Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 5 July 2017.
Well, I thank Jenny Rathbone for that question. I saw the advice that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, with Public Health England, had published last week, with guidelines calling for clean air zones to be set up outside schools, hospitals and care homes, for example. They don’t, I think, in that document, refer directly to a fixed-penalty regime; they talk about the possible use of bye-laws and other actions to support no-vehicle-idling areas. Given what we know about the pressure on air quality, this seems to me a very valuable report, and I know that colleagues in the Welsh Government will be looking at it, to see whether there are any actions from it that we should think of taking in Wales, including making powers available to local authorities, if that is thought to be the best way of enforcing such a regime.