A Public Forum
Statement from Cllr Denyer was read aloud by Cllr Comley and a
short discussion ensued about the scale and pace of the Mayors
Climate Emergency Action Plan. Examples
were given on how and where investment is being targeted, for
example, the Council is investing in programmes to leverage in
further external funding to deliver on the actions.
The Sustainable
City and Climate Change Service Manager then went on to present the
published slide deck on the Mayor’s Climate Emergency Action
Plan Update which focussed upon:
- Governance Arrangements – to ensure the Council has the
right advice and expertise guiding it e.g. One City Environmental
Sustainability Board and Bristol Advisory Climate Change
Committee
- Development of the One City Climate Strategy
- Communication and Engagement
- Integration into Council Systems
- Climate Change Training
The following are
some of the key points that were highlighted:
- It was said that consultants are currently working on potential
heat networks for the future.
- The Council is working with businesses and also community groups
by helping to point them in the right direction and develop a
common strategy to work together on.
- The Lottery - Climate Action Fund is coming soon and officers
are working with a consortium to prepare bids for this.
- The Plan is being integrated in to the Councils service planning
process. Officers said that it was not
just about environmental assessments on cabinet reports, but rather
it needed to be embedded in the processes much earlier than
that.
- There is an identified need to ensure officers are trained in
this field so they can ask the right questions of others including
consultants etc. This is about
equipping people with the right information to make more and more
changes. It was said that Bristol is
one the first councils to be doing this at this level, which makes
it quite difficult.
Questions and
comments from Members:
- The Chair said she wasn’t sure why the Advisory Board was
only meeting quarterly and not more often. She therefore hoped there was a lot of work going
on outside of the meetings.
- Several Members said they thought the pace of action appeared
slow and it also frustrated many other people outside of the
Council. It was suggested that the
Council needed to encourage more behaviour change rather than
waiting for it to happen. One Member
suggested that the Council should ‘exemplify, explain, and
enable it by removing barriers where they currently
exist’.
- It was asked if the Council is asking the Government to remove
some of the barriers. Yes it was said
this was part of the process that was currently happening as part
of the Strategy. Officers did however
highlight there was a slight conflict between ‘doing things
quickly and doing things well’.
- Is the Council working with Core Cities on this? Officers said yes they are working on
‘common asks’ and there would be a joint declaration
the following week. Yes there were
barriers and a need for more funding and skills to be developed;
they all need to be in place for things to work at a pace and
effectively it was said.
- Another Member said he believed that the Action Plan should be
both ‘top down’ so business can buy in to it and be
encouraged to change their practices and ‘bottom up’
to capture the enthusiasm of young
people .
- The Chair said she was slightly concerned that now there is an
Action Plan coming thorough there will also be some level if
complacency when actually there is still so far to go. She said the Strategy ‘would not get us
there’. Officers said no but the
Action Plan is what is being done to ‘get us there’ and
this this will be completed in March 2020. The Chair asked ‘whether it would have
everything in it that was necessary to get us to be where we need
to be’? Yes it was
replied. She asked if behavioural
change in there ‘because without it we won’t get
there’. No was the
reply.
ACTION: It was agreed that Officers would bring a
further update on the Mayor’s Climate Emergency Action Plan
in January 2020