Agenda item

The Leader was pleased to present our organisational Climate Change Plan to colleagues.

Climate Change was one of the defining global challenges of our generation and there was an urgent need for the world to decarbonise, to limit global temperature rise and avert the worst impacts of climate change.  There was also a need for the world to adapt to the impacts of climate change now and in the future.

As a globally responsible organisation, the Council declared an ecological and climate emergency in November staring that we would: 

Develop a clear Climate Change Organisational plan, in consultation with our citizens, for the next five years that would set out the actions we need to take to achieve this.

As part of the declaration, we also stated we would:

Reduce council carbon emissions to net zero carbon by 2030, and

Review the services the council provided to ensure they support the city’s journey to both net zero carbon and adapting to the impacts of climate change.

Our Climate Change Plan set out the themes, priorities, actions, and milestones that were needed to take over the next five years to achieve that commitment.

The plan was developed by staff and managers across the council and was scrutinised by the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee in October 2021.

A full public consultation took place in November and December 2021 where over 600 individual comments were received which have helped to shape the plan further.

The plan would be a key document for the Council going forward and would guide our direction of travel as an organisation in tackling the climate and nature emergency and their impacts. 

The Leader invited the Cabinet Member for Sustainable Development to comment.

Councillor Hughes mentioned that the Council had made a good start and had already made a substantial reduction in carbon emissions exceeding targets set out in our Carbon Management Plan.  This resulted in a 29% reduction of scope 1 and scope 2 emissions over the last three years. 

Councillor Hughes looked forward to further reductions as we continue to retrofit our council buildings, and further increase our electric fleet vehicles.

There was however, still much more that we needed to do as an organisation to mitigate and adapt to the nature and climate emergency and our organisational Climate Change Plan would set us on the right path for this journey to ensure we act on behalf of current and future generations.

As Cabinet Member with responsibility for carbon reduction and future generations, Councillor Hughes was pleased to see the fruition of this plan and would be monitoring progress closely and requesting regular progress updates to ensure that we continued to proceed at the pace that would be required.

Comments from Cabinet Members:

§  Councillor Davies added that as previous Cabinet Member for Sustainable Development, she was tasked by the Leader to take forward the plan at the beginning of the pandemic and since that time, the Climate Change Plan had developed immensely.  This was not only because of the support of Councillor Hughes but also because of the support of officers.  Councillor Davies thanked Tracy McKim, Head of People (Policy and Transformation), Emma Wakeham (Senior Policy and Partnership Officer) and Ross Cudlipp (Carbon Reduction Manager) for their involvement and hard work which had structured the development into a plan of action.  It was our corporate responsibility to take this forward, as this would have more of an impact with positive consequences.

§  Councillor Harvey felt it was a fascinating document to read which covered all the basis and could only get better.  Councillor Harvey added that it was down to us as a Council to make a stand and protect what we had in place for future generations.

§  Councillor Truman said that the document set out the targets which needed to be acted upon immediately as future generations would remember and judge the decisions made by us.

§  Councillor Jeavons mentioned it was a worthwhile report, highlighting the achievements of Newport City Council.  The prospect of changing the home to school transport for the future with the introduction of electric or hydrogen transport would be a fantastic achievement.

The Leader added that whether this was an individual change or on a larger scale, the Council needed to work hard to achieve this change for the future.  The Leader was incredibly proud of the Council and what it had achieved through this Climate Change Plan.

Decision:

Cabinet approved the attached draft council organisational Climate Change Plan.