Issue details

Sheffield and Rotherham have been identified by the Government in its National Air Quality Plan as areas of exceedance for Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) gas concentrations.

In order to comply with the European health based limits, the Joint Air Quality Unit (‘JAQU’) which is a setup of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (‘DEFRA’) and the Department for Transport (‘DfT’) has directed Local Authorities to lower the limits.

This resulted in the submission of an Outline Business Case (‘OBC’) to the JAQU on 21 December 2018 for our preferred option of a CAZ C charging zone in Sheffield plus additional measures across Sheffield and Rotherham (therefore referred to as ‘CAZ C+’) in order to achieve legal compliance by 2021. 

The JAQU has already awarded Sheffield City Council (‘SCC’) a total revenue grant of £1.2m in order to develop our OBC and complete our Full Business Case (‘FBC’).

This report is to accept further revenue grant of £500k from the JAQU in order to complete our FBC together with an initial £3.2m capital grant to start implementing a charging CAZ in Sheffield.

The JAQU continues to working closely with SCC and Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (‘RMBC’) to submit the FBC by specified deadlines, as detailed in this report.

This Report is for SCC to accept and spend the additional revenue and capital grant funding, noting that further grant funding will be made available by the JAQU in 2019 / 2020.