Clean Air Zone questions

There’s an emergency scrutiny meeting on the city’s Clean Air Zone on 2 February 2021 (Groundhog Day). It is too late to ask questions of the meeting but I have put some comments together for committee members to consider.

1. Which Index of Multiple Deprivation data is the technical team using? A new set of measures was released in October 2019, which was just days ahead of the 5th of November 2019 cabinet meeting where the CAZ was decided on. I asked at Cabinet which year’s data was used and did not get a reply. As we can see from the comparison below, there has been a big difference in deprivation in relation to the quality of the local environment between 2015 and 2019.

2. In Members’ Questions and Mayor’s Responses in July 2019, Paula O’Rourke mentioned the UWE research that showed people in poorer areas own fewer cars, drive less and pollute less. She asked the mayor to ensure that this data was being used for the CAZ assessment by the technical officers. The mayor said he wasn’t involved. “It’s brainy people with computers” who run the technical models.