Agenda item

N Turvey presented to the committee on the Environmental Management System and the ISO14001:2004.

• Benefits of the ISO14001:2014 include: legal compliance, traceability and transparency, accountability and accessibility to records, uniformity in approach, collaboration between departments, continual improvement and internationally recognised standard.
• The Council has 13 sites covered by the ISO. These include: the civic centres, the cemeteries, adventure playgrounds and Cupid Green.
• There are seven volunteer internal auditors who look after two sites each. They audit these every six to nine months depending on the time they have as they are volunteers.
• Not every Council has an ISO so this is a great achievement.
• Data loggers have been purchased for the final seven sites which allows access to hourly/daily/weekly/monthly profile to identify abnormal flow or water leaks.
• N Turvey referred to the graphs in the presentation and said that Berkhamsted Civic Centre had a continual flow throughout January and February.
• Tring Cemetery is due to have a leak repaired in February and this should save 80% of the water already flowing.
• Hertfordshire University students came to the Civic Centre for two days and instructed a waste survey. They found that of the waste that goes to landfill, only 4% of this really needs to. Therefore it is important to push up the recycling rate from inside the Council. This can be done through education, behavioural change and more accessible facilities.
• The electricity use in adventure playgrounds is high because they only have two utilities provided to them – electricity and water. Therefore, the playgrounds are heated with electricity. Electricity costs 12p Kwh compared to gas at 2.5p Kwh.
• The gas use is high in the Civic Centre through the winter months. It is turned off in April and turned on again in September. Also, the water is heated by electricity at the Civic Centre.
• There are little controls in the Civic Centre for water mainly because there is no point investing when the building will be out of use next year.
• Adeyfield adventure playground had high water usage in March 2015 because there was a break in and an outside tap was damaged meaning water was flowing out.
• Chaulden adventure playground has an undetected leak which cannot be found.

Councillor G Adshead had asked why there was such a high electricity usage at the Civic Centre in October.

N Turvey replied that there was demolition works taking place on site and the tools on site were powered by the Civic Centre’s electricity.

Councillor S Hearn said that small savings in several locations culminates in big savings for the Council.

Councillor Anderson questioned the financial benchmark of the project.

N Turvey said the urinal control in 13 sites has made a saving of just under £2,000 per site.

Councillor Anderson said it would be useful to quantify all savings and then asked if the leak in Gadebridge Park was detected.

N Turvey said it was a urinal control failure in Centre in the Park.

Councillor Marshall thanked the Committee for their interest in this topic and said it was important to improve and regulate.

Councillor G Adshead asked if N Turvey had any idea of the financial savings moving into the Forum.

N Turvey said she was unsure but would be monitoring and comparing figures.

J Doe said the estimated savings would be approximately £300,000 a year.

Outcome

The Strategic Planning and Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee noted the report.