The Chair to advise the Committee of any items on which members of the public have requested to speak and advise those members of the public present of the details of the Council’s public participation scheme.
For those members of the public who have submitted any questions or statements, please note, a three minute time limit applies to each speaker and you will be asked to speak before Councillors debate the issue.
Temporary measures during the Coronavirus Pandemic
Due to the Government guidance on measures to reduce the transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19), we will holding meetings in a virtual manner which will be live webcast on our website. Members of the public will still be able to register to speak and ask questions, which will then be read out by the Governance and Democracy Case Manager during Public Question Time and will either be answered by the Chair of the Committee, or the relevant Portfolio Holder, or be followed up with a written response.
Minutes:
Bryony Chetwode spoke on agenda item 7, Somerset Climate Emergency Strategy and SWT Carbon Neutrality and Climate Resilience Plan:-
Q1. Could the Council explain how it could both support the Climate Emergency Strategy at the same time as planning to develop the bus station into parking?
Q2. On behalf of our members we asked that the Council integrated their thinking and took a positive, meaningful, collaborative approach to connectivity for the people of the town and surrounding area.
Q3. Could those with responsibility for action addressing the Climate Emergency tell us how they planned to ensure other portfolio holders actively engaged with them to prevent counter-productive projects?
Q4. Could the Councillors involved promise to actively engage the community before deciding whether/how to implement schemes?
There wasn't a vision of a sustainable, working transport system for connecting us with work, place, and play within the Strategy which had left the door open for schemes which encouraged congestion, pollution and carbon. An urgent strong additional element of instruction needed in the strategy document. This would provide a prevailing vision which other teams would have to look to instead of planning for further carbonisation.
Bryony Chetwode, TravelWatch SouthWest CIC
Nigel Behan spoke on agenda item 7, Somerset Climate Emergency Strategy and SWT Carbon Neutrality and Climate Resilience Plan:-
In paragraph 3.4 it stated that:
“Despite the production of the CNCR Action Plan and Somerset-wide Strategy, Climate Change itself remained a major risk, and likely would do even if every identified action was delivered here because the issue was a global one. For this reason the Somerset-wide Strategy contained goals aiming at decarbonisation of the Councils themselves (mitigation); decarbonisation of Somerset as a whole (mitigation); and creating a resilient Somerset ready for projected impacts (adaptation), and the CNCR Action Plan was entitled Carbon Neutrality and Climate Resilience and included actions aiming to ensure the Council and district were resilient to the projected impacts climate change.”
Q1. How could SWT ensure that cross boundary (other areas/councils etc.) actions didn’t have an adverse impact and ensured there would be integrated working with other public bodies etc?
And Public Finance recently reported:
https://www.publicfinancefocus.org/2020/10/covid-19-no-excuse-forget-about-climate-change
“Many local authorities and governments had declared climate emergencies, but although responding to the coronavirus had taken up most of their attention for the past eight months or so, Bedford stressed that environmental issues had not gone away.
“This wasn’t a new risk, but it’s striking harder than many expected,” she said.
Natural disasters such as heat waves, wildfires and droughts, which threatened lives as well as assets and supplies of necessities such as food, were becoming more frequent and more intense.
In recent years, threats from climate change had been steadily climbing insurers’ risk lists, and Bedford said that Covid-19 must not allow them to fall back down compared to the more short-term (in relation to climate change) economic risks.
Bedford said organisations should identify the risks climate change posed to them specifically, and ensured plans were not only fit for the situation now but future proof for the years to come.
She said proactive investment in climate resilience could be five times cheaper than reactive measures taken in the future. (our emphasis)
Climate change strategies should also consider procurement, in terms of whether the partner organisations were able to help the public body meet its climate goals, Bedford said, adding that it could also be important to consider whether procurement was necessary in the first place. (again, our emphasis)
“It’s not always about doing things differently, but it could be about doing different things,” she said.
Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment Chief Executive Sarah Mukherjee said she had been “quite encouraged” by how seriously the public sector was taking climate, on a local and national level in the UK and internationally.
“In terms of action to take, the best thing to do was to plan, to make sure they had the understanding to process some of this very complex stuff, and incorporate it into their work,” she said.”
Q2. Would SWT (and other councils) consider whether Procurement (and commissioning/contracting etc…) “was necessary in the first place” when applying the proposed strategy?
Best Wishes, Nigel Behan, (Unite)
The Portfolio Holder for Climate Change thanked the speakers for their questions and advised that he would respond with a full written response which would be sent onto them after the meeting.