Venue: Council Chamber, Town Hall, Judd Street, London WC1H 9JE. View directions
Contact: Sola Odusina Email: Sola.odusina@camden.gov.uk
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Apologies Minutes: Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Sharon Hardwick.
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Declarations by Members of Statutory Disclosable Pecuniary Interests, Compulsory Registerable Non-Pecuniary Interests and Voluntary Registerable Non-Pecuniary Interests in Matters on this Agenda Members will be asked to declare any pecuniary, non-pecuniary and any other interests in respect of items on the agenda.
Minutes: Councillor Kirk declared in relation to item 6 (Climate Action Plan) that he held some shares in Power North, the Community Energy Group based that worked with the Council to install solar panels on a number of buildings in Camden.
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Announcements (If any) Webcasting of the Meeting
The Chair to announce the following: “In addition to the rights by law that the public and press have to record and film public meetings, I would like to remind everyone present that this meeting will be broadcast live by the Council to the Internet and can be viewed on our website for six months after the meeting. After that time, webcasts are archived and can be made available on DVD upon request.
If you are seated in the room it is likely that the Council’s cameras will capture your image and you are deemed to be consenting to being filmed and to the use of those images and sound recordings for webcasting and/or training purposes.”
Any other announcements
Minutes: The Chair announced that the meeting was broadcast live by the Council to the Internet and could be viewed on the website for six months after the meeting. After that time, webcasts were archived and could be made available on DVD upon request. Those who were seated in the Council Chamber or participated via Teams were deemed to have consented to their contributions being recorded and broadcast and to the use of those sound recordings and images for webcasting and/or training purposes.
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Deputations (if any) Requests to speak at the Committee on a matter within its terms of reference must be made in writing to the clerk named on the front of this agenda by 5pm two working days before the meeting.
Additional documents:
Minutes: The Chair informed members that three deputations had been received and accepted, copies of the deputation statements were included in the supplementary agenda.
The 3 deputations related to item 7 Camden Strategy Annual Update 2023 and were from Ben Pearson accompanied by Rachel Mawby of Save the London Motorcycling Group, John Chamberlain from Camden Cycling Campaign and David Harrison from London Living Streets. The deputations would be heard when that item was reached on the agenda.
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Notification of any items of business that the chair decides to take as urgent Minutes: There was none.
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Climate Action Plan - Annual Review 2022/23
Additional documents:
Minutes: Consideration was given to the report of the Director of Environment and Sustainability.
Members made the following comments:
· There was lots of good stuff in the report, there were 40 actions crossed off and 6 opened in the course of the year does that reflect a reduction in the Council’s ambitions. · It was always good to receive feedback on the progress the Council had made in achieving its goals. · It was a very good report.
In response to questions, the Head of Sustainability, Air Quality and Energy Harold Garner, Sustainability Officer Maggie Tappa and Richard Bradbury (Director of Environment and Sustainability) made the following points:
· There was work underway to decarbonise the Council’s fleet of vehicles led by the Camden Accessible Travel team. They had just completed a feasibility study with the Carbon Trust Energy Saving Trust, which was looking at the fleet as a whole and the transition that could be made within the budgets that were available to get it to zero emission by 2030. · A lot of the actions in the Action Progress Update were continuing actions, there were a lot of actions still open indicating that there was a lot of work going on. The additions represented developments from the original action plan. · The plan was developed through the Citizen’s Assembly model with a lot of the ideas and suggestions coming from residents and what they wanted rather than what would lead to the biggest carbon savings. · A lot of the individual actions were difficult to quantify in terms of carbon savings for instance a lot of the work the Council did with community groups was around promoting and sharing ideas around climate action and facilitating change, which was quite difficult to quantify in terms of carbon savings. However, in terms of engaging people on climate change and getting them thinking about acting against the climate crisis, was a different way of measuring it. · What the Council had done was to introduce a number of metrics which had been developed with the Citizens Assembly Panel and which was felt to be reflective of the main pieces of work across 4 themes of which most importantly were carbon emission outcomes and borough wide emissions. There were strong outcome focussed metrics to guide the work done. · The Council was installing air source heat pumps, but not so many ground source heat pumps due to constraints with space. The Council had delivered a few key projects across its corporate estates recently, such as Swiss Cottage Library which had a £3.7m retrofit of the whole building which included air source heat pumps and Acland Burlghley School. · The Council had secured £10m from the Government’s Public Sector Carbonisation Scheme and Social Housing Retrofit Scheme, to retrofit about 350 social housing properties. Funding was also available from the Camden Climate Fund to support residents with heat pump installations. This had generated a lot of interest from residents. · There were still a lot of Camden properties left to retrofit however this could only ... view the full minutes text for item 6. |
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Camden Transport Strategy Annual Update 2023
The Camden Transport Strategy (CTS) was adopted by the Council in April 2019. In December 2022 a report to Cabinet reviewed progress in delivering the CTS to that point, and sought and received approval for a new 3 year Delivery Plan covering the period 2022/23 to 2024/25.
This report summarises progress and challenges in delivering that Plan in 2023 (calendar year) and briefly highlights the main activities taking place in 2024. It also includes an assessment of the extent to which the Council is meeting targets (both strategic and local level) set out in the CTS and risks/mitigations to future progress.
Additional documents: Minutes: Consideration was given to the deputation statements referred to in Item 4 above.
The following responses were given by the deputees to members questions:
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Use of Pesticides in the Public Realm
Minutes: Consideration was given to the report of the Director of Recreation.
Oliver Jones (Director of Recreation) Richard Bradbury (Director of Environment and Sustainability) and Darrell Abercrombie, (Green Spaces Operations Manager) made the following comments in response to members questions:
· With regards to whether the Council proactively encouraged residents to weed their area like other boroughs such as Lambeth, the Council engaged with local groups and those interested in Parks on how they could keep the parks tidy, how they could plant, as well as what they could do to assist with weeding the environment. · The Council had the infrastructure to support engagement with the local community and worked with a lot of Community Groups such as think and do the Climate Action Network. Through these various networks Streets collaborated with the Council on a whole range of issues such as the spray free approach as well as with communities that wanted to plant tree pits which attracted a lot of weeds. · The local work done across the Council via various departments such as the Sustainability Team, Environmental Services, The Trees Team, helped the Council understand what the community wanted in the local neighbourhoods and to provide that support appropriately. · Rather than distributing leaflets like some other Councils, Camden collaborated with the community in a more focussed way through its networks. · Camden had a good balanced integrated weed management approach. The Council had some aspects of what other boroughs such as Hackney did in its approach. · Camden tried to manage the risk between what was suitable and a somewhat grey area where there was no clearly defined right approach. · Considerable research had been conducted on behalf of Cardiff City Council to determine the climate impact and the right approach. The analysis indicated that alternative approaches had considerable side effects and biodiversity impacts. · In relation to gardens, the Council does not spray herbicide on a planted area, the only time herbicide was used was to tackle invasive species. · Although Officers were not aware of the situation in Belgium with regards to statements about the eradication of pesticides, in France the bold statement did not quite match the reality. Organisations when making bold statements about absence of pesticides, were in reality mostly referring to a subset of an area rather than the whole area. · In relation to use of pesticides, the Council provided an accurate depiction of what it was doing and how it was dealing with the situation and managing the risk. · It would be ideal to have a situation where the Council did not have to use chemicals, however this was not the case and the Council continued to look at alternatives and best practise. · The scientific report from the EU was confusing, the guidance provided was not clear. · Managing green spaces required a wholistic approach and one aspect of this was conservation led maintenance which was introduced by the Council over 7 years ago, this was aimed at improving the soil as well as using manual techniques to improve the ... view the full minutes text for item 8. |
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Report of the Executive Director Supporting Communities.
This paper provides an update on the work programme for the Committee for the 2023/24 municipal year and tracks actions from previous meetings.
Minutes: Consideration was given to the report of the Executive Director Supporting Communities.
RESOLVED –
THAT the Work Programme be noted.
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Any Other Business that the Chair Considers Urgent Minutes: There was none.
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