Question
Forty councils across Britain, including Reading, have recently declared a Climate Emergency. Does your newly created role mean that Wokingham is joining with the other councils and their climate change initiatives? And if so, what can we expect in the coming months that will help stem the tide of climate change, and improve the environment of all our residents?
Minutes:
Question
Forty councils across Britain, including Reading, have recently declared a Climate Emergency. Does your newly created role mean that Wokingham is joining with the other councils and their climate change initiatives? And if so, what can we expect in the coming months that will help stem the tide of climate change, and improve the environment of all our residents?
Answer
John Halsall started the process of declaring a climate emergency within his maiden speech as the Leader of Council on May 22nd. Following on from that speech the Council has been preparing a formal motion declaring a climate emergency which will be brought forward for a vote of the full Council at its next meeting on 19th July 2019. To support our ambition of being carbon neutral by 2030 over the next six months we will be working to develop a Climate Emergency Action Plan. A key part of which will be to understand exactly what our current carbon footprint is and identify measures either to reduce or offset our carbon emissions. A partnership group will also be set up to help monitor the progress in achieving this ambition.
Within the Wokingham Borough Climate Emergency Action Plan, which is a bit of a mouthful and we may try and find a better name for it, we will look at all actions and opportunities available to help us reduce our carbon emissions and address climate change. I am particularly keen to ask our residents, our businesses, our charities and our schools for their thoughts and ideas on how we tackle this most important of issues. These will then be carefully considered and the most appropriate will be actioned.
I would also like to add that Wokingham Borough Council is already undertaking some bold and highly successful initiatives to help address climate change. The food waste recycling scheme has just collected its one thousandth ton. There are programmes in place for reducing the amount of energy that our own Council uses across its estates and we have many sustainable development and transport policies already in place. All of these coupled with the updated Local Plan, to include even more sustainability policies and targets, will help us to take steps to reduce our carbon emissions and reach our carbon neutral goal.
Although this is a global issue local actions do matter. Wokingham Borough Council has already demonstrated that we take our environmental responsibilities seriously and a climate emergency declaration is further proof of this. We call on all Members regardless of political party to vote to support this crucial motion and ask all residents to contribute as we work towards effecting positive change with this stretching ambitious but essential objective.
Supplementary Question
It is obviously very important that we communicate this to all our residents so what are you planning to ensure we reach them all?
Supplementary Answer
That is a very good follow-up question so David Allen and his team have already started working on some environmental communication initiatives. You will have already seen on things like social media a lot of communication around the food waste recycling and some of the other initiatives that are going on. When we go to residents to ask them for their opinion we will be conducting, I do not like using the word survey but something along those lines, asking residents for their ideas and they will then be brought to a forum to be considered and we are hoping to partner with some of our esteemed newspapers to be able to communicate those surveys and those results and the actions that will be taken as a result.