Preventing the premature deaths of up to 43,000 people per year in the United Kingdom and reducing cases of cancer, strokes, heart attacks, dementia and asthma would be reason alone. Those who suffer the most from air pollution are people living on the lowest incomes, in deprived areas and from minoritised communities, so improving air quality offers an opportunity to tackle these inequalities.

But improving air quality can deliver many other benefits, including supporting people to live more active lives, creating more green spaces and people-friendly streets in our towns and cities, saving the UK economy billions of pounds, and reducing carbon emissions.

Across local and national government there is a need for greater ambition and urgency around air quality. Insights from councils that are leading the way with ambitious action to improve air quality suggested that adopting bold targets can help galvanise action.

Key findings:

• Local authorities have powers to address air pollution, but there are gaps, and some of the powers they do have are hard to implement or unclear. The councils taking ambitious steps to improve air quality across the country share several traits: strong leadership, integration of air quality as a priority across the council, and ambition and a mandate to act.
• However, local authorities face a number of barriers to action, including a lack of funding, resources and political support; over 70 per cent of councillors polled felt they were not getting enough support from national government to take action on air quality.
• There is support for ambitious action to improve air quality among councillors and the public. Over 80 per cent of the councillors polled backed adopting WHO guidelines locally and supported a wide range of interventions designed to improve air quality, despite the narrative that addressing air quality is challenging or not politically salient.
• Councillors almost uniformly agreed that the public should be involved in the design of policies to address air pollution.