The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has awarded a three-year contract to monitor air pollution in the UK.

Sustainability consultancy Ricardo-AEA will provide quality assurance and control services to the UK’s largest air quality monitoring network.

The ‘Automatic Urban and Rural Network’ (AURN) helps the UK Government fulfil its statutory European reporting requirements.

It also supports air quality research and policy development.

The data produced by the network is relied upon by a wide variety of stakeholders, according to Defra.

AURN has been delivering data since the early 1970s and has 149 monitoring stations across the UK, producing 5.5 million measurements every year.