Birmingham's 2021 pollution purge

Many residents in Kings Heath were left frustrated after Birmingham City Council placed boxes filled with earth , blocking access to residential roads in a bid to reduce pollution and traffic.

Brum Breathes, a government ran informative body for the Birmingham clean air zones, have said "Up to 1,000 deaths a year in Birmingham are caused by air pollution, mostly caused by road transport and the increased use of diesel vehicles. By contrast, there are, on average, fewer than 30 deaths resulting from collisions on Birmingham’s roads each year", so it is understandable that the city council are eager to reduce pollution levels.

In 2015 the government said they aimed to implement 5 Clean Air Zones (CAZ) across the UK in the most polluted cities. Although there has been a delay in the council enforcing them, they, alongside Bath, are joining London to have Clean Air Zones by June 2021.

Birmingham City Council are aiming to tackle air pollution not only on a city-wide scale, but hyper-locally, as seen in Kings Heath. The road blocks have been placed in order to divert traffic to stop the backstreets of Kings Heath high-street from being a quick diversion to evade traffic.

Residents have said however that the blocks are merely causing more traffic in other areas, worsening commutes and damaging businesses. Emily Evangelou, a university student, said "They (road blocks/modal filters) are not doing any good and causing a lot more traffic in the morning which the bus gets stuck in, making it difficult to get to university on time."

I spoke to Lisa Trickett, Birmingham City Councillor for Brandwood and Kings Heath ward who said "the implementation of the road blocks was poor and rushed, however the idea of LTN (Low Traffic Neighbourhoods) are a brilliant idea for clean air zones."

Evidently, the need for clear air zones are pivotal in the movement for a greener environment, but as Ms Trickett says, "has the government provided the money to enable people to switch to clean vehicles? No it hasn't." "there are 200,000 journeys a day in this city which are under than a mile and if you are able, you can walk that distance." Quite clearly, if we reduced insignificant journeys in our cars daily, the impact on climate change will be astonishing.

For there to be a significant change in our climate, "in the next five years we must take 60% of the cars off our roads." The Conservatives have not only failed to provide an incentive, but to provide affordable low emission and electric cars to those who cannot afford them.