Cogan Inaction

Isn’t it about time I ruffled the feathers again? After all, it’s been well over a year since I last took the Vale Council to task – yet again – over their desire to poison the good people of Cogan. At that time I said:

This decision is not before time. I pointed out here that the air pollution in Cogan has been beyond European legal limits since at least 2006:

What on earth is going on here? What have the people of Windsor Road done to deserve such negligence? The Vale’s forecasting and reporting has been chronically optimistic year after year after year after year after year afteryear after year, and the pollution load – particularly at the 154 Windsor Road station – has consistently breached European limits set down in the Ambient Air Quality Directive. And the Vale Council has done absolutely nothing to remedy the situation.

I even went as far as to ask the Welsh Government why no action had been taken – you can see their response and my analysis here:

I don’t very much care for the idea of Penarth taxpayers shelling out their share of millions of pounds in European Commission fines for the Vale’s failure to take air pollution seriously. But I care even less for the idea that the residents of Cogan are being subject to illegal pollution loadings year after year after year because councillors in the Vale haven’t had the gumption to confess there’s a problem.

It turns out that some other people have been digging around in relation to the Vale’s willingness to get stuck in to declaring an Air Quality Management Area for Cogan. Because CG has sent me an email, received from the Vale on 15 March 2013. The Vale said:

Our consultation included a recommendation to declare an Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) for the area identified as likely to exceed the NO2 annual average objective. The responses from this consultation are now being considered and over the next few months a further Report will be presented to the Council’s Cabinet recommending a way forward

Then in December CG received the following notification:

Since the declaration of the AQMA earlier this year…

Whoa! So we have official confirmation that an Air Quality Management Area exists for Windsor Road as it runs through Cogan. Well blow me down, surely that deserves trumpeting on the Vale of Glamorgan website.

But funnily enough, this is the latest news you’ll find on the Vale’s website:

The Council have identified that nitrogen dioxide emissions from road traffic are likely to exceed healthy limits set by the regulations. We are also monitoring what is known as particulate matter and our results suggest that we need to carry out more sophisticated monitoring to further check these concentrations… In the Spring of 2013 we will review the evidence and comments from the consultation and make a decision on declaring your area an AQMA.

And even more peculiarly, the Vale doesn’t show up on Defra’s map of local authorities with AQMAs, nor is it listed in their directory. And, before you ask, it doesn’t exist in the list of local authorities whose AQMAs have been revoked.

So either the Vale’s officials are lying to their own constituents and salary-payers, or the officials are withholding information from their lords and masters in Whitehall.

Well I have to confess to being slightly cheered by the discovery that the Vale isn’t lying to us, friends. Because the Cabinet minutes for the meeting of 1 July 2013 approved this report, which instigated an AQMA as from 1 June 2013, which was a full month before the meeting that approved it. Details, details.

So why doesn’t Defra know about this? There are a few possible explanations, not all of which paint the Vale in such a bleak light. They may well have told everyone all about it. For sure, you’d never know what the Welsh Government was thinking on this issue. Believe me, I’ve crawled all over their website and just about the only mention you’ll find of air quality (unless you happen to live in Port Talbot) is the helpful definition that it is “a measure of how good our air is”. Certainly you’ll find the Welsh Government barely speaks of such vulgarities as Air Quality Management Areas.

So perhaps Defra does know about it but is just that incompetent that a full eight months after the designation date has failed to update its website. It’s difficult to be more confident where the greater incompetence lies: the Vale or Defra. One thing’s for sure, by the time you read this post, an email will have winged its way to Defra asking for their side of the story.

And in the meantime, we can all relax, because the Vale had 12 months to bring forward its Air Quality Management Plan from the date of designation. I’m looking forward to delving into that tome no later than 31 May.

Finally, in case the crew down Barry Docks don’t realise, this is an election issue. Either that, or you’ll need to find an alternative psephological analysis for why the vote for the incumbents in Cornerswell ward decreased by 53% in 2012:

… could the hint of a constituency scandal – the incumbent Conservatives having been complicit in the Vale of Glamorgan choking residents of Cogan – have made erstwhile Conservative voters simply unable to bring themselves to vote for the negligent pair of Dorothy Turner and John Fraser?

If there’s even the slightest hint of truth in that, then this May has served notice that negligent or incompetent councillors can expect to pay a heavy price come election time.