Recent air quality assessments by Aether

25 April 2022

Over the last six months, the air quality assessment team have been working on many detailed assessments for housing schemes and industrial sites as well as mitigation strategies, low emission strategies and air quality neutral and positive statements for developers.

Recent examples include an air quality assessment for the proposed development of Caversham Park near Reading. From 1943, the site was home to BBC monitoring and related uses; however, in recent years the BBC has been winding down its operations. The project will consist of redevelopment of the existing buildings to create 66 assisted living apartments, a 64 bed care home, as well as an additional 94 houses and apartments around the site. The ADMS-Roads dispersion model was used to determine the impact of emissions from road on sensitive receptors traffic both without and with development and predicted concentrations were compared with the air quality objectives. The impact of the development was deemed to be negligible; however, the development will install electric charging points, a travel plan is being provided and air source heat pumps will be used for heating to minimise emissions arising from the site.

Another example includes the development of a mitigation strategy for a proposed Lidl store in Gillingham, Kent. The assessment used Medway Council’s Air Quality Planning Guidance document and Defra’s 2020 damage cost guidance to calculate the total damage cost of the expected traffic generation over a five-year period. This information was then combined with the cost of mitigation actions that Lidl are taking including the installation of multiple solar photovoltaic panels on the store roof and electric vehicle charging points to ensure that appropriate mitigation was being provided.

For further information on our air quality assessment work, please see our AQA service pages. 

 

See all news

Testimonial

Don't just take our word for it...

“A heartfelt thank you to all the Aether team for this very comprehensive review – this is certainly turning out to be one of the most beneficial capacity building projects I have ever been involved in.”

Saviour Vassallo, Senior Environment Protection Officer, Malta Resources Authority

“Aether is a great partner for work in the area of European Air Emissions. The team was committed, reliable, well organised and had a deep technical understanding and motivated other partners with their good spirit.”

Umweltbundesamt: Environment Agency Austria

“The support provided by Aether for this project was especially remarkable considering the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tools and methods used in order to engage local stakeholders really added value to the capacity building of the national team.”

Shanna Emmanuel, Saint Lucia BUR Project Coordinator

“Both the face-to-face training and the online version have been of high quality, with dynamic methods and a practical orientation that have allowed students to reach a solid knowledge base. The products have been delivered within the stipulated deadlines with an excellent quality and the team has always shown willingness to make adjustments according to the requirements of CONAF. We are very satisfied with the work. ”

Javier Cano Martín, Professional Unit for Climate Change and Environmental Services, CONAF (National Forestry Corporation), Chile

“Professional team and very collaborative communication. Effective result in terms of suggestions for improvement in the quality of the inventory and proposals on how to streamline specific topics.”

Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research

“Aether was a great asset in involving/engaging with Member States experts on highly technical subjects regarding GHG reporting. Very clear communication of issues and results.”

Andreas Pilzecker, DG CLIMA

“It has been a pleasure to work with Chris Dore and Richard Claxton from Aether: they did their job in a very professional and timely manner. The workshop was organized and carried out in a cooperative spirit; the information provided to the workshop participants was complete and clear.”

Alina Novikova, UN/ECE Secretariat

“I must congratulate each of you for your professional and tireless efforts. Let me point out that this has been the 'neatest' in-country review expert review team I have coordinated, and it has been a real pleasure.”

UNFCCC Secretariat

“Aether delivered training workshops and generated learning materials for our SSN members, providing technical content in a manageable and comprehendible format. We particularly benefitted from their extensive knowledge and ability to interpret the needs of our members into the training materials.”

Jennifer Anderson, Sustainable Scotland Network

“If we have a need for any more reports in the future Aether will be first on my list.”

Alan Hardy, Kyson Design

Contact us

Get in touch

Call us on +44 1865 261 466, complete the short form below, or go to the Contact page

 Security code