Figures for the latest Nitrogen Dioxide (NO₂) for Greater Manchester have just come out for 2025. Just a reminder that NO₂ is a harmful pollutant formed mainly from the burning of fossil fuels in vehicles and industrial processes. It can harm our lungs through inflaming airways and worsen respiratory conditions such as asthma. The ten district councils that represent the Greater Manchester Combined Authority(GMCA) are directed by the government to reduce roadside levels of NO₂ to an annual mean level of 40 µg/m³ by no later than 2026 (this is laid out in the Environment Act 1995 (Greater Manchester) Air Quality Direction 2025). They have set out how they will achieve this in their GM Clean Air Plan (CAP) (Supplementary Appraisal) Their plan is based on a number of investment-led measures, predominantly based on transitioning buses and taxis towards electric vehicles (rather than reducing car journeys or increasing active travel). (One technical note: GM’s own reporting treats a result of 40.4 µg/m³ or below as compliant, allowing for measurement rounding, so you’ll see that threshold used throughout the figures below.)
Every year, GMCA (through Transport for Greater Manchester or TfGM) is required to measure annual mean levels of NO₂ (in µg/m³) at key sites across Greater Manchester as part of the Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) – the UK government framework requiring local councils to monitor, review and assess air quality. If air pollution objectives are not met, councils must declare Air Quality Management Areas (AQMAs) and create action plans. GMCA is required to do thia and, in June/July each year, publishes the results of previous year’s measurements in a report called the GM Air Quality Status Report (GM ASR) on their GM Clean Air Data Hub (which they are legally obliged to do). This report shows progress against actions within the Greater Manchester Air Quality Action Plan (AQAP). They are also required to report on progress towards achieving the targets set out in the GM Clean Air Plan. To note, these are two different regimes and frameworks but GMCA combines and summarises its specific GM CAP monitoring updates directly within these broader regional ASR publications alongside the LAQM reporting. This lack of detail in the report means it is difficult to see progress towards achieving the GM Clean Air Plan (GM CAP) – the sites that they take measurements from for LAQM are not the same monitoring sites as those used for the GM CAP. So we have done our own detailed analysis and reporting using the CAP monitoring site data to help you understand how things are going.
This is the first year we have been able to look at the targets for 2026 as set out in the original GM CAP versus the actual levels, as previously there was no correlation in the naming convention of the sites measured in the annual statistics spreadsheet and those in the original GM CAP. This year, a new CAP Change Request Receptor Reference field has appeared in the spreadsheet, which we’ve used to link the two together. GM’s own documentation states it exists to cross-reference sites named in a Change Control Request which GM submitted to Government in August 2025 to revise its own delivery plan (more on that below).
The good news
First of all the good news. Things are definitely heading in the right direction with a significant improvement showing in 2025. The figures for 2024 (based on data for all GM CAP reporting sites) showed a large number of sites either over or near 40 µg/m3 and levels still increasing (sites in the top two quarters):
However, 2025 figures show a more promising picture, with no sites that were over 40 µg/m³, with levels still increasing and 10 sites over 40 µg/m³ but with levels on the decrease from 2024 (we want to ideally see everything in the bottom left box):
GM looks hopefully to be on target for 2026 for all sites showing levels of 40.4 µg/m³ or below.
We also looked at the trends over the last 7 years:
We can see a downward trend and that the introduction of the GM Clean Air Plan appears to have had a positive effect, as more buses and cars are becoming electric.
Greater Manchester has made substantial progress towards the Clean Air Plan objectives and the monitoring evidence broadly supports the conclusion that compliance remains achievable in 2026.
So we don’t need to worry?
Further analysis did show some gaps in the data. Whilst we have been able to do some analysis for the first time, it means our correlation is only as complete as GM’s paperwork for a different purpose, which is part of why 12 of the original 32 target sites have no usable match at all.
The table below shows sites with their CAP plan Do-minimum target, their CAP Investment-led Plan target (ILP) and their actual 2025 value. As each CAP site may have more than one diffusion tube, the average across co-located tubes has been taken where this is the case. 17 sites have met or exceeded their ILP target:
There are still 3 sites that have not met their proposed targets for the GM CAP – all around the Manchester end of the A6 (although only 2 are showing exceedances over 40 µg/m³ for some of their specific tube readings):
However, the following sites from the orignal plan have no matching or valid monitoring data in the 2025 figures:
Source: GM Clean Air Plan Supplementary Appraisal Report, October 2024; GM NO₂ diffusion tube dataset, 2011–2025)
Notably, three of the most polluted locations in the original 2026 do-minimum modelling – Portland Street and A6 Piccadilly, forecast at 44-48 µg/m³ without action – fall into this unmatched group. Because these are among the locations the Investment-led Plan most needed to fix, the absence of a traceable link is a significant gap for verifying delivery against the original targets at exactly the sites of greatest original concern.
It’s also worth flagging that the 2026 targets we’re comparing against here are the ones set out in October 2024 but the plan itself has moved on since. In August 2025, GM submitted a Change Control Request to Government, later approved, which dropped some of the measures those targets assumed (including the St John’s Area traffic measures and average speed cameras on A57 Regent Road, Salford) and added others instead (more electric buses and depot electrification at Bolton). The sites those dropped measures were meant to help around St John’s/Quay Street and A57 Regent Road are actually tracking below target in the 2025 figures, so the change doesn’t look to have caused an obvious problem there. But it does mean nobody has published an updated set of 2026 site-level targets that reflects what’s actually being delivered now, which makes the graph above harder to fully trust as a check on current plans rather than an old one.
To also note that there are a number of additional sites now reported on in the GM CAP statistics that, whilst they were not in the original plan, are still in exceedance and over the target of 40 µg/m³ (although all levels have decreased since 2024). A short update is being provided to the GM Air Quality Administration Committee on August 3rd 2026 which has re-evaluated levels that are still at or close to the legal compliance threshold and proposed ‘adaptive planning measures’ in order to mitigate through bus improvements or signal optimisation or just to monitor where levels are already decreasing. There are 5 in Manchester (A665 Cheetham Hill Road, A665 Great Ancoats Street, A57(M) Mancunian Way, Shudehill and Ardwick Green) and 2 in Stockport (A626 St Mary’s Way and A34 Kingsway). These mitigations may be aligned with these additional sites although it is not clear. There is also no mention of a plan for Oldham Way:
| Site Address | 2024 figures (µg/m3) | 2025 figures (µg/m3) |
| A665 (Great Ancoats Street) | 46.3 | 40.5 |
| A6 (Ardwick Green South) | 53.1 | 42.0 |
| A665 (Great Ancoats Street) | 50.0 | 41.1 |
| A57M (Mancunian Way) | 45.8 | 42.3 |
| A665 (Miller Street) | 49.0 | 42.5 |
| Shudehill | 55.5 | 42.1 |
| A6 Stockport Rd | 47.5 | 40.5 |
| A665 | – | 42.0 |
| Oldham Way | 42.2 | 41.0 |
| A626 (St Marys Way) | 47.6 | 41.9 |
What about the World Health Organisation targets?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends safe levels of NO₂ to be at an annual mean of 10µg/m³ (not 40). They have also set interim targets of 30 µg/m³ and 20 µg/m³ for progress to be measured against. We haven’t done our own graphs for this (using CAP data), but here is the graph from the GM ASR report that shows how we are progressing towards the WHO targets using their LAQM data:
Whether we are looking at GM CAP or LAQM, we still have a long way to go to even meet the first interim target of 30 µg/m³. And the plan and funding for further reduction comes to an end in less than 6 months.
We’d like to hear from our new GM mayor what is next for cleaning up the air in GM, as there are currently no targets or funding in the plan beyond 2026 – just a vague aspiration.
Let’s not forget that Manchester has the highest levels of NO₂ in the country. Emergency admissions for children and young people with asthma for Tameside and Oldham are in the top three highest in the country at 340 and 332 per 100,000 population ( the national average is 138.8 per 100,000). Emergency admissions for adults with asthma are also higher than average in Tameside, Oldham and Manchester, with the highest in Tameside being 63.3 per 100,000 (national average 44.4 per 100,000).
Will we just wait for time to pass as more vehicles become electric, or will we do more to proactively get people out of their cars and mode shift to using public transport or active travel?
Particulate matter levels
Although it is somewhat hidden in the GM ASR report, statistics are also given on levels of Particulate Matter PM2.5 and PM10. Particulate Matter pollution comes from a number of sources including dust from vehicle brakes and tyres (regardless of whether they are electric) and also domestic woodburning. It harms health by entering the lungs and bloodstream, causing breathing issues, heart attacks and long-term organ damage.
Under the Defra guidelines and Environment Act regulations, a target of 10 μg/m³ or lower is set to be achieved by 2040 (with interim targets aiming for 2030). WHO guidelines state that the annual average must not exceed 5 µg/m³.
The graph below is taken from p231 of the GM ASR report and shows how GM has experienced a more sustained upward trend in annual mean PM2.5 concentrations between 2023 and 2025, with nearly all monitoring stations recording increases over the three-year period.
This is the same for PM10. Nationally, PM2.5 concentrations also increased in 2025 (attributed largely to meteorological conditions), but this followed a period of lower or relatively stable concentrations and sits within a longer-term downward trend. Further analysis is required to understand the GM year on year increase.
Our Bee Network Manifesto asks that there is a recognition of the Bee Network’s contribution to particulate matter air pollution from tyres and brakes.
What does this mean for active travel?
There is a large section in the latest GM ASR report that sets out activities relating to active travel. However, it does not relate them either to the GM CAP or to the lack of progress in increasing walking and cycling referenced in the GM Active Travel report for 2025 which admits:
“There remain challenges that we need to overcome. Progress on our Right Mix Targets is slow and there has been little overall change in the proportion choosing active travel. It’s important to recognise that most people still favour car travel: both car ownership and car trips continue to grow and remain the dominant mode (57% of trips). We still have work to do to convince people of the benefits of the alternatives.“
We disagree with this approach. Best practice shows that the only way to reach the modeshare targets is to provide an attractive choice for users, such as a functioning and widespread e-scooter and cycle hire offering, secure and plentiful cycle parking and high quality road infrastructure, as can be seen by the increasing numbers of cyclists on Oxford Road and the Chorlton Cycleway. Build it and people use it (so long as it’s high-quality and links places).
The lack of significant change in region-wide active travel may be a reflection on the lack of joined up infrastructure that has been built.
On cycle hire, London and Edinburgh both have a successful mix of public bike share schemes, which have unlocked significant latent demand for active travel. In Edinburgh, switching from a poorly run government scheme to a private operator has increased trips by 2.6 times, now up to 619,500 rides in the first 8 months. TfGM’s Starling Bikes have failed to achieve the same ridership number over any 8 month period with 5 years of operation.
DfT-sanctioned e-scooter trials expanding outside of Salford would also provide an attractive low-emission alternative to car journeys at minimal cost to taxpayers, but have yet to materialise in Greater Manchester, despite councils willing to work with TfGM delivering a scheme.
The report notes that in 2023, 189 of Greater Manchester’s 1,362 signal-controlled junctions had no green man crossing, and a further 282 were substandard, missing facilities on some arms or lacking tactile signals. Twenty-six crossings have gone in since. On our calculation, that leaves the remaining 445 taking somewhere between thirty and fifty years to reach minimum standards.
The report tells us that 390 zero-emission buses prevent an estimated 23,000 tonnes of CO₂ and 84 tonnes of nitrogen oxides every year. No comparable figure appears anywhere in the active travel content for the 161+ km of Bee Network routes, including successful routes on Oxford Road and Deansgate with 3,000-4,000 trips per day during weekdays or for the 39 plus School Streets. Not for 504,807 cycle hire rides and not for the two million trips logged by the Salford e-scooter trial. The last two are app-based schemes where every journey is recorded.
All this leaves active travel without quantifiable data which can prove its success against clean air targets.
Our asks
- A detailed 2026 progress report based on the GM CAP reporting data, alongside the GM ASR report showing LAQM data, in particular publishing updated 2026 site-level targets reflecting the delivery plan actually being funded now, following the August 2025 Change Control Request
- That TfGM investigates and rectifies missing data for GM CAP 12 sites with no useable data and publishes a clear cross reference between the original 2026 target list and the site references used in the monitoring spreadsheet, prioritising John Dalton Street, Portland Street and Piccadilly for enhanced monitoring – these are three of the highest-polluting locations in the original plan and currently have no traceable data at all
- That Oldham Way is brought into GM’s adaptive planning process, or that GM explains why it’s the only remaining exceedance site with no named plan for it, while Manchester and Stockport’s other flagged sites all have one
- An outline plan of how GMCA will move from the current target of 40 µg/m³ to the WHO recommended interim target levels of 30, 20 and eventually 10 µg/m³
- That TfGM does some targeted research on mode choice for locations with existing high quality public transport and active travel infrastructure to identify if this does make a more positive impact on mode shift
- That TfGM reports on the Bee Network’s contribution to particulate matter (PM) air pollution and explores measures to mitigate it across the city region
- Stronger measures to disincentive short car journeys and increase sustainable or active travel
One reply on “GM Clean Air Progress 2025”
Thanks, really helpful analysis and improvement suggestions. Let’s hope that GMCA engage with the ‘asks’.