Minutes:
Does the Leader of the Council agree that the Climate Emergency Action Plan is weak, vague and contains few of the attributes of a viable Management Plan and that it should be returned for a complete revision before it is approved by Council?
Answer
At a Council meeting on 18th 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 the 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 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. In essence, it is a dynamic plan which represents a first step, so no, I don’t agree.
Supplementary Question
I would like to thank the Executive Member for the work done so far. I would like to be assured, and he has partly assured me, that proper programme management will be used in this really important, major and expensive endeavour.
Supplementary Answer
I assure you that we take this very seriously. I have been a tree hugger all my life and I shall probably die a tree hugger. We are determined to do whatever we can and, as we are not national government or world government we don’t control all the levers in the Borough to do more than we are doing. However, our plans are very ambitious and we will progress them as fast as we can in as disciplined a manner as we can.