Residents will be invited to have their say on a five-year plan to improve air quality in the borough.

Haringey Council’s Air Quality Action Plan will look to cut the level of harmful emissions that can contribute to serious health problems such as heart disease and cancer.

Levels of harmful pollutants are particularly high near busy main roads such as Tottenham High Road and Wood Green High Road.

The action plan includes measures to improve air quality in and around schools, encouraging walking zones that make it safer to travel to school on foot.

No-idling zones – preventing drivers from leaving their engines running when their vehicles are stationary – also form part of the plans.

There are proposals to retrofit council-owned buildings with insulation and new boilers to improve their energy efficiency, along with measures to ensure green spaces are provided on new developments.

The council’s fleet could also be updated to include more hydrogen, electric, hybrid and bio-methane vehicles.

A public consultation on these and a range of other measures set out in the plan will be launched in May and run for eight weeks.

Cllr Kirsten Hearn, cabinet member for environment, said: “At the last full council we declared a climate emergency, and the air quality action plan is a pivotal part of challenging the issues that face us.

“Air quality affects all of us in different ways. Our children are going to school in very highly polluted places. We have to do something about that if they are not going to grow up damaged by our environment.

“Poor air quality affects older and disabled people, shortening many people’s lives. We can’t have that.

“We are welcome to have conversations with you about how we are going to tackle this issue together.”