A new four-year, £15m contract sees Informed Solutions appointed as the Technical Delivery and Support Partner for the national roll out of Clean Air Zones by the Government’s Joint Air Quality Unit (JAQU).
The Joint Air Quality Unit (JAQU) – a joint unit between Defra and DfT, is charged with delivering HM Government’s legal and policy commitments to improve air quality by reducing levels of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) pollution. A key priority is to work in collaboration with Local Authorities (LAs) to influence changes in motorist behaviour.
The Clean Air Zone (CAZ) Framework permits Local Authorities to implement Charging Clean Air Zones as a measure for achieving this. The intent is that the introduction of Charging Clean Air Zones will drive changes in motorist behaviour – such as upgrading to a cleaner vehicle or using public transport – thereby reducing NO2 pollution.
The Central CAZ Service is a national digital infrastructure with exacting non-functional requirements for security, availability, elastic scalability, and resilience. Hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), PaaS and SaaS AWS offerings will accelerate and de-risk delivery, maximise technical quality and minimise administrative and maintenance overheads. A serverless execution model maximises the solutions’ ability to scale elastically in response to changing demand as more Local Authorities implement Clean Air Zones.
Informed Solutions has already delivered, launched, supported, and continually improved the CAZ Vehicle Emissions Checker and the CAZ Charging Service. The new contract sees Informed Solutions providing a 24x7x365 managed service alongside continual service improvement through WebOps and DevOps as new clean air zones are launched.
Informed Solutions UK CEO Seth Finegan comments: “We are delighted to have been chosen as Technical Delivery and Support Partner for clean air zones. Through a highly successful inception, development, and launch phase, which included integrating and coordinating the efforts of a wide range of delivery partners and suppliers, we are delighted to be trusted to look after this important national service for the next four years.
We’re looking forward to accelerating the improvement of the UK’s air quality by delivering the digital infrastructure to support clean air zones and in doing so, helping our cities become increasingly welcoming and healthy places to live, work, and play”.
Suzanne Trueman, Deputy Director of JAQU at The Department for Transport comments: “As set out in Defra’s 2019 Clean Air Strategy, transport is a significant source of emissions of air pollution. Our immediate air quality challenge is to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides in the areas where concentrations of these harmful gases currently exceed legal limits.
“Informed Solutions has demonstrated its expertise for national scale digital service delivery through the first critical stages of CAZ design and implementation. We are delighted to be working with them as our Technical Delivery and Support Partner to maintain, continually improve, and roll out the CAZ Service across England. It’s a critically important solution that is set to play an increasingly effective role in improving the quality of the air we breathe”.
61 Local Authorities are already involved in the programme. The first Clean Air Zones have successfully launched in Bath and Birmingham in 2021 with an anticipated further 7 Local Authorities preparing to launch in the coming 12-24 months.