To answer any public questions.

A period of 30 minutes will be allowed for members of the public to ask questions submitted under notice.

The Council welcomes questions from members of the public about the work of this Committee.

Subject to meeting certain timescales, questions can relate to general issues concerned with the work of the Committee or an item which is on the Agenda for this meeting.  For full details of the procedure for submitting questions please contact the Democratic Services Section on the numbers given below or go to www.wokingham.gov.uk/publicquestions

Mel Davies asked the Chairman the following question:

I would like to thank the Executive Member for the Climate Emergency for issuing the first iteration of the Climate Emergency Action Plan. The plan is a start but doesn't contain many of the fundamental attributes of a viable Management Plan. In particular, I would like to ask the Chairman if she thinks the following items should be added to the plan:

1.         A top level set of requirements and a flow down of requirements into the various project branches.

2.         A project scope, meaning a single section detailing precisely what is and what is not inside the project boundary.

3.         A description of a project Risk Register and how it will be managed. (This should then contribute to the Council risk register)

4.         A hierarchical diagram to show how this plan fits with all other Council plans and policies as well as Central Government plans and Policies.

5.         A stakeholder list.

6.         A top level project roadmap or Gantt Chart

7.         A list of definitions and acronyms.

8.         A description of how the project will measure progress

9.         A consolidated list of referenced work.

10.      A definite start date and end date.  

These are some of the defining attributes of a successful project but they are not defined clearly in the current plan.

Answer

At a Council meeting on 18^th July 2019, Wokingham Borough Council agreed a Motion declaring a climate emergency.  The declaration set out the Council’s commitment to play as full a role as possible in achieving a carbon-neutral Wokingham Borough by 2030 and to report progress to Council within six months, setting out an initial plan of action.

As a working document this plan reports our progress and lays out the initial steps of our journey to working towards achieving a net zero carbon Borough. It was not the intention to develop a comprehensive project or ‘management’ plan.

The Climate Emergency Action Plan has: established the Borough’s climate footprint from where we will measure all future activity, announced a budget of £50 million for carbon reduction projects over the next three years and established eight priority areas of focus for Council actions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions over the coming years.

These include tackling carbon dioxide emissions from transport, reducing energy use in domestic properties, generating renewable energy, planting more trees and encouraging behaviour change.

The Council consulted with Wokingham Borough businesses and specialist consultants all of whom gave positive feedback on our plans. The Government funded Greater South East Energy Hub fed back that the plan demonstrates that Wokingham Borough Council is a leading Local Authority in this field and suggested that the plan should be shared with other local authorities as an example of good practice.

The Climate Emergency Action Plan is a high-level programme of activities and work streams to begin our journey towards a zero-carbon future.  The extent of these actions will require the appropriate project and programme management frameworks to ensure effective delivery and corresponding monitoring. We have set up working groups for each of these priority areas which will support the delivery of the action plan.

An annual Climate Emergency Progress Report will be developed and brought to Council for approval in July 2020 and annually thereafter. This report will provide more detail on our projects and the anticipated carbon savings that we hope they will achieve.

With a programme that stretches out until 2030 we will set up more manageable timeframes of work to support delivery of the action plan, whilst being able to respond to both policy and resourcing changes at a national and potentially international level that we cannot, at this point, second guess.

Supplementary Question

I will be interested to see how the Action Plan develops. In the meantime, is there any way that members of the public, such as myself, could sit on any of these Committees or Working Groups?

Supplementary Answer

I will ask Gregor Murray, who is the Executive Member for Climate Emergency, for an answer to that point.

Gregor Murray

Sitting above the Climate Emergency Action Plan is a governance structure. This includes the cross-party working group and a forum where businesses, charities, academics and community leaders can help to shape the agenda.

At the moment there is no plan to include input from residents in terms of attending meetings. We have spent the last six months writing the Action Plan and we are now working on driving it forwards. In terms of future engagement, all options are open.