Construction equipment in London will be required to meet new emissions standards as part of the Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG), spearheaded by the capital’s mayor, Boris Johnson.

The new standards aim to cut emissions by 40% by 2020, with standards for particulates (PM10) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) to be met by September next year.

It is understood that the new standards will see machinery that is more than 10 years old needing to be replaced or retrofitted, however, some exceptions will be made for specialist construction machinery.

In his introduction of the SPG, Mr Johnson said: "London’s air quality has vastly improved since the killer smogs of the 1950s, and even in the last four years London has seen significant reductions in emissions of both NOx and PM10/PM2.5 – the especially nasty particulates. Since 2008 the numbers of Londoners living in areas in areas where NO2 levels are above EU limits have halved, but given the health impacts of air pollution we must plainly do far better.

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"It is for this reason I have set out an ambitious package of measures to improve air quality that are to be implemented in my second term, including retrofitting more homes with energy efficiency measures, accelerating the roll-out of cleaner hybrid buses into the London bus fleet and setting out my vision for a central London Ultra Low Emission Zone from 2020. Cleaning

up construction sites is also a key component of my plan.

"The latest evidence suggests that construction and demolition activity, and the machinery used for this purpose, may be responsible for up to 15 per cent of air pollutant emissions in the capital. Having made great leaps in reducing emissions from the transport sector, we must now tackle emissions from other sources."

(MH/IT)