The Clean Air Fund is welcome and we hope that the Government makes the money as easy as possible for local authorities to access. Complicated national criteria for competitive funds will waste resource and slow down the UK reaching compliance. The LGA also believes that there is more scope for the Government to take national steps to hasten the transition to low emission vehicles.
The LGA believes the creation of the Clean Air Fund and the changes to tax treatment for new diesel vehicles are a step in the right direction. However, we feel that the Government could go further using its fiscal levers to hasten the transition to low emission vehicles as well as giving councils more funding certainty and powers to manage traffic.
We continue to be concerned about the reliance of government funding on competitive bidding. This adds costs, time and uncertainty onto any project that it funds and we hope that the process for allocating the air quality fund will be as simple as possible.