Air quality forecasts
The Evening Standard has an opinion piece written by the founder and director of Clean Air London, Simon Birkett criticising how Defra shares air pollution alerts.
A clear and easy to interpret, daily air quality forecast is published on the UK Air website and you can get regular updates by following UK Air on Twitter.
Anytime there is concern over air quality, we work closely with our colleagues at Public Health England to make sure these alerts are distributed to a range of charities, including Asthma UK, the British Lung Foundation and the British Heart Foundation, who then share the information with their members.
And in May we launched our Clean Air Strategy which set out how we will work with media outlets and weather forecasters to improve public access to the air quality forecast and help individuals and organisations reduce their contribution to air pollution.
Coverage of EFRA committee on water regulation
Today the Daily Mail’s front page covers the suggestion from Ofwat Chief Executive Rachel Fletcher that people shouldn’t use tap water to water their gardens and should instead switch to using recycled water from baths and showers and tanks that capture rainfall.
She highlighted that this will be especially important as climate change and population growth will put increased pressure on supplies.
The comments were made at yesterday’s EFRA committee session at which the Environment Agency’s Chief Executive and Sir James Bevan and Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey also gave evidence..
The recent dry weather and the resultant increase in demand for water were also discussed. Sir James emphasised that water companies need to do better on leakage while Minister Coffey said the government would be setting ambitious targets to cut down tap water use from the current average of 140 litres per person, per day. The Minister also urged people to cut down the time they are in showers to help conserve water.
The story was also covered in The Sun, and The Telegraph.