Question
You have stated publicly that you intend to ask residents for their ideas on how Wokingham Borough can reach Carbon Neutrality by 2030, please can you update us on when this consultation will begin and what form it will take?
Minutes:
Question
You have stated publicly that you intend to ask residents for their ideas on how Wokingham Borough can reach Carbon Neutrality by 2030, please can you update us on when this consultation will begin and what form it will take?
Answer
I have indeed previously stated my intention to consult all residents of Wokingham Borough and ask them for their ideas on how we can reach Carbon Neutrality by 2030 and I am very pleased to announce that this consultation will being on September 26th, a week from today, using the WBC online portal.
Residents, businesses, schools, residents groups, Town and Parish Councils and any other interested local parties will be welcome to respond to four simple questions and share with us their thoughts, feedback, ideas and suggestions on how we meet this most stretching of targets as agreed at our last full Council meeting.
I encourage anybody with an idea to share it. You may think others will have said the same thing, but repetition is a good thing as it will show us the strength of feeling behind specific ideas across the Borough.
The consultation will be widely publicised using Wokingham Borough Council’s social media forums and print media. I encourage everyone to get involved and send in your ideas. Tell your family, tell your friends, your uncles and aunties, your colleagues and neighbours, your classmates and teachers and everybody else and make sure that they are contributing.
If you can’t get onto the portal write to Wokingham Borough Council, write to me, write to any of the elected Members in this Chamber. We will ensure that your idea is included in the list for consideration for the Action Plan and by the cross party working group and Council Officers.
I will publish a summary of all the ideas that we receive to ensure 100% visibility and clarity.
Initially, the consultation will be open for 3 months, until the end of December, but it is my intention that, if it is successful, we will open it up and keep it as an ongoing consultation so that anybody who comes up with a great idea in five years’ time, in the middle of the night, can go onto the WBC website and share that idea with us so that we can achieve our stretching target.
Supplementary Question
We are working hard to reduce, reuse and recycle. Would you agree that it is far better to reduce and reuse than to recycle. Can you tell me what the Council plans do to reduce the use of plastic?
Supplementary Answer
I have put forward a Motion for this evening and, hopefully, if time permits, we will get to it. That Motion will call on the Council to eradicate single use plastics from our operations and supply chains. We appreciate that that there is a degree of essential single use plastics that the Borough has to have, for example some of our elderly residents cannot drink water without using a single plastic straw. In all other instances we are looking to remove single use plastics from our supply chain because, frankly, the impact they are having on our environment is awful. It is devastating and we need to play our part.
Note: At this point in the meeting Andy Croy raised a Point of Order under Paragraph 4.2.9.5 (Scope of questions) on the basis that the question was frivolous. This related to the fact that the Executive Member had reported similar information to the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee at its meeting on the previous evening.
The Deputy Mayor stated that the question was not frivolous and should be heard.