|
The West Midlands Region
The West Midlands region is located roughly centrally within England and contains the cities of Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton. The region is divided into 7 municipal areas of administration; Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Solihull and Sandwell. The population of the region is
approximately 2.5 million, with 1 million of these living in Birmingham.
The West Midlands
consists of one continuous conurbation across most of the region. This means
that traffic and transportation issues are most effectively managed for the
region as a whole. The Local Transport Plan sets out the transportation
strategy for this region and is produced jointly by all 7 authorities.
Air pollution travels across the municipal boundaries of
this region and the solution of problems in one municipal area are likely to
require the co-operation of adjacent municipalities. For this reason the West
Midlands Pollution Group (WMPG) was formed in 1998.
How Co-operation is achieved
Each
municipal authority carries out its own air pollution monitoring and reports to
the UK national government on air quality standards in its area. However, the
results of this monitoring are shared between authorities on a regular basis.
In 1998 a
Technical Group was formed through the WMPG to enable the air quality
professionals from all of the municipalities to meet regularly. This is an
extremely valuable process as most of the authorities employ only one or two
specialist air pollution professionals. The WMPG enables these small groups to
come together to share best practice and discuss technical issues.
Air quality modelling is a highly specialist area of work
that requires expensive computing facilities and software. For this reason air
quality modelling is carried out on behalf of all 7 municipal authorities by
the WMPG. In practice each authority makes an annual contribution, dependent
upon its population, to a fund held by Birmingham City Council. Birmingham City
Council then employs a full time member of staff and provides the necessary
computing facilities and software to support air pollution modelling for all of
the municipalities. This arrangement ensures that there is enough air pollution
modelling work to fully occupy a full-time specialist,
and minimises software and computing costs. This approach also maintains
consistency across the region and ensures that trans-boundary issues are
identified. The contracts for this joint working are agreed every three years
for the three years ahead.
Modelling is carried out using Air-Viro
software. Municipalities request the
model runs that they require, and supply any necessary data. The action
planning process to deal with specific pollution problems is then carried out
by each individual authority.
In addition to the Technical Group a Planning Group was
established in 2003. This group was formed because a number of the
municipalities had declared air quality management areas and were in the
process of producing action plans. The planning group allows the sharing of
experiences of action planning and the co-ordination of action at a regional
level. This group has been working together to develop targets for air quality
and mechanisms to improve air quality that will be included in Local Transport
Plan for the region.
The co-operation between the municipalities in the West
Midlands Region has been extremely successful. It has allowed all of the
municipalities to maximise upon their collective expertise and to minimise
their costs in respect of air quality modelling. It has also been very
important for air quality specialists to work together at a regional level
because transportation is the largest source of air pollution, and
transportation planning occurs at a regional level. The group has recently
signed agreements to continue in this joint working for a further three years.
|