Agenda item

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 be carried out at the rate the funding was made available with government funding only meeting 20% of retrofit costs for social housing.

·       The Council had a tree planting strategy which focussed on planting trees in the right place at the right time, ensuring that it followed the biodiversity and maintenance and management regime. The plan was to plant 600 trees each season between October and March each year.

·       The Council had planted 525 trees this year, the holes and trees were in place and the Council was on track to plant 600 trees.

·       With regards to the net figure of trees in the borough, the Council had to fell trees for a variety of reason including damaged trees which had died, as well as trees that grew inappropriately and damaged homes.

·       The Council fell between 300 to 400 trees a year some of which were self-seeded and had grown by themselves.

·       The Council’s website was updated every year to indicate the number of trees planted and felled yearly. There was net growth in trees in the borough every year.

·       The legislation on Tree Protection Orders only applied to trees on private land that were visible from the public highway that had some public amenity, if the tree was not visible from the road it had no protection. The issue of TPO’s had previously been considered by this Committee, Camden was one of the many boroughs lobbying for more protections in this space to try to ensure trees and gardens were protected.

·       With regards to community engagement the Climate Action Plan came from the Citizens Assembly which was created in 2019.

·       The Assembly was demographically representative of everyone living in Camden, a recommendation of the Citizens Assembly was that a Citizen’s Panel should be created which still existed and met quarterly. This was also demographically representative of people living in Camden and helped guide the development of the Climate Action Plan.

·       The Council also had projects and engaged with residents in Sommers Town, Future Neighbourhoods were involved in the work associated with the action plan, the Council was also hosting an event on 2^nd March in Kentish Town bringing together citizens to celebrate the work being done to combat the climate crisis.

·       With regards to the recommendation from the Cabinet Advisor’s report on promoting green space and biodiversity, the Council was bringing all the information on green spaces and biodiversity together.

·       The Council worked closely with Power North, the Community Energy Group in Camden, installed solar panels on a number of buildings including some leisure centres, St Anne’s Church and also had a number of schools in the pipeline which it was hoped would progress in the next few months.

·       There was a climate crisis webpage that signposted people to everything relating to the Council’s policies on climate action.

·       The Council was working with Agro to deliver the Metrofit Support Scheme for Camden which involved the opportunity for homeowners in Camden to receive a subsidised plan towards retrofitting their homes. The aim was to make it as fair as possible and was opened up to households across the borough.

·       The Council was also working with community groups to deliver community events to explain retrofit and provide opportunities for residents to ask questions.

·       The Camden Climate Fund was also available, providing £5,000 grant match funding to support the installation of energy efficient measures.

·       The report described all the projects the Council had been involved in as well as some of the barriers faced, in particular the retrofit agenda and the financial restraints which was a huge challenge for the Council.

·       Every major planning application in Camden was assessed against flood risk. With policies tighter in areas known as local flood risk zones. Any property in these locations was subject to enhanced planning policy in relation to flood risk.

·       The Council could not control everything relating to flood risk because some of the infrastructure was maintained by other organisations such as Thames Water.

·       The Council carefully monitored air quality through measures such as Healthy Street Schemes, all these monitoring reports were available on-line.

·       There appeared to be an increase carbon levels post pandemic as people started to go back into the office which saw an increase in energy consumption across Camden.

Officers were thanked for their work, time taken to attend the meeting and their responses.

RESOLVED –

THAT the report be noted.