Minutes:
Question
My question relates to Agenda item 38, in particular the Officer response to point 6 on page 35.
The Task and Finish Group was told that there would an update in January 2021, as there was in January 2020.
A cross party Task and Finish Group has identified serious errors and gaps in the plan. The gaps and errors are not fixable by future innovations but relate to fundamental flaws in the composition and presentation of the plan.
Why has this issue not been properly addressed in the responses?
Answer
Officers welcome feedback on the Climate Emergency Action Plan and have worked positively with the Climate Emergency Task and Finish Group to discuss the issues and recommendations in their report. The Climate Emergency Task and Finish Group is set to continue and Officers look forward to working with this Group to help deliver the outcomes of the Climate Emergency Action Plan.
An initial, one off, report was presented to Council in January 2020 which outlined the priorities of the Climate Emergency Action Plan and set out the baseline carbon footprint of the Borough. This report also promised to deliver a detailed Climate Emergency Action Plan in July 2020 and provide an annual progress report to Council thereafter.
The Climate Emergency Action Plan is a working document which means that changes can and will be continually incorporated into the document. The Plan is comprehensively monitored on a three month basis and as promised the highlight report will be shared with the Climate Emergency Task and Finish Group. Not only is progress monitored but changes in the methodology and form of the Plan will also be reported. The first highlight report will be ready to be shared in November. Going through the democratic process every six months will make additional demands on Officer resources and given the existing regular reporting mechanisms, and where we are with Covid, this may not be the best use of Officer time.
As suggested at the Climate Emergency Task and Finish Group Members are encouraged to get in touch with Officers to have discussions about specific issues that they feel would improve the Plan. These will then be incorporated into the Action Plan on an ongoing basis.
The Climate Emergency Action Plan is a tool which is continuously being updated and helps give direction to what the residents, businesses, town and parish councils, charities and the Council need to do achieve net Zero Carbon by 2030.
The Plan is not the only method of measuring carbon emissions. The definitive measure of the performance for the Borough is through the Government’s emissions data published annually by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy which will be used to calibrate our predictions and to ensure that they are on track.
Extensive consultation was undertaken during the development of the Plan. The Council received both positive criticism and also encouragement; including the Plan being described as best practice. The Council is ahead of the vast majority of other councils in attempting such a detailed plan and are regularly consulted for advice by other authorities while building their own action plans.
Supplementary Question
I think the fact is the reason those gaps and errors and omissions won’t be corrected is because it is politically embarrassing. Now it is great to hear your newfound enthusiasm for Citizen’s Assemblies which is a way of taking politics out of these plans. To do a Citizen’s Assembly does cost money. Have you told John Kaiser how much a Citizen’s Assembly, that you say you are planning, will cost?
Supplementary Answer
We are currently working through how we are going to run Citizen’s Assemblies. We have had numerous discussions already and I am already talking with environmental groups across the Borough in terms of how we run them in partnership with them. I am not concerned in terms of the cost of running Citizen’s Assemblies because it is an important thing for us to do and will help us address some of the challenges we currently face.
In terms of some of the gaps that are also in our Plan you will have seen the Prime Minister announce earlier this month that by 2030 all homes across Great Britain are going to be powered by offshore wind farms. Now domestic electricity accounts for 71,000 tonnes of our carbon footprint as a Borough. So that is 71,000 tonnes that we can now build into our carbon budget that we can remove from the work that we need to do and our Carbon Emergency Action Plan continues.
So you know I have always expected that our Action Plan is going to ebb and flow. I have always expected that at times we are going to have gaps and at other times we are going to be over our target. That is how things like this work especially from 10 years out.
So I am confident that we are going to able to hit our target.