Agenda item

Daniel Hinton asked the Executive Member for Resident Services, Communications and Emissions the following question:

 

Question

Like many interested parties across the Borough The members and followers of Greener Wokingham are looking forward to WBC running one, or more local deliberative processes.  Can you tell residents what progress has been made in determining which LDP are right for our Climate Emergency and what the likely topics of the LDPs will be?

 

Minutes:

 

Question

Like many interested parties across the Borough The members and followers of Greener Wokingham are looking forward to WBC running one, or more local deliberative processes.  Can you tell residents what progress has been made in determining which LDP are right for our Climate Emergency and what the likely topics of the LDPs will be?

 

Answer

Local deliberative processes aim to help us better understand the views of our residents and community groups on the Council’s response to climate change.

 

Tackling the climate emergency in Wokingham will require active participation from our residents, all of whom have a big part to play in delivering the big changes that are needed on our journey to decarbonisation.

 

Through the right consultative and participation methods, the Council will be able to hear their voices, collect their views and gather insight to inform future decisions.

 

To advise on which deliberative processes to use, significant research and consultation have been undertaken both internally and externally.

 

Fifteen community engagement options recently used for climate emergency were reviewed and scored based on the policy stage, length of the process, number of participants, participant selection, delivery form and cost.  These include crowd sourcing, citizen’s assemblies, juries and panels, advisory groups, polling e-panels, to name but a few.

 

This comparison not only highlights the breadth of options available but also enables us to identify the most suitable solutions to use to engage the community with the different aspects of our climate emergency agenda.

 

Successful case studies from other local authorities engaging residents with climate emergency were sourced to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of these approaches.

 

These examples vary in terms of the number of residents involved, the length of process and the cost of delivery. They also produce similar results on engaging the community, producing recommendations and actions and informing the climate emergency panels. 

 

Following this research, a detailed proposal to deliver community deliberative processes is being developed, which will come towards this Executive in the coming months, to provide comprehensive information on how these methods will be set up and delivered.

 

Some of the potential topics for discussion will reflect the behaviour change needed to achieve net zero, and this includes:

 

·       Our vision for future living across Wokingham Borough;

·       modal shift in transport;

·       reducing energy consumption through behaviour, technology and home improvements;

·       reducing the amount of waste we generate and improving our recycling behaviours;

·       reducing food waste and supporting sustainable consumption; and also

·       Conscious consumption.  So shopping local, using less plastic, avoiding fast fashions and taking staycations.

 

This process will involve a diverse and unbiased range of participants to obtain the best quality feedback from balanced discussions. The results will then be openly fed back into the Council and also back to the community.

 

Supplementary Question

Can I put a request in that we look at how we can increase biodiversity in the Borough and see if we can get this as one of the subjects of the early LDPs as you go forward?

 

Supplementary Answer

Yes, I can certainly confirm that we can do that.  I think it is a great thing to add to our list of local deliberative processes for the future.  Increasing biodiversity is really important to us as a Council. 

 

Yes, absolutely I think getting our residents’ views and opinions on how we do that would be very valuable to our community and our climate emergency going forward.