Issue - meetings

Members of the Council may ask the Cabinet member any question without notice upon an item on the report as published in this agenda;

5.1       Councillor Tindall        Leader of the Council (verbal update only)

5.2       Councillor England     Portfolio Holder Climate & Ecological Emergency

5.3       Councillor Wilkie         Portfolio Holder Place

5.4       Councillor Weston      Portfolio Holder People & Transformation

5.5       Councillor Tindall        Portfolio Holder Corporate and Commercial Services

5.6       Councillor Dhyani       Portfolio Holder Housing & Property Services

5.7       Councillor Bromham   Portfolio Holder Neighbourhood Operations

5.1       Leader of the Council

Cllr Tindall advised he was pleased to advise that Cllr Capozzi has agreed to be the Cabinet members for Corporate & Commercial and will be taking up the post directly following this meeting.

Cllr Tindall further advised a change in reporting for the Climate & Ecological portfolio which will now report to the SPAE OSC rather than the F&R OSC.

The Mayor advised that updates from the individual Portfolio Holders have been circulated with the agenda and invited questions.

5.2       Climate & Ecological Emergency

Cllr Wyatt-Lowe asked; is your use of Net Zero based on Co2 alone or does it include Carbon equivalent, methane and other gases?

            Cllr England referred back to the Climate Emergency Strategy produced under previous administration, confirming all the measurements of Carbon are Co2e, that ‘e’ stands for equivalent and that does include methane and other fast gases, which are gases which don’t existing very long in the environment but do a lot of damage while they are there.

            Cllr Wyatt-Lowe followed up and asked; presuming then that the polices take note of this and that you have thought of what measures you can carry out to achieve that whole package of reductions?

            Cllr England responded that plans are developing and are dependent on resources, but absolutely all the gases are included in what we are trying to do.  Cllr England added that we are also trying to prevent the escape of money; a lot of money to be saved and generated through the activities we are looking to deliver over next few years.

Cllr Douris referred to page 6 of the Portfolio Holder’s update, where it says ‘residents can save up to £720 a year following 4 simple steps’, and asked the Portfolio Holder; can you please justify to us what those 4 simple steps are?

Cllr England advised he does not have that information in his head but will arrange for the Social Media Team to circulate.

Action: Cllr England to arrange for the 4 simple steps information to be provided to Democratic Services for distribution. 

Cllr Barradell asked, when do you hope to be back on track with the carbon budget forecast?

Cllr England responded with his view that this is a difficult question, in particular the previous administration need to explain why they got so far off track in last few years. 

Cllr England explained that the situation is, if you look at chart carefully, it starts to dip quite sharply around 2019/20 as that is when the improvements we are looking for are supposed to start.  It is not a steady linear progression to zero, instead it drops much more steeply in first 5 years if all measure are put in place.  It is a reality that the steps taken by central government are wrecking the chances we have of meeting the specified line, but we are going to do our best. 

Cllr England advised there are two aspects to this; making a decision and putting resources behind  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5