Air quality

At National Highways, we want to do all we can to look after the wellbeing of our customers – everyone who uses our roads and those who live or work near them.

That includes making a difference when it comes to air quality.

We know that emissions from vehicles using our roads, particularly nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), contribute to poor air quality, posing risks to people’s health and wellbeing.

We also know that there’s a long-term solution to poor air quality: replacing older vehicles that create pollution with ones that are better for the environment. There’s a substantial amount of work under way across Government and industry to achieve this.

But there’s still much to do to fix the problem of poor air quality in the shorter term, through practical and effective measures.

One way we’re doing this is through our environment and wellbeing designated fund. This fund is helping us operate our business in an environmentally responsible way, while making sure sustainability shapes our work from start to finish.

Our research programme has played an important role in making sure we invest this money wisely and achieve real and meaningful improvement for the people most affected by poor air quality.

Designated funding for air quality

The government has committed ring-fenced funding specifically for the environment and wellbeing to deliver cleaner air to protect the health of our neighbours and road users. Work includes exploring new and innovative approaches to air quality through pilots and feasibility studies with the anticipation some of these can be effectively scaled across parts of the network.

Research and innovation

We have led a wide-ranging research programme, drawing on expertise from across the UK and internationally. This programme has been ambitious and has sought to explore every plausible opportunity to address poor air quality alongside our network and ensure we achieve real and meaningful improvements.

Our research, summarised in this document, includes:

• reducing emissions from HGVs
• encouraging the switch to electric cars and vans
• viability of alternative cleaner fuels
• the impact of managing traffic different through junctions
• understanding how changing driver behaviour could impact on emissions
• eco-driver training
• physical barriers to block harmful pollutants
• mineral polymer barriers incorporating materials to remove NO₂ from the air
• green walls – trialling the use and impact of plants alongside our roads

It’s the nature of research that some ideas work while others are discounted where the research finds they don’t lead to positive improvements. That’s been the case with our programme. We publish the results of all of this work on our Innovation pages to make them available to others, contributing to the wider body of knowledge and informing future activity.

Air quality innovation call

To reach out for ideas, we recently ran a multi-million pound ’Innovation call’ for research funding, for people and organisations who have ideas for improving air quality. Working in partnership with Innovate UK, the Government’s innovations agency, we’re now investing in a number of promising projects and look forward to seeing what impact they can make.

View a list of funded projects.

National Air Quality Monitoring Network

To help us monitor the improvements in air quality we’ve established a comprehensive network of continuously monitoring stations – our National Air Quality Monitoring Network.

Working with local authorities

We’re clear that we’ll achieve the greatest results by working with others. We now have an established network of Air Quality Focal Points in our regional teams to support our engagement with local authorities as we jointly tackle air pollution, including Clean Air Zones where applicable.

Get in touch

If you have something you’d like to discuss with us, please get in touch by emailing airquality@nationalhighways.co.uk