A FACT-FINDING visit to Cuckoo Corner left council staff “struggling to breathe” amid fears residents are living near to high levels of pollution.

An Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) – where higher than average levels of nitrous oxide have to be monitored – was declared between the Bell junction and the Cuckoo Corner roundabout in 2016.

Another AQMA was declared for an area from Victoria Avenue and the junctions of East Street, West Street, Priory Crescent and Fairfax Avenue in 2020.

Work to improve the flow of traffic at the Bell junction was intended to help reduce emissions from idling traffic but logjams at Cuckoo Corner continue.

St Laurence ward councillor and Labour Group leader Daniel Cowan recently led a council walkabout around the area to gauge the extent of the problems but he said one of the group became overwhelmed by fumes.

He said: “I was there with councillor Lydia Hyde and we were joined by a couple of executive directors of the council.

“We went on a long walkabout up and down Manners Way, Rochford Road and lots of roads in between. We then spent approximately two minutes at Cuckoo Corner before one of the executive directors asked if we could move on because they were struggling to breathe.”

Mr Cowan added: “It wasn’t a particularly busy day and about 11am. Different people have different tolerances to pollution. Some people are highly sensitive to it and others aren’t but we have to take an approach of if air quality is affecting people who maybe already have difficulty that’s the baseline where we need to work from.

“Although they maybe in the minority, the exposure to that level of pollution could bring people who previously had a high tolerance level of exposure and bring to them into the vulnerable category, We need to take more preventative measures.”

A motion by Mr Cowan and Ms Hyde will next week call for something to be done about the junction.

Mr Cowan said: “What we need is a task and finish group where we focus on it in great detail in a short period of time so we have councillor engagement but we also need to have a forum to receive ideas from the public, from the bus companies, from our road users and cyclists and have it all modelled by our highways professionals.

“There are government grants for these kinds of improvements. There’s grant money that’s available at the moment and there’s new schemes we can apply for.”