Thursday 13 November 2014

Wiltshire Council Launch Air Quality Initiative

Wiltshire Council has today launched ‘Know and Respond’ - an air quality text/email alert system. This is aimed at people who have asthma or other respiratory conditions – if you sign up, it will let you know when air pollutants are rising so that you can be prepared/avoid those areas. Please pass this on to anyone you know who has these conditions or who’s interested in air quality for other reasons.

You can sign up to this new service on http://www.wiltshireairquality.org.uk/

This website also gives access to current data on air pollutants and lots of other information. It’s mainly aimed at community groups who are working to reduce road traffic in their area – emissions from vehicles are by far the main cause of air quality problems in Wiltshire’s urban areas.

You can look at current air quality levels in Devizes, Salisbury, Calne and Bradford-on-Avon and the ‘non-automatic monitoring data’ (which is less current) for all those places plus Marlborough, Chippenham, Westbury and Trowbridge.

Wiltshire Council is also consulting on its Air Quality Action Plan until January. This has specific action plans for Devizes, Salisbury, Calne, Marlborough, Westbury and Bradford-on-Avon - feel free to respond if you have views on traffic, walking, cycling, air quality, green space or other issues in your local town or across Wiltshire:

Small Grants Fund 2014/2015 Applications welcome

Link2Nature has a small grants fund available kindly provided by Public Health Wiltshire to award to local community groups. To find out more about the fund and how to apply please see the Small Grants Fund section of this site under Projects.

NELMs targeting statements issued

The NELMs (New Environmental Land Management Scheme) or Countryside Stewardship targeting statements for each National Characteristic Area either wholly or partially within Wiltshire have been released for comment by Natural England. Comments need to be sent by the 23rd November. You can access the darft statements via this link http://www.link2nature.org.uk/news-events/nelms-feedback.html