The Council is asked to note any statements made by Members of the Cabinet (Portfolio Holders).
Councillors may then ask questions of the Portfolio Holders on their statements.
Minutes:
Action on Climate Change Update
The Environment & Public Space Portfolio Holder (Councillor Talbot) made the following statement:-
“Dear Fellow Members,
Herewith the updated situation with regard to our Climate Change objectives driving towards the Net Carbon Zero policy adopted by Council last year.
You will remember that earlier I reported on our efforts to have Solar Panels fitted to roofs of Council houses along with battery storage units, fed from the individual panels. Discussion have been taking place with an organisation who claims they can supply, on a lease arrangement, solar panels and batteries for our Council houses. Our officers are not yet convinced that what is promised, can in fact be delivered, but we will have to decide one way or another whether this is go or no – go!
The next step is to commission The Association for Public
Service Excellence (APSE) to look at solar more generally
for us, including the feasibility of a Solar Farm in the District
and other options for our roofs.
Tim R. Clarke suggested to me that if we can deliver on the roofs
of Tendring’s Council houses,
then that is still the preferred option, as it also helps to
addresses fuel poverty. If this comes to fruition it would also
mean that consideration of a TDC solar farm can be deferred to
later.
There is financial help available through the ‘Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund’–. The fact is that we have an opportunity to bid into a £160 million fund to improve the energy performance of our council houses. Andy White’s team are working on this and in addition to insulation and heating improvements, it could include solar panels and batteries. Funding these through a grant will obviously be better than ’leasing them’ so this may prove to be the direction to go in. I am sure we all wish success to the team working on this.
Lee Heley on secondment from ECC and a Corporate Director, has special responsibility for Climate Change in Tendring and is supporting a new Climate Change Project Group which will include both knowledgeable Members, such as, I hope, Alan Coley, who was Chairman of the original working party, and other Assistant Directors This group’s job will be to drive the projects and strategy. It is also intended to form an officer group for those with an interest in Climate Change, even though the subject is not part of their job role. We are hoping that such a group of enthusiastic individuals, can help to drive change and thinking within teams and services and come up with good ideas.
Data collection – we are almost complete on our data collection for our carbon emissions for the 2020/21 financial year and Tim has commissioned APSE Energy to undertake the analysis for us. The 2019/20 data had been submitted to APSE for analysis, but they (and now us) have identified some missing data that we are trying to get hold of. This perhaps highlights the difficulties we have in gathering accurate data from our various utilities suppliers and then putting enough resource into checking it. This will be a topic of discussion at forthcoming meetings.
All the above colleagues is preparing for actions yet to materialise, but just to finish this report on a high. One of our objectives is to reduce and then abandon ‘Single use Plastics’. The Princess Theatre has stopped the use of plastic cups last Sunday the 12th. Instead, the theatre will provide audience members with a reusable cup and special bins for them to put their cups in at the exit. The use of these reusable cups will be introduced this coming Friday the 17th.
This action in the Princes’ Theatre also gives ammunition to our food safety teams when talking to business about their use of single use plastics, and can stress it’s not just a case of ‘Do as I say’ but a factual ‘do as I’m doing’.”
Councillor Talbot then responded to questions put to him on his statement by Councillors I J Henderson, Calver and Scott.