Chesterfield clean air zone: residents concerned about impact on town centre businesses

To improve air quality, some local authorities are introducing clean air zones, where drivers of vehicles that exceed emission standards have to pay a charge if they drive inside the designated area..

Sheffield launched its clean air zone in February and Derby has started discussions about introducing one as well. We asked Chesterfield residents what they think about introducing a clean air zone to the town centre.

Sue Gee said: “A clean air zone would be very good for Chesterfield as long as it doesn’t affect shops because businesses in Chesterfield are dying so I'm just concerned if it would affect them more. As long as improving clean air is concerned it would be a wonderful thing. But it shouldn’t affect smaller cars and business owners and should be aimed at bigger vans.”

Jeff Gee said: “In the rush hour traffic at West Bars is really bad, it gets really congested down by the new McDonalds in the mornings and at night time. Clarence Road is always plugged up and backed up onto Saltergate. There are quite a lot of running cars. But I don’t know if clean air would help because the problem in Chesterfield is not the type of vehicles, bigger vehicles, or lorries, it is about the volume of traffic.”

Steve Palfreyman said: “The principle of the clean air zone is right. The question is where it goes, what sort of cost it is to the motorists, and what effect it will have on the centre? Will fewer people come in? I don’t know.

"I can't see it helping many businesses because people will shop elsewhere. If it's easy to go outside into one of these larger shopping areas rather than coming to town, pay for the car parking and the clean air charge as well. And it's a double whammy. Isn't it? It would be expensive.”

Johnny Nelis added: “Anything that improves the air we live in cannot be bad. It has to be good. There's a lot of traffic on all the entry roads into Chesterfield, from Derby, and from Chatsworth, and so on, it’s all very busy.”