides the independent oversight of these AQMAs and the plans that come out and so I'd like to get your thoughts on how you think the system can be improved overall. Gavin do you want to start and I will I will come to everybody who wants to answer this one. Thanks very much I think just to bridge from what we're just talking about about low emission zones then because the enabling legislation makes it pretty clear some of the processes around low emission zones whose role is it to oversee the plans what happens if a low emission zone isn't performing or is poorly planned there's a set role for the cabinet secretary and Scottish government ministers and there's a clear relationship between councils and government moving away from that into say a city in Scotland that doesn't have a low emission zone planned or just general air pollution issues which aren't addressed by low emission zones is much less clear the roles and responsibilities and the avenues of accountability I think that's one of my frustrations with local air quality management areas and their associated plans if a plan is pretty rubbish it's not clear what happens whose role is it to say that's not sufficient to protect people's health who live or work in that area so there are real gaps which I think a lot of them have been identified with the environmental standards Scotland report and I think crucially the recommendation around uh well they recommend a new body but someone a stakeholder needs to have responsibility for overseeing local air quality management plans and tracking accountability for if those plans are not sufficient and I think that definitely needs to be cleaned up and in terms of that specific point around monitoring vulnerable populations and monitoring outside of schools that's something that should be part of all plans or should it be on a place-based approach I am in my opinion as Dr Fuller already said there are key demographics which are increased risk and we know for example nurseries in schools where children are going to school and they are at increased risk of some of the health impacts of pollution so it does make sense to me that those should have particular priority in monitoring and in some cases they do if a local authority has placed their diffusion tubes which is a low-cost monitoring device around schools but that's you know up to probably the officers in that council who placed the monitoring devices it's not set out as far as I'm aware and so I think you're right to set out that key demographics and key areas should have particular priority and prominence in monitoring as a step that we probably should take okay Gary Fuller and I'll come to others in the panel in terms of monitoring outside schools and others yes I think we should be doing a QMA, air quality management area reform. I think I won't respond in detail about the Scotland situation since it's some time since I've visited and seen this in action apart from to say I think local authorities have a tremendous role in being able to shape air quality policies to the needs of their community and to their town cities and rural areas and we should be doing all we can to encourage them to do so and empower them to do so but I don't think I should say much more on the Scotland situation. In terms of monitoring do you want to add anything else on that? I think monitoring is really really important I also think we need to think about monitoring in a much broader sense other than just looking for changes in air pollution we need to be monitoring traffic flows for instance with school streets which you know where you're creating a zone around the school that's traffic free many of these it's quite hard to detect if you're doing it in a rural area for instance maybe a change in air pollution but I would you know I think you need to there you need to be thinking about monitoring in other senses like monitoring changes in traffic flow monitoring changes in parking and monitoring also the differential in the behaviour of the children okay great in terms of their times before school I mean yeah thanks great I got nothing really to add to that other than coming from the planning perspective it's the need to join some of this stuff up and I think there's a particular in the monitoring and the sharing of data and the impacts which have been happening through any interventions which have happened or put in place already and certainly in planning we've been looking for to try and change the way in which success is measured and moving away from metrics which are all about the speed of planning applications being processed and the number of houses being built towards outcomes and I'm just wondering if the outcomes based approach to this and if you've got an outcomes based performance management system and its self-conchange behaviours and make sure that you work in a way which is more effective to try and achieve that outcome and the impact that you achieve from that outcome. Stuart? I think there's an issue around about local delivery of air quality management. I think if you take the Parliament as a good example it has a transport plan and it's got it well developed I think you would have a good profile in terms of how people get here. If you go across the road to the office, is there a plan there? I don't know who's responsible for making sure that that office has got a plan to change behaviour and that's the key because that is that people will drive there and if you look there on Holyrood Road you'll see offices there with a large amount of parking so we need to build our policies around good hyper-local interventions and I'm not sure who's responsible for delivering them in the same school travel planning who's responsible for coming up with those plans and making them happen. One of the things that I would say is that it's not headteachers that will do that, they've got quite a lot on their plate at the moment so who is going to help out the schools to work with parents? We work with schools but we can only ask them to do so much, they need a bit of backing from other parts of councils. Okay Paul, do you have anything to add from the transport perspective? I think most things have been covered, I've just agreed with the others about local interventions but I do a few from reading the reports, I'm certainly not an expert in that area of it that oversight and accountability is really important. I've just got one supplementary for Gary actually, it's just about a technical issue around monitoring. I was looking at the air pollution data for Perth for the last week and I noticed that if you average out the air pollution data over a week I think it maybe just comes under the limit value but if you look at the particular times of the day it spikes up quite strongly. Are there other issues in the way that we're collating and interpreting air quality data in this country? There are lots and lots of issues to do with the ways in which we measure air pollution, it's where we decide to put a measurement site, create a lens through which we view the problem and I think if we can go back to kind of your air quality management question before we need to stop focusing quite so much on limit values. Certainly when it comes to planning in England for instance if someone comes through with a planning application it will be treated differently for its air pollution impacts if it's inside an air quality management area versus outside and I think very much we need to be respecting the fact that harm from air pollution also occurs outside air quality management areas, it occurs in rural areas as well. In terms of monitoring I just think it should be there's a tendency certainly within the way air quality management works in England that we're just chasing hotspots, we're only measuring in hotspots as well and we're not making measurements for instance in areas where the majority of people may actually be living we just measure close to roads and close to city centres. This may also mean that we're missing some problems since for instance there's we think during with cost of living for instance there's a great increase in the amount of people that are using solid fuels to heat their homes and it will be very hard to detect these with our current measurement strategies that are so focused on transport. Some of the work we're doing in London is to investigate for instance whether we're creating new suburban hotspots because of the way that people are now choosing to heat their homes so I think our measurement schemes need to be agile. There's also a really good opportunity to involve communities in measurement. One of the projects we have is Breathe London where we're giving out so funded by the mayor to college as well as Bloomberg Philanthropies giving out a measurement note small measurement devices to local communities and one of the really exciting and things from that that you're just overwhelmed by is the amount that communities want a voice so they're not interested in the precision that I've spent my life doing of wondering whether it's 39 or 40 microcans per cubic metre what they're really interested in things that you described earlier like the variations in air pollution in the day are there times when there's a problem through the day you know the ups and downs of air pollution can they tackle those but really they're wanting a voice in this so one of the other things going forward is you know is there an opportunity to let's say in place more citizen science perspectives not to expect them to produce really accurate data but to help them produce data that describes their local problems to get solutions that fit that and also empowers communities to be able to take their concerns forward to be at their local council or CEPA or transports government. Thanks very much. Okay the final questions for this panel come from Monica, who's waited very patiently. It's been very interesting so thank you to all of our panel today. We did receive a written submission from the environmental rights centre for Scotland and they highlighted the concept of clean air as a component of the human rights of healthy environment and signaled to opportunities in the forthcoming human rights Scotland bill so just keen to hear any views on that. I see Gavin Thomson nodding so I'm going to come to you first. Dr Fuller has a point to make as well just to note that so I think that's a really important component of the right to a healthy environment. I'll just make a couple of points that there are real inequalities in where air pollution comes from and who's most affected by it. We've already talked about along the age spectrum so children are at increased risk of air pollution but obviously it's adults making the decisions about transport and all the other sources of pollution but we also not know when it comes to transport. Richer people drive, they drive more, they drive further and it's poother people are living areas with higher levels of air pollution so there are real issues of inequality so if we think in terms of a human rights framework that's a way of making sure everyone's protected and I think this is key thinking about of air pollution in terms of people's rights being infringed and who the decision makers are on a kind of individual level but obviously a systemic level as well and I think there's also another aspect of it in terms of the governance and transparency of organisations which the Environmental Standards Scotland report looked at. If we position clean air within our rights based framework and our right to a clean air environment that might also lead us on to thinking more about reporting, monitoring, transparency for organisations like local authorities and I'll pass to Dr Fuller now I suppose. I'm keen to come back to that point about inequalities but yeah I'll come to Dr Fuller. Thank you very much, I think it's a really really important question and topic for how we should really move forward in the future as I say moving beyond the sort of paradigms we create in the 20th century to something that we should create in the 21st. I entirely agree with I think it's Gavin about inequalities and last night I was at London but an event focusing on air pollution and black communities for the most part and really the inequalities in terms of exposure between the richest and poorest in the UK is quite stark and then if you look within the BAME communities it's far stronger again and we don't talk about that enough in air pollution we're almost completely blinded to it. We may talk about inequalities in terms of exposure and we're just starting to talk about inequalities in terms of exposure to people in vulnerable times of their lives for instance you know those that are pregnant and for children and that's really important so I really support the idea of a rights framework behind this but we've also got to ask what difference would it make and I think there's so many times when if we try to change our lens to be able to reduce not just you know inequalities in terms of wealth but they come with them with inequalities in terms of health as well and so by viewing air pollution in that lens can help us as well. Also a rights agenda will help us when there's times where there's ambiguities in the situation or we come across a new case and if I may just for one moment there's a case verse school in north London where a large distribution depot is planned to be right next to the school fence within two metres of the nearest playground and the current planning laws would just really allow that to go through but a rights agenda would allow us to look at this and be able to weigh the rights of the children to a healthy environment compared to the right of the land owner to develop their land so I fully support it. Thank you so much Dr Fuller. The disadvantage of being last I've been told I've got about two minutes left so I know Stuart was nodding but I wanted to ask a further supplementary so maybe Stuart could maybe come in very briefly on that. So Gavin raised inequality, Gary's added to that. I'm aware of some research by the woodland trust looking at tree equity so I won't have to rehearse to all of you the benefits of trees and vegetation but they found that the most deprived areas coincide with areas where there's least tree cover and vegetation so I'm keen to hear in a couple of words what should be done to tackle the link between deprived areas, lack of access to nature and air pollution and maybe just come to Stuart and then into Craig. I'll come back on a broader point on that question which is we need to give people the capacity to use the rights we give them and I think we've got disability legislation and people have a lot of light rights and they can't actually enforce those rights so if you bring it in but actually give people training and give them routes to enforce those rights for anything if you feel your council should be planting trees what labourage do you actually have to make them do it you might have a right but how do you make them do it? I could talk about this for some time but I'm not at can but I'll just go back to the idea of what planning is about it's about giving people the opportunity of a vision for what the place could look like and doing that early and I've had a discussion about that about the opportunities the constraints and from there building a route map to try and make that work and that's the important bit for me because the route maps where you can start having a good discussion about the resources which are required and the responsibilities of people to actually take this forward and deliver that route map. Thank you. I did have a couple of questions for Paul White but I know there's no time so with permission we perhaps could write to Paul. I'm happy to let it run for a bit you've got Gary if Gary could give a really short answer then we could come to Paul White with the questions that Monica has got. Gary don't upset Monica. I'll try for three sentences. Firstly there's a huge opportunity to kind of reprioritise our urban spaces to create green areas. The second one is that WHO actually has evidence and guidelines as to improved health that's created by greening our urban areas and I can't remember off the top of my head I'll put it in the notes but there is actual guidelines that they've created for the greening of urban areas with people having green areas within a certain access space so yes go for it. Monica if you could roll them into one. Okay so I was interested to look at the £500 million bus infrastructure fund that was announced about three years ago and it was to think about work that's in mind for improving bus journey time reliability particularly around the AMA in the Glasgow area it looks like this business plan and design developments taken a few years I know there's been Covid but have you got any insight Paul and how important is that work to encourage people to leave the car behind and then get on the bus? Yes trying to be quick as possible work is under way through a partnership with Glasgow City Council operators and other stakeholders to identify where these projects where these pinch points are that should be tackled and how we improve that by putting in bids I'd say that these bids then have to go through the STAG process the transport appraisal guidance which seems quite a burdensome process and I would like to see that if possible streamlined because these are projects that are really key to getting the benefits on the ground that will encourage people to leave the car behind so anything that could be done to improve that process would be welcomed. No that's fine that'll do thank you I'm not upset. It's always a difficult expectation for a convener to manage the committee to make sure that they all get the questions that they want so but thank you very much been a really really interesting session I've found it extremely interesting and the fact that we've overrun probably proves that everyone has done that thank you to the panel I'm going to briefly suspend the meeting till 10.50 to allow change over at panels thank you okay and welcome back to our second session on the air quality improvement plan which is with a panel of local authorities representatives and I'm pleased to welcome Kenny Biss at the lead officer for land and air quality team from five council Tom Callaghan assistant group manager for sustainably sustainability Glasgow city council and Shauna Clarke the environmental health officer for the city of Edinburgh council thank you for accepting our invitation we slightly ran over in the last session say if you see me waggling my pen like that I'm trying to get you to keep your answers short so we can keep all the questions coming in from all the committee members so that we'll head straight off and the first question comes this morning from Mark Ruskell Mark I think I was going to move on to some areas later on convener were you indeed I had you down for the first question that's fine Jackie while you just get ready for your first the first question Jackie would you like to hand off with that thank you convener and can I just see you also lugs his pen at us as well my first question I think I'm not sure who to ask so just stick your hand up it's in if Scotland was to adopt the 2021 who guidelines what would that mean for local authorities in meeting the current legal air quality limits I'm not sure who would be best to don I'm happy to start off on that the who guidelines especially as they relate to nitrogen dioxide are extremely ambitious their ultimate target is 10 micrograms which is for the annual mean and just for reference our the Scottish objective is 40 micrograms so that's a huge drop there is interim targets within the who guidelines but that's the ultimate aim to achieve that and to put that into a little bit of perspective only one of our automatic monitoring stations regularly meets that that level and that is our background site which is positioned outside the city in a rural area and experience is basically the air before it comes in their city mixes with the different sources of air pollution so in effect I think in the long term to reach that ultimate who guideline value for nitrogen dioxide we would need to see really significant pro progress in the decarbonisation of transport and heating which aligns more closely I would say with the ultimate aims of the climate plan glasgo's climate plan rather than specific air quality plans at this point in time but to stress it's a very ambitious target okay so a huge amount of work then we'd need to be undertaken from all local authorities I would reiterate that from what Dom has said there in terms of Fife especially aligning ourselves with the climate action plan which we are currently doing with our colleagues in the 501 race climate team and I would say that and as he's mentioned the decarbonisation of the fleet but yes challenging but we've faced challenges before and I think we can face them again okay thank you yeah might think you've got some questions now yeah thank you convener you will have seen we did see you were at the back the earlier I talked about the clean air for Scotland 2 strategy Kenny Bissett I'll come to you first of all what role and how great a role will local authorities have and play in delivering the policies under clean air for Scotland I see the role of local authorities in delivering clean air now as not just to focus on transport but there's been concentrates now in terms of domestic burning from installations and that would only be considered and looked at I also see looking at the clean air act 1993 and revising that to assist and help local authority officers in their functions in terms of that particular piece of legislation because I feel that that is outdated I also feel it's very important to work closer with our colleagues in climate change and recognise the overlaps I don't I feel that we are doing that currently now in five and we are reaping some of the benefits of that I think the key thing that has come out of me in working since in air quality and since 2004 is setting up a core steering group I think working with others was the key step that we took in terms of getting things done in terms of air quality and meeting on a quarterly basis I have found has enabled actions to be taken forward that have delivered significant improvements in air quality in the Fife area and has allowed us to receive some recognition for that and that that's a very grateful Kenny Bissett. Thank you. Shona Clark, I'd like to offer the same question. What role do local authorities play and how great are all in delivering CAFs to? Yeah, CAFs to I suppose is you know as well as being sort of a wide-ranging strategy it does have specific actions in there and I think local authorities are responsible for a couple of those actions and so predominantly to look at local plans and policies and other bigger infrastructure plans and policies like the city deal etc and to see how air quality is incorporated into those so you know I think we do have to take a leading role in that and like Kenny said there's also big crossover with the climate strategy world and the CAFs to you know have another action to look at how we might explore zero carbon city centres and that's something that you know local authorities also need to take a leading role in and you know in discussions with Transport Scotland and Scottish Government so yeah there are definitely a couple of elements that you know we need to be heavily involved in I would say but in the overarching basis the strategy does talk about the precautionary approach to dealing with air quality so of course we've got a lot of standards that we have to work towards achieving but I think we've also got scope within the local air quality management regime to take little steps forward in a precautionary manner if you know what I mean absolutely so Dom Callaghan we've heard from those two answers and obviously you have further to submit on that and do so but we've heard from those two answers that there's a significant role or arguably a very significant role for local authorities in delivering CAFs too and implementing the policies that are in that now you all heard panel one earlier on talking about resourcing and financing and specifically panel one talked about when we were talking about idling outside schools it was mentioned that there was a lack of resources to deliver plans and interventions in terms of other implementation we heard that there are huge gaps in reporting and according to the ASS report and that resourcing was the issue leading to that so Dom Callaghan, do you think that local authorities have sufficient financing and resources to implement the policies that are under CAFs too and if not what level of finance is required and specifically what resourcing would be required? In terms of resources I think there are a variety of Scottish Government grants that are open to local authorities to pursue both air quality action plan measures and for the day-to-day running of the of local air quality management so that's the monitoring side of things as well so those are mostly funded although funding is tight we might not get everything that we ask or we might make submissions as part of the air quality action plan grant funding which don't receive funding therefore as a local authority with limited resources we're unable to take forward but I think in the main the the Scottish Government has shown a commitment in the past to to funding local authorities in their actions to improve air quality and that's been further evidence through the funding that's been put in place with regards to the design establishment and implementation of low emission zones as well. Kenny Bissett then I'll throw that question because as you've heard panel one seemed to be saying there wasn't enough financial resources but I think what I'm just hearing there from Don Callahan is that the Scottish Government has been supportive to an extent that it is providing that. Would that be something that you would agree with Kenny Bissett? It has provided resources and we've been able to use those resources to a certain extent in innovative ways to try and reduce air pollution in our area as a result. It will be more challenging in the future with the the latest to target limit values but at the moment we are fairly pleased with the progress that we are making in our action and plan measures in terms of dealing with air quality in the Fife area. I'm very grateful. Shona Clark, if you have anything to add. Yeah, I think you know I concur with you know what my my counterpart is saying. You know certainly through the ground process we don't always get what we want I think because there is obviously a need across the whole of the country to look at prioritising you know what measures all the local authorities are applying for because I think certainly through the local air quality action planning grant funding you know it's not certainly a pot of funds that have increased a lot in recent years. I think there is scope probably for those you know funding mechanisms to be better aligned in terms of what actions need to be taken especially on the transport and the transport infrastructure side of things and you know how better we could link you know the air quality needs with transport budget and money if you like. I think more locally probably in Edinburgh council you know the human resource side of things is an issue I think for the local authority there's certainly I think it's fair to say a bit of a crisis within the environmental health profession at the moment you know you know taking students through university and so therefore more qualified officers you know that I think that probably will manifest itself more so in the near future. I'm very grateful to you all. Kenny Bissett will come to you first. You said that what worked was working with others because you perhaps will explain who that is and you know how local authorities are working with the Scottish Government and its agencies to deliver CAFs too so what's working when you work with others and who would you like to work with more? When I first started in 2004 on air quality as an environmental health officer I was going out and doing diffusion tubes and it was quite technically orientated and there wasn't much interaction with other colleagues in other departments such at that time then we identified issues and problems including air quality management areas which allowed you have to set up a core air quality, it advises that you set up an air quality core steering group and the core steering group that we set up is colleagues from transportation fleet services from planning, NHS also University of St Andrews and also colleagues from economic development and education and we meet every three months and we go through the action plan measures that we want to take to improve air quality not just in the air quality management areas in our area but also five wide per se looked at the future as well and considering the options available to us in that respect and it was through talking to colleagues in transportation in our first few meetings in the steering group that we developed a road traffic management system in the Bonnie Gate and Cooper that halft the pollutant concentration levels within a year and we were especially proud of that and demonstrated the strength of working closer with colleagues on these particular matters so it's really been internal within five times so we work with SIPA as well, SIPA are on the area on our core steering group as well and they audit us in terms of checking that we're making adequate progress in terms of our action plan progress. So can we move to to Dom Callaghan, our last panel was talking about the fact that all types of air pollution cause an issue not just the ones on this in terms of standards and regulations for compliance and is there a danger that you spend so much time trying to to meet the regulations and standards that actually there's less emphasis put on continuous improvement and probably what we need to try and do is work a continuous improvement aspect of air quality. Do you have any views on that? Local authorities are very much guided in their actions by what is set out in the local air quality management regime so obviously the focus on objectives is at the highest point in our minds when we're looking into air quality objectives but we do look to reduce air pollution and we have shared the aspiration that was expressed in CAFs that Scotland should have the best air quality in Europe and that's certainly something that we're looking to achieve in Glasgow as well so it's not just about although achieving the objectives is a primary target and should be our first aim we want to go beyond that we want to have the cleanest air possible so we are cognising of the who objective limits we're also cognising of the the conditions that apply to local air quality management in respect of modern locations it's very much a place-based approach rather than an individual based approach now there's very good reasons for that it's very technical technically difficult to estimate what somebody's average exposure would be so we use the place-based approach as a proxy for people's exposure but we're always looking to push it down as low as possible and i know that there was that aim of reducing the pm 2.5 when those were brought into the scholarship objectives there was that aim towards continual improvement from the first point at which the objective was introduced to try to improve the position with regards to that pollutant and i think that when it comes to the harm that's caused by i know that you've heard quite a lot of evidence about the harm that air pollution causes and i think it's quite clear from the scientific evidence that's available that particulate matter especially has an impact on people's health in scotland and glasgo is in a relatively good position when it comes to particulate matter and we in general meet the wh o guidelines we spoke earlier about how we had such a long journey to go on to to meet the who guideline values for nitrogen dioxide but we're already pretty much there in terms of particulate matter especially pm 10 the larger fraction and that shows that i think that scotland is coming from a good start in place just now but we do have a way to go particularly around pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. I can move to Sean and the Edinburgh experience and working with different local authorities or different agencies. I represent a constituency that has 104 constituents it's the biggest in numbers of people in the whole of scotland they commute but clearly if you're trying to tackle transport and traffic in Edinburgh it's not just about Edinburgh it's about surrounding areas so how closely are you aligned with the transportation network the regional transport partnerships to reduce traffic in to Edinburgh because we're kind of struggling to get basic things like bus hubs that can take people in the m8 from Whitburn and the M9 from Winchborough this is kind of fairly obvious things is there enough coordination between those different agencies was you wacky in your pollution? Yes well I suppose I would draw on you know the recent work that we've done through the law mission zone and project development just to which really I think because the governance structure of that was so set out and clear that you know local authorities were to function to have a delivery group and that delivery group you know was to include obviously colleagues in SIPA and Transport Scotland but also a lot of representation from the neighbouring local authorities and that certainly crossed over from you know with air quality specialists and their transport specialists so there was a real forum there to delve deep into you know as I suppose that's quite a specific transport intervention but it's certainly you know left you know the things open to develop relationships for you know talking about wider regional transport policies I mean it has you know some good workshops and things like that as a part of the whole process so yeah I mean I think wider the local authority you know in the area we're just about to publish I think the regional transport strategy which of course takes account of the law mission zone and you know other bigger aspirations so there I think there's good work in practice yeah. I can just ask about schools because we know in Edinburgh as soon as the schools go on holiday the transport eases quite widely so in terms of powers that local authorities can or should have to help try and tackle school issues in particular what do you think needs to be you know done more and is it just a case of people resources but how do we make sure that we don't have that idling around our schools and we try and reduce the number of car journeys for schools. Yes well in Edinburgh as you know which probably know we've had the school streets projects which have been very successful you know on a national basis so you know we obviously need to to look at rolling that out further but I think also you know certainly there's been a lot of discussion earlier as well about you know monitoring outside schools and whatnot and I think of course we don't we don't do that every school but I would say you know the local authority management regime has been very strong in the past 20 years almost or more on monitoring so I think over the years we've certainly you know established or got a good understanding of what the levels are at schools that's maybe why sometimes it might be seen to be a bit of a gap now that we're not monitoring there but you know that that information is sort of established with us so I think you know it's what we've done in recent times in Edinburgh is really trying to engage with the schools themselves and try to you know go down the education route and try to encourage the monitoring through you know classroom activities for you know like younger younger students and the high schools to try and encourage it into the geography or the science lessons and that's through the set up at the moment with SIPA and you know the Scottish air quality database the Scottish Government overseas you know to try and help a bit more get schools themselves involved and to make something more of and just to engage really into um help you know take on the problem if you like thank you uh monica you want to come in briefly on this specific point thank you convener um yeah shona clark made quite a serious statement you talked about um a workforce crisis within the environmental health profession so just keen to hear a bit more about that is that attracting people in at undergraduate level is it retaining staff is there something else going on um yeah i'd say also in my role as the the chair for the Scottish pollution coordinating committee um yeah we've had some evidence that of a crisis in terms of yeah not you know the undergraduate programme for environmental health you know not being attractive and people not joining the profession in that manner so I think this is a very recent thing so it's yet to sort of materialise but also more locally um just trying to you know recruit environmental health officer to the local authority it might be a wider local authority issue in terms of recruitment but yeah it does seem that it's it's a problem and just one final question on that how many um accredited courses are there in scotland um i don't know we've had this issue with planning i think there's two planning skills now so what's the situation for environmental health i think it's just the one tree strathlite university just one okay thank you thanks monica the next questions come from ash thanks convener good morning um i wanted to start by asking about Glasgow's le z obviously they've implemented phase one already so i suppose this is primarily initially for dorm in the first instance what lessons have been learned from that for Glasgow and then to the other two panellists is there any learning there that you were able to pick up on for your own areas thanks very much yes the phase one of Glasgow's le z started in the at the end of 2018 and as i think you've heard from earlier evidence it started off fairly modestly it only required it only targeted the bus fleet and that's the scheduled service buses and it started off modestly as i say it only required that 20 percent of the bus fleet the actual it was expressed in terms of bus movements through the le z should be by euro six or better buses but that increased year on year by 20 until we achieved full compliance from the bus fleet at the end of last year and i think one of the the clear things that we can see from that is it's been very successful the reason we started with buses in back in 2018 was the source apportionment showed that on the streets where we had the highest levels of air pollution it was unequivocally buses that were the major contributor in fact hope street monitoring station which frequently talks the the bad list of highest air pollution levels across scotland that sits on a major bus route and we saw quite a dramatic fall in terms of the the nitrogen dioxide levels that were monitored there at the start of 2020 that was when the first real significant change in the le z required of the bus fleet that move up to 40 percent kicked in so for the first few months of 2020 we saw quite a good result from the the monitoring unfortunately in march of 2020 lockdown happened and any air quality benefits from the le z were masked by the massive drop in transport we did see the return to exceedances of the nitrogen dioxide objective level at hope street in 2021 when restrictions were lessened but it was marginal and preliminary results from last year show that we've again dropped down to below and that's as the buses have hit that 80 to 100 percent level through the course of last year so if you consider before the le z kicked in that monitoring station was more than 50 percent above the objective level and it now looks as though we are on the borderline of compliance it just shows what a big improvement just tackling the buses in that location has been but preliminary results from our last year from the non-automatic monitoring sites such as the diffusion troops do continue to show exceedances across Glasgow city centre which reinforces a position that a bus only le z isn't enough to give us the outcomes that we want the outcome of achieving the air quality objectives and that's why we are looking forward to to the implementation of the Glasgow low emission zone on the 1st of June and the air quality benefits that we fully expect to arise from that. Okay shona clerk would you like to add anything? Nothing specifically I mean just to say maybe that you know I suppose again as a part of developing Ellie's Eds in Scotland we have worked closely together the four local authorities with transfer Scotland Scottish Government in SEPA so yeah we are I think constantly learning of each other and yeah hopefully that will continue so that actually when Glasgow go first with the big one this June that you know I think the other local authorities will probably pick up some benefits for that for next June. Okay so there's nothing specific from the implementation that you've seen that Glasgow have done that you would do differently or? No because I think you know being on this journey together and you know we we work towards a timeline that where we all implemented the Ellie's Eds around the same time actually last May so yeah I think it's just been you know a good sort of case of like working together really. Okay thank you Kenny do you have anything to add? We haven't identified the need for a low emissions zone following the relevant technical guidance screening criteria however we're very grateful for sharing knowledge, sharing basis through the relevant liaison groups with Glasgow and Edinburgh and the work that they do and learning new ideas and they're using some monitoring equipment that is of particular interest to us for the future for some of the areas that we're dealing with and tackling in fight. Okay I'm wondering then if you could outline for the committee how your local authority is preparing you know specific steps that you're taking for that and it might be useful as well if you can outline some of the support that's available so that's whether that's for businesses or households in order to help them comply? Yes it's been a long process of preparing for the Glasgow low emissions zone. As Shauna said they all came into effect last May for all four of the cities but the process of preparing stakeholders the public for the implementation of the low emissions zones started off even before phase one started in 2018 so we are really focused on the communications side of it at the moment to really get the message out and from a practical point of view the signage which went up in December of last year and into January really made people realise this is actually physically coming and brought a lot of focus to it. We've quite an extensive communications plan involving all kinds of advertising including television advertising to get the message across and just trying to get people prepared for the low emissions zone get the knowledge out there. I think it was mentioned earlier it is a hard message sometimes to sell. People might not be aware of the euro category of their specific vehicle and now the vehicle checker the transport Scotland have supplied up and running so people have got that easy way to go and check their vehicle whether it can be driven in a low emissions zone. One of the things I would say is we are very grateful in the preparation for the low emissions zone to the help that we've received both from transport Scotland and from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. SIPA provided the technical expertise in terms of the evaluation, the modelling and helped us design exactly how our low emissions zone would have to look in terms of providing the outcomes that we were looking to achieve. It's been invaluable and despite the fact that they had their own issues with the cyber attack seriously affecting their systems they pulled through and managed to give us the information base that we needed to present to the public to say, this is the situation, here's what we're proposing to do and here's the benefits that we expect to see from it which is a very important message to get across. I want to just pick up a little bit on what you were saying about signage and that level of awareness raising because it did come up on the earlier panel as you know. Do you think from the obviously there's a lot of work that you've undertaken to raise that awareness but do you think that message is starting to get through as far as you can tell? I would say definitely in terms of the amount of public interaction that we have. Recently it has increased dramatically over the past year since the low emissions zone formally came into effect and the external advertising, billboard advertising, radio advertising and TV advertising that we undertook last year. We saw all of those coincide with increases in the correspondence that we would receive regarding the low emissions zone. The signage, I would say, was the single biggest factor in raising public awareness. We established what we called indicate of signage around some of the main traffic entry points to the low emissions zone way back in 2018 and that set to prepare people who regularly use those routes to let them know that the low emissions zone was coming but the statutory signage, the road signage that effectively legally declares that you're entering a low emissions zone seems to have had the biggest impact. We've also seen spikes at all times when we've undertaken co-ordinated communications campaigns, advertising campaigns. We always see that spike in inquiries and responses focused on those. We've undertaken a bit of work in the build-up to the implementation and enforcement next year, just looking at the awareness and understanding in the public. We did a study with 600 drivers in Edinburgh and found that at least three quarters of them considered that it was important to protect public health and reduce air pollution. That study also found that drivers supported the LAZ. We think that, due to the national campaigns and the materials that we've seen on the radio and on the TV, the message is definitely getting out there. We intend to continue with doing those sort of studies just to keep an eye on that. Also, we've been monitoring the traffic itself and the composition of the traffic with colleagues in SEPA, who have been helpful in presenting tools and information to try to make the information a bit more accessible to the public. We recently published a press release that talked about how that traffic composition has changed in the past, up to six years when we started the work. We're looking at the fact that now we're over three quarters compliant as a total fleet of vehicles, whereas we used to be less than 50 per cent compliant. That traffic analysis is also allowed us to identify where maybe we need to do some targeted interventions and awareness raising. Certainly with our LGV fleet, which back in 2019 was something like 6 per cent compliant, so that's jumped hugely now to almost 70 per cent. Now we're sort of focusing some of the targeted messaging in that sector. There's constant work going on and we're trying to tie in as well with the national comms and campaigning. Pife is two-year quality management areas and we've amended two of them to remove the pollutant nitrogen dioxide from it. We're currently awaiting the outcomes of an intercomparison study done on particulate monitors in Scotland, which will apply a correction factor, and then we will make an informed decision as to whether or not to then vote those particular areas. What is of interest to us as dealing with members of the public? Is there interest, heightened interest in the fact that we might be taking away the air quality management area and leaving it? We've had to be at a pains to point out very clearly that we will be continuing to monitor and we will be continuing to institute our air quality strategy aims and objectives in ensuring further air quality benefits in those zones. Before we leave Glasgow, can you just clarify me? There's talk that the council would like to include the M8 within the LEZ. Is that true? I think that that's been expressed at a political level as an aspiration to undertake some remedial actions in terms of the M8, including potentially inclusion within our low-missions zone. At the present point in time, the M8 is not within a local authority control and the transport act is quite clear that it cannot be included within the low-missions zone. We also have made sure that, apart from one junction where it was unavoidable, that anyone exiting the M8 has options in terms of entering the low-missions zone. The signage is very clear on the one junction where that is not possible. We have tried to make sure that the M8 is not impacted by the introduction of the low-missions zone, that drivers have options and do not find themselves with no choice but to enter. No, sorry, I just want to clarify that because it is clear my understanding of the transport act 2019 that special roads such as trunk roads, some trunk roads and the M8 cannot be included within LEZs. I just wanted to ascertain from you what you believe the process would be if that aspiration of the council was to include LEZ who would have to give authority for that. It is outside my area of knowledge, but I understand that, as a Transport Scotland controlled road, then any decision on that would have to come through Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government. I just remembered conversations in the transport bill where it had to be a consideration given to all roads that linked across the United Kingdom, so there was a standard policy on all of them. As I said, only those roads that are under local authority control can be officially within the low-missions zone. However, I would stress that the M8 has been considered in the modelling and consideration of the design of the low-missions zone. Just in the same way as the evidence space was built up for the city centre streets, the M8 was incorporated into both the traffic model and the air quality models to take into account any transport-based pollution that was coming from the M8. The next questions come from Jackie Jackie. You have been telling us today how you are monitoring the effectiveness of the LEZs. Can I ask what is being done to monitor that in that regard? Can you also tell me what the impact the LEZs are having on low-income communities that are reliant on private car travel? If I can come to Shona first, please. In terms of the LEZ monitoring, what we want to do, certainly on the pollution side of things, is to make sure that it integrates well with the established local air quality management regime. The system that we currently have is where we monitor and with the passive diffusion tubes or the more established units. We want to build on that and make sure that we are looking at what the LEZ impacts are in terms of pollution. On top of that, we recognise the need to monitor the traffic, perhaps a bit better. I mentioned earlier about looking at the actual composition of the traffic, looking at what the vehicle types are and what the Euro standards are. There is a need to do quite detailed traffic monitoring in that respect. That normally involves putting up a camera and establishing that for a period of time and taking good data from that. That is also our intentions, but sometimes that can be, especially if you are looking at across the board, across the city, that can be quite resource intensive. I think that we will seek and support in terms of grant funding and stuff like that to undertake that traffic monitoring. Earlier, there was a discussion about all of that data, if you like. It is very well established that the air quality monitoring data is openly available from the Scottish air quality website. However, in terms of the traffic monitoring that has been done for the project and that will need to be done in the future, we also want to make sure that that is openly available. I know SEPA and colleagues in Transport Scotland are working on that and hoping to have better links into the spatial hub to make that data available. I think that there are positives there. In terms of the impact on low-income households, and probably something that we did not mention earlier about the supports that are available for people impacted by the low-emission zone, there are a couple of grant regimes to support those most affected by the low-emission zone. They are administered by Transport Scotland on the Energy Savings Trust. I will not be able to remember the money involved in that. I can say that £5 million has been spent in the Glasgow region through the LAZ support fund. I cannot recall off the top of my head what the total across Scotland was, but for Glasgow it was around £5 million has been given in grant funding. That is targeted at those least able to adapt to the introduction of low-emission zones such as low-income households, small businesses, micro-businesses and transport stakeholders. Just on the point of the impact on low-income households and communities, we heard earlier evidence that those communities contribute least to air pollution because they drive less and so cause less transport-related pollution but are also most exposed to air pollution in general across Scotland. The LAZ should bring co-benefits in terms of the air pollution that people are exposed to but the support fund is targeted specifically at low-income households and micro-businesses to help them adapt. I will stay with you for a minute if you do not mind. What can you say that local authorities are doing to improve the air quality out with the city centre, out with the LAZs? What is it that they are doing and what impact does that have on overall? The previous air quality action plans that Glasgow has put in place in response to our air quality management areas has taken a city-wide approach for the most part. A lot of the actions that were included in them are not geographically specific to an area, so they not only have benefits within the air quality management areas but also for the city as a whole. I expect to see the low emissions zone will contribute to that by reducing the journeys across the city, not just within the low emissions zone, but by reducing the journeys by the most polluting vehicles. The evidence that we can point to out with the city centre is that we have had three air quality management areas in respect of nitrogen dioxide in Glasgow. The city centre is one of them, but the other two are other hotspots at locations in the city. One of them was revoked in 2020 after a long period of compliance with the objective level, and the last remaining one will be revoked this year because, again, there has been a long period of compliance with the objective at that location. The progress has been made. The last remaining hotspot in the last remaining area where we have fairly widespread exceedances of the air quality objectives is now the city centre. Naturally, that is becoming the focus of our work in terms of the low emissions zone. I have just a final question, if you do not mind, convener, and I will put it to Kenny. We were discussing monitoring stations and tubes. I cannot remember the proper word for tubes, so excuse me. Who is it that is responsible for choosing the locations of the monitoring stations? How do you decide? The local authority will undertake that process, and then it will submit its report to the Scottish Government in SEPA, which will review our reports. If there is any agreement or disagreement, we will discuss that. However, today, it is times of fife and not aware of anything. It is a joint decision, really? It is a joint decision, yes. Thank you. Just before we leave, you will have heard the question to the last panel. The money that is raised from the penalty or the charge, whichever way you view it, if they are different, how is the council going to use that money and how will it take into account those who live and commute into cities who will probably be the biggest ones affected? Very brief answers starting probably with you, Dom, and then Shona and then Kenny. First of all, I have to qualify it. We are unsure as to exactly what the penalty income will be. It is an exclusionary policy, not like the clean air zones that operate in England. It is an escalating penalty, so to discourage repeat entry by the same non-compliant vehicles. Should there be any income from penalty charges, which the first set in the transport act what we can use. First of all, it is for the cover the cost of operating the scheme. The second is to help achieve the aims of meeting the air quality objectives, so that is fairly wide-reamout, which could be interpreted in a number of ways, including potentially to use that funding to enhance and benefit public transport, for example, outwith the city centre. The other mandatory use of it is to help to achieve the climate change objectives. That again has a fairly wide-reamout and could be used. The funding, should there be any, could be used for projects with a clear climate change benefit. I am not sure that anyone is going to add much more to that, Shona. Do you want to add anything briefly? Just to say that we were looking at where there are similar LAZs implemented and Brussels is one of those whereby it has more of a penalty-type scheme rather than your ULEZ London charging scheme. We know in Brussels that the non-compliance is very, which way around is this. They do not really recede much income from non-compliance. We are anticipating not much income, and if it was to cover the operational costs, that would be welcome. Currently, we have an unfodded budget and discussions to be had about how we could cover the operational costs of running the low-missions zone. Kenny, do you want to add anything? I think that Donald Mund and Shona have covered all the similar points to that. Okay, brilliant. Thank you very much. The next questions then come from Mark. Yes, thanks. You covered quite a few aspects this morning of what makes an effective approach to local air quality management, delivery groups, having a spread beyond a council area to other council areas, as well as communication, I think that you mentioned in relation to ULEZ's monitoring. Are there any other aspects that are really at the core of a successful delivery of air quality management through air quality management plans? From my perspective in Edinburgh, we are currently drafting a new air quality action plan. Just with the low-missions zone now moving forward, that is obviously going to feature a major action in that action plan. As Kenny touched on earlier, that has meant getting council disciplines around the table as well as with our partners, neighbouring local authorities, SEPA, Transport Scotland. That is quite a process in terms of a steering group to get that plan constructed, which is now out for public consultation. In fact, there are stakeholder workshops today up the road in terms of discussing that plan and trying to finalise it. I think that what we hope from that is the continuation of a steering group and the priority that that might have within the council. Maybe to put this the other way around, because it seems that you are all working on delivery groups. You have all got that really well established as part of your approach. Do you think that it is possible to have an effective approach without a delivery group? There are councils in Scotland who do not have delivery groups that have been set up, even though they have AQMAs in place. You should have a delivery group in place. That is a good way of establishing progress in terms of your action plan measures. It was the best decision that we made to have a quarterly steering group in terms of taking forward a range of measures that we believe are helping to improve our quality in our area. I think that my point was more that we have established a steering group to develop an action plan. It is not something that is a regular or a set-up in the council at the moment as a permanent feature. The establishment of a group like that with priority in the council would be of benefit. I agree with Shona in that respect. In the establishment of an air quality action plan, we have the steering group, the delivery group, but that has historically fallen away once the action plan is in place. Although the responsibilities for delivering certain parts of the action plan might fall out with an environmental health section or a sustainability section, it might touch on roads, transport and planning. That is something that we would look to take forward. We are in a similar position to Edinburgh in that we have a draft air quality action plan. We will be looking to review that based on the outcomes of the ESS report and the Scottish Government's report. We will take into account the new guidance and the new template approach to revise our draft air quality action plan. However, during the delivery phase of it, we will certainly look to have a long running through the course of the land delivery group to ensure that the actions that are developed within the plan are fully taken forward. That leads me on to my next question, which is about the standards of Scotland recommendations in relation to air quality action plans. There are recommendations in terms of timescale, for example. As you said, there will be new guidance coming out as well. Can I get your reflections on that, on how achievable the timescales for completion would be? I might ask you, Kenny, because I know that Five Councils won the award for the fastest production of an air quality action plan for Cooper. I am not sure why, if that is because issues are simpler in Cooper or just the effectiveness of your teams and your process for developing that. What would your reaction be to the ESS recommendation that needs to be timescales for production? I think that there need to be timescales for production. I think that the timescales that are presented are realistic and achievable. I think that we have now got the set-up that can achieve that, if there were any issues in the future that arose in terms of air quality in Five. Have there been resource implications for producing a fast air quality action plan as you have managed to achieve for Cooper? I think that we can do that in 12 months, yes. Within existing resources? The recommendations with the ESS report, when it comes to the timescales, it talks about the declaration of an air quality management area. Our focus is really, as I mentioned earlier, on the revocation of our existing air quality management areas. As things currently stand, I do not think that that will apply to Glasgow City Council unless there is a change in the objectives levels under local air quality management regime. We have to then look again at redeclaring air quality management areas. As I understand the conclusions of the report, I indicate that once guidance is produced, we will have a period under which to revise our current air quality management plan. We are already quite advanced in that. As I mentioned, we have a draft in place and we will be looking to revise it based on the other recommendations within the report and the other recommendations that come out of guidance. Any new action planning guidance that is issued. Again, just as with Five Council, I feel confident that the timescales are achievable by Glasgow City Council. I would perhaps be not as positive. Local authorities are definitely under a lot of pressure in terms of resourcing, and as I mentioned, they are human resourcing. Even with the recent example in Edinburgh for drafting the action plan, we implemented the LAZ last May, but it took us time towards the end of the year until we had a draft plan going through those steering group meetings and getting everybody together, etc. That in itself took some time. With the draft plan, it has to go through political arrangements within the Council for agreement to sign off to go out to statutory public consultation. Of course, we have to do that important part of the process as well, so that you are getting the public on board with things and that is not to be a rushed job. In fact, Edinburgh would take at least a minimum period of 12 weeks to undertake a public consultation. There are a lot of bits that have to be undertaken. Is that an approach that you have chosen to take at the Edinburgh Council? Is there a quicker way of doing it? Yes, I suppose so. That is a policy statement for undertaking consultations, but there is always going to be the need to go back to committees and to fit in with the committee timetable at the local authority level. It is just marrying all those bits together that we could struggle with meeting a 12-month period. We have always had good working relationships with SEPA and I trust that any sort of problems with not meeting the time period could come to an agreement. In terms of that support, which is available from SEPA and Scottish Government, what does that look like? Kenny said that SEPA sits on the delivery group, but beyond that, what does that support look like and is it adequate? Do you want to come back in on that? Yes, I think that it is about keeping SEPA up-to-date with what is going on and the fact that they are involved in steering groups and understand the process. In practical terms, it can be quite two-way and supportive. Is it adequate? I agree. The oversight and the aid that we experience from SEPA in terms of both the local air quality management and the development of the low mission zones has been invaluable in helping us to achieve that. The Scottish Government's support in the grant funding for air quality action plan measures, which I mentioned previously, is also invaluable. I would highlight that it might not be possible for some of the larger schemes that we might have—more transport-based schemes that might be required—might not be able to be covered by the air quality action plan grant would have to seek other funding sources, so it is not that the air quality action plan grant is the sole source of funding for air quality measures or measures that have a primarily air quality focus to them. Overall, the current system and the increased involvement in local air quality management that we have seen from SEPA since the introduction of the original CAFs has proved to be effective help for local authorities in progressing both the low mission zones and the AQM in general. I reiterate the comments of the assistance that we have had from the Scottish Government and the SEPA in terms of our local air quality management duties. We have managed the source of our monies from other means, as Don was mentioning, to the local transport initiatives and so on. However, we have used air quality as a supportive mechanism for that, and we have been successful, as we found out in the Bonnie Gate Cooper with the improvements in the Cooper Town Centre plan, including the road traffic relocation system. Jackie Dunbar raised the issue earlier on the WHO limit, so we had some discussion on that with the first panel. I think that Gary Fuller was coming from saying that strict compliance might be very challenging, but there is still work that councils can do to look at effectively pathways towards potentially meeting those WHO limits on a much wide area-wide basis. What is your response to that? Is that something that you, as councils, can look at developing, looking at what it would take and what the various pathways might be? I suppose that it might be possible to pick particular pathways that match the wider investment that you are planning in active travel or neighbourhood regeneration. I do not know, but it is interesting to know how you might approach that, or is it just in the too difficult to-do box? That is quite a long question, and I am sure that there will be a huge amount of things on all of your shopping lists. However, if I could ask you for a couple only when it comes to things that you would like to see that on, otherwise I fear that we could be here till Christmas. Maybe just how you would approach it. I think that the point that Gary Fuller was making in terms of what councils can do is to map out what the pathways might look like. What is your response to that? I think that I mentioned earlier that to achieve the WHO limit values in terms of nitrogen dioxide, it really would take a significant step towards decarbonising transport and domestic heating. Those are most closely aligned in Glasgow with our current climate plan. We have a range of around 60 actions within the climate plan. We are very interested in the pathway in terms of delivering our climate plan actions and objectives. We are looking to engage a net zero feasibility pathway project within the current calendar year that will help to define what actions we will take forward as priorities and to define the work plan towards delivering the climate plan, which will have those air quality benefits as well. I will touch on the fact that the introduction of CAFs and CAFs 2 align more with the air quality side of things with the climate change and I see developing the actions that would benefit both as the path to achieving our climate change objectives and longer-term air quality objectives. I agree totally with what Dawn is saying. In Edinburgh, we also have a new local transport strategy and we are looking at city centre transformation projects and aspirations. I think that they are all a part of the plan and there is a lot going on. It is about delivery of those, I suppose, and the resources to do that that we need to concentrate on. I would just flag something on the WHO guidelines. I got the feeling that there was appetite to aim towards continual improvement and whatnot, but I also think that there is some benefit. If you look at the WHO guidelines and how they are set out, there are incremental points of basic stated reduction concentrations over the years. I think that it is helpful to have targets like that because, through a monitoring regime, you can nail that down and work towards something that is more concrete. Kenny, do you have anything to add on that? I totally agree with my colleagues' comments that they have made. It is warning hearts and minds and I am finding a lot of that now as we progress our air quality strategy, both from internal and external organisations, as the profile of air pollution rises. I am finding it very heartening when I see the work that I, myself and my colleagues, do in other local authorities on this very important public health issue. You have one brief follow-up. That is a very brief task about air monitoring in schools. The Royal College of Physicians now and their submission to the committee's inquiry has said that there should be air monitors outside or at schools throughout Scotland. If I am correct, Shona said that the Enmer council has monitored and knows what the information is for their city. Can we ask you, Dom, and then Kenny, what your view on that is? Do you think that this is a proper new use of resources? Will it be helpful or would you have enough information already about schools not to require such a major initiative? I would agree that monitoring a sense of locations such as schools and hospitals is a priority and has been treated as a priority in Glasgow. I hesitate to give numbers of schools that we monitor at, but it is a significant number. We have monitored very close at a worst-case location, so if there is a major pollution source, we would monitor closer to that pollution source than the school actually is. One of the benefits of 20 years of local air quality management is that local authorities are very good at understanding what the air quality situation is within their areas. Where it has maybe been lacking in the past is taking significant actions on improving things, but in terms of understanding what the air quality situation is like in our areas, I think that we are all got a good understanding of it. I could say with a very high degree of confidence that all schools within Glasgow City Council meet all of the air quality objectives, but that is not to say that we should not monitor at a representative sample and that we should not also try to reduce air pollution levels at these sensitive locations. Shona mentioned earlier, the school streets programme. Glasgow has a very similar programme in place with around, I believe, 60 schools. Currently, there are school streets where access is restricted during pick-up and drop-off times, reducing the periods of time where school children might be exposed to elevated pollution levels and having the added benefit of encouraging parents to transport their children to school by other means than the use of a car. It is a priority area that we continue to monitor. It is a priority area that we continue to monitor. We act upon it from the outputs of a five-wide dispersion-waddling software exercise that we carry out every year. To date, we have had no issues. We would like to progress further in learning more about it and trying to prevent idling outside schools, et cetera, through our idling at schools campaign that we have recently initiated last year. We would like to try to expand on that campaign on a five-wide basis, because we feel that that makes significant inroads in tackling the issue. Shona, is there anything in addition to what you previously said? Yes, please, if I could just come in just for the record. In Edinburgh, there are a number of schools within air quality management areas, but there are four schools within air quality management areas. Out with that, we do monitor at a number of other schools, so I was not meaning to say that it is not something that we do not at all. Certainly, if schools are on arterial routes where there is a lot of traffic, we do undertake monitoring there. We have worked with SIPA last year to do a couple of projects with other schools as well. In terms of the levels, we are looking at something around 20 micrograms per cubic meter as aniole mean, and we know that the standard is 40, so just to give you a bit of an idea of what we are looking at. I am afraid that we have overrun slightly, but that shows how interested everyone has been in the subject. Thank you very much for your time. We are going to move into private session, so I would ask you politely to move as quickly as possible, because we have quite a lot to discuss, but thank you very much for your very valued input.