Agenda item

For committee to review the draft Climate Action Plan and provide recommendations to Cabinet (paper to follow).

Councillor Cooper introduced the report.

This Plan is the key delivery vehicle for demonstrating our Corporate Plan commitment of taking action on the Climate Emergency and our outcome and target of becoming a carbon neutral council by 2025.

The CAP looks at council operations, measuring actions and outputs and also how we engage and involve communities. The CAP is one piece in a larger picture to tackle the climate emergency.

Councillor Cooper will bring a quarterly progress report to the committee, to monitor the progress of the CAP, and to provide Cabinet with recommendations on this live document. Policies and strategies need to evolve over the length of the plan to become more ambitious.

Thanks to involvement from councillors and officers, we produced a robust and deliverable CAP.

Questions from the committee:

·       Timescale to make changes? – it was confirmed that as there would be quarterly reporting, changes on a quarterly basis could occur, depending on what the change is.

Changes will be reported at the next quarter after they have taken effect. Changes as a result of the Environment Act will be considered and updated in the CAP. Chair had a slot at Cabinet to inform them of the comments and recommendations made by this committee. There will be a similar monitoring process for targets, as per the corporate plan quarterly monitoring. Ways of working items should be completed and then crossed off the list.

·       Suggestion of SMART objectives. Suggested categorising tasks by timescale for completion – 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months etc. Identify items that can’t start due to policy outside of council remit.

It was responded that some items are waiting on the budget to understand what resource we will have to achieve a certain timescale. The example is officers to work on bidding for funding.

·       Will we see the CAP post-budget to see the impact of budget on resource level? It was responded that the actions are absorbed into existing teams and had been already agreed and allocated, and teams manage their own staffing and delivery plan.

·       Want to see timescales and milestones – do we need a delivery plan? Prioritisation – which items would give a better pay-off?

·        

Comments from the committee:

·       A lot of items were based on current resource, but others were more open ended and what could be achieved depends on further resource.

·       Rank system on what can be done? Red/green coding

·       Periodic highlighting of items (starring) - to look at in the next quarter.

·       Appendix of completed items

·       A view was expressed that we should adopt a plan so we can press on with progress, and we get to review it again and input into it – forward progress was important and we should start work. Items had been chosen due to being deliverable.

·       Some of the work in the CAP was already in progress, rather than waiting on the plan to be adopted.

·       Future Oxfordshire Partnership Environmental Advisory Group was working on (PAZCO) delivery plan, and that county-wide had agreed for officers to accelerate the delivery of the PAZCO option. Our CAP should reflect that.

·       Anthesis report - it was responded that this was not related to council data, and therefore not useful enough to impact the CAP. We intend to circulate it – there was no officer involvement in it and the CAP was not reliant on it.

·       Was there a sense of our target for 2025 being achievable through this plan?

·       Targets are ambitious but there were many variables that could impact it. E.g the emissions from homes was a large portion of emissions, but retrofitting was a costly process. There was a strong statement of intent from our 2025 target.

·       Measures should support objectives of corporate plan. Testing monitoring of achievements.

·       Demonstrating progress to the public and leading by example was important.

Resolved:

To agree that CEEAC recommends the Climate Action Plan to Cabinet for adoption.

Cabinet should consider the comments and changes raised by the CEEAC.