News

Anisah Khan,
Parliamentary Campaigns Manager
Estimated reading time 2 minutes

The 10 Year Health Plan, published on the 3rd July 2025, is part of the government’s health mission to build a health service fit for the future. It sets out how the government will reinvent the NHS through 3 radical shifts: hospital to community, analogue to digital and sickness to prevention.

Air pollution is the biggest environmental risk to our health in the UK and contributes to health inequalities, creating a burden on health estimated to cost the NHS £27 to £50 billion.

The shift from sickness to prevention is pivotal to improving the nation’s health, it is great to see the Government recognise air pollution as a health issue and as a social determinant of health, and to see commitments to reduce air pollution in this plan.

While we are encouraged by some of the measures outlined to improve health, action from this Government must go further.

We are glad to read that the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will set out action on air pollution through the Environmental Improvement Plan review and welcome the commitment to consult on how to reduce emissions from domestic burning and would like to see steps outlined in our policy pathway implemented.

Additionally, we welcome the Government’s commitment to review air quality targets and urge these to be set in line with World Health Organization guidelines.

However, with the Health Plan for England recognising clean air as a health issue, responsibility for action on clean air cannot lie with Defra alone and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) must take a leadership role as it does on other public health priorities in order to achieve its hopes for an NHS fit for the future. The DHSC must lead a public health campaign on air pollution, as it does for other public health issues. It is also vital that DHSC works with the relevant training bodies to ensure that the health effects of air pollution are embedded into the medical curriculum, with additional training for relevant professions to enable them to advise patients on the health risks and mitigation behaviours.

This year, Global Action Plan and Great Ormond Street Hospital organised a walk to Parliament Square in support of healthcare professionals across the UK who are calling for the Government to clean up the air we breathe. 500 health sector representatives signed the letter, and we were joined by prominent campaigners such as Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, Mums for Lungs, Dr Camilla Kingdon, Professor Stephen Holgate and other senior representatives from across the health sector.

It was the largest movement of healthcare professionals in the UK to call for urgent and ambitious action to clean up our dirty air and prevent the devastating impacts air pollution has on our health. 

This action and the evidence outlined in the RCP Report ‘A breathe of fresh air’, demonstrate the increased understanding by experts that air pollution is a health issue and it is therefore welcome that this Government recognises it as such. No level of air pollution is safe and we must now move from recognition of the problem to the rapid implementation of measures to improve the air we breathe to protect people’s health and create a population and NHS that is fit for the present and for the future.