Air Quality Management Areas - Scotland

Local Authorities have a duty to designate any relevant areas where the air quality objectives are not (or are unlikely to be) being met as Air Quality Management Areas (AQMAs). AQMAs must be designated officially by means of an 'order'. The extent of the AQMA may be limited to the area of exceedance or encompass a larger area. Following the declaration of an AQMA, the local authority is required to develop and implement a plan (Air Quality Action Plan) to improve air quality in that area. AQMAs can be for a combination of NO2, SO2, PM10.

Most data provided by local authorities is in polygon format. However, some is provided in point and line form so we are currently buffering such data by the width of a road or so in order to merge them in to the national polygon dataset. Some smaller local authorities e.g. Dundee, use the entire extent of their local authority, as digitised in Ordnance Survey's BoundaryLine dataset, for the AQMA.

We have included date of AQMA declaration in our national schema, though many LAs do not currently provide this. Revoked AQMAs are now held in this dataset with a 'Date revoked' attribute.