How is air pollution regulated?

Your local council regulates the emission of smoke, grit and dust caused by burning waste.

Other regulations controlling air pollution are:

  • Environmental permitting (England and Wales)
  • Pollution prevention and control:
    • Part A, Part B and Part C in Northern Ireland
    • Part A and Part B in Scotland
  • Local air pollution control (Northern Ireland and Scotland)
  • Waste incineration directive
  • Waste management licensing (Northern Ireland and Scotland).

    If smoke or dust produced by your business causes, or is likely to cause, a nuisance to the surrounding community, your local council can limit, or even stop, your work activities.

    Smoke control areas

    Your local council may declare an area to be a smoke control area, which means that you can use only authorised fuels or exempted furnaces or boilers. In such areas, the emission of any smoke at any time from a chimney is an offence, with only a few exceptions. You could be fined £1,000 for each offence.

    If you are a contractor and work at different locations you should check with the local council in each of these locations about their smoke control areas.

    Air quality management areas

    There is a national air quality strategy that covers:

    • how we can deal with air quality issues
    • air quality standards and objectives that must be achieved
    • a framework for tackling fine particles
    • potential new national policy measures that could give further health benefits and help meet the objectives of the strategy.

    If the air quality in an area drops below a certain threshold, your local council may declare it to be an air quality management area (AQMA). Poor quality air can be caused by high levels of pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, sulphur, benzene and fine dust, coming from:

    • industry
    • tyre and brake disc debris
    • vehicle emissions
    • biological particles
    • solid fuel domestic heating.

    If your business is in an air quality management area, you could be affected by:

    • the introduction of road charging
    • parking restraints
    • increased restrictions on permitted waiting and loading times
    • taxes to encourage moving freight by rail rather than road
    • the review of planning applications by a pollution control team.

    In this guideline: