Ashby de la Zouch Town Council is to challenge air quality monitoring results suggesting there is 'no pollution' in the town.

Last year, the council commissioned air quality consultants M-EC to conduct the survey due to councillors fears that residents were being 'poisoned' by the levels of traffic on the A42 and Nottingham Road.

Last month's meeting of Ashby Town Council's planning committee discussed the findings of the £4,000 report and said they have been disputed by a local resident, Bill Moore.

Councillors then suggested the survey may need to be carried out again, however this would be at a further cost of between £5,000-10,000 and would be likely to be staged next September.

The committee was concerned about paying for the first set of results after hearing a series of claims from Mr Moore about how it was set up.

Cllr Mike Ball said: "The reason we commissioned this, at great expense, was because we were concerned that people in the town were being poisoned by a combination of 80,000 vehicles a day on the A42, and 15,000 on Nottingham Road.

"But we have heard a diversion of opinion from two sets of experts.

"A year and a half on, we're sadly not much wiser.

"It's a big expense to go through it all again.

"But people's health in this town is of paramount importance.

"We should send M-EC a copy of Bill Moore's report and ask them for comments, and why certain things are not up to scratch. They should be invited to a committee meeting, and if we're going to spend upwards of £10,000, we need to know we're spending it with the right people."

Cllr Mary Tuckey added: "Excuse me for being cynical but I think they've got exactly the results they wanted, which was to say there is no pollution in Ashby.

"We know that's not true.

"It concerns me, the results don't seem to be accurate and I don't think they're being very transparent about it.

"We should pursue it strongly, we need to know, we owe it to the citizens of this town to get to the bottom of what's going on.

"Can the so-called experts at the District Council look at this?"

It was agreed that representatives of M-EC should address councillors at a future meeting to discuss the results.

But it was also made clear that the requirements for the monitoring of air quality is the responsibility of the District Council.

The start of the monitoring was delayed until September 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic and there was then a further lockdown though the monitoring continued.

Cllr Ball added: "One of the reasons we went into this in the first place was that we didn't trust what the District Council were doing.

"But we need to know if this £4,000 report is worth the paper it's written on, because this committee has been told it's not."