CAMPAIGNERS have warned against the environmental impact of online shopping as thousands more vans have flooded Bracknell's roads in recent years.

Retailers have been urged to reduce the number of diesel vans they use to make deliveries, and make more effort to switch their fleets of vehicles to cleaner sources of fuel.

Since 2012, 2,944 more vans have been registered in Bracknell Forest, nearly all of them powered by diesel. In total, 8,576 vans are registered in the area, an increase of more than 50 per cent.

The increase in vans has vastly outpaced the growth in the number of cars in Bracknell Forest since 2012, as people increasingly shop from the comfort of their sofas, with only four per cent more cars on the road.

But the convenience comes at a cost, with increasingly poor air quality having an impact on public health and the environment. This week, a new clean air strategy published by government was branded "hugely disappointing" by the Labour party, which said it did little to tackle diesel pollution.

Oliver Hayes, clean air campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "Only a very small proportion of vans on our roads are low emission models, with the vast majority releasing clouds of toxic diesel fumes onto streets across the UK.

"The online shopping world is largely dominated by a few e-commerce giants, the rise of which has been at the expense of our air quality as well as high street businesses.

"We need to see more deliveries being consolidated into a lower number of vans, as well as more effort made to switch to fleets of cleaner vehicles."