Air pollution and development: advice for local authorities

Publication Year

2025

Document Status

Current

Abstract

Comprises standing advice on assessing the impacts of air pollution on protected sites, to assist on making decisions on sector-specific planning applications that could affect air quality. Provides information on when the advice can be used and the steps required to assess a proposal, which include: step 1 - check if emissions will reach a protected site; step 2 - check relevant 'critical loads' and 'critical levels'; step 3 - check if agricultural developments can use an emissions reduction approach; step 4 - consider the proposal in combination with other projects; and step 5 - completing a detailed air quality assessment.

Document History

Sourced from: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/air-pollution-and-development-advice-for-local-authorities and converted to pdf. Whilst we endeavour to capture all updates it is subject to receiving alerts from the publisher and there may be formatting or punctuation changes applied to the html version that do not affect the text. Document type: guidance. First published: 16 October 2025.

Publisher Information