We had a busy 2017 campaigning for better air quality in Birmingham. We did a lot of raising awareness on stalls, replied to consultations, led a Clean Air Conga around the city centre, contacted councillors and ended the year with a meeting with Councillor John Cotton who is a member of the scrutiny Committee for Health, Wellbeing and the Environment.
Back in November, we held a pub quiz to raise money to buy air pollution testing kits. We started the year by putting up clean air testing kits around Birmingham, in locations where we think the air quality is poor and in areas where we think the air quality is better. This will enable us to identify factors which are causing the difference in air quality. We are replacing the air test kits after 8 weeks so we can measure the air quality over a longer period of time.
Following the meeting with Cllr Cotton in December, we have decided to take his offer of handing our petition to full council on our behalf. This will ensure we receive a response from the council. At the time of writing we haven’t confirmed when this will be.
We are planning to hold an event at the beginning of March to raise awareness of the poor air quality in Birmingham and why it is important to have an effective Clean Air Zone. There will be activities for people of all ages to get involved with and we are hoping to have gained lot more petition signatures which is calling on Birmingham City Council to:
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Implement an enforceable Birmingham wide Clean Air Zone by 2020.
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Ensure nitrogen dioxide levels meet or remain below EU limits everywhere in Birmingham, all of the time.
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Make certain that monitoring of all areas in Birmingham is regularly carried out and reported on and this information is publicly available.
This year we are hoping to build alliances with many groups and organisations across the city who will support our call for a sustainable, city wide clean air zone. This will strengthen the message that Birmingham needs to tackle it’s illegal levels of air pollution in a sustainable way.
Hello, It’s Sue here from the British Lung Foundation. I am working as their Clean air coordinator for the Clean Air Parents’ Network http://www.cleanairparents.org.uk We are setting up a national network with Client Earth to work with parents to ask for action so that all our children can breathe cleaner air with healthier lungs. My remit is to set up a parents group in Birmingham (along with Manchester and Liverpool) to campaign for clean air in their city’s. I would really welcome the opportunity to meet up and see how we can work together as I know you have been doing a lot of work in Bham around this. We are also offering some Campaign training that your volunteers who are parents (or grandparents or carers) might be interested in
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lets-make-air-quality-better-in-birmingham-free-campaign-training-tickets-46280034830?aff=erelpanelorg
look forward to hearing from you!
Cheers,
Sue