Council must aim higher on the environment
RECENTLY West Berks Council published its draft environment strategy delivery plan and opened a public consultation on it.
Compared with its forerunner, the environment strategy, it is a worryingly disappointing document. The publication of the strategy document followed WBC’s declaration of a climate emergency.
The council had acknowledged that it should provide the leadership necessary to reduce all emissions across West Berkshire, not just their own which are a tiny fraction of the whole.
And they had put figures on it, specifically a target by 2030 of a reduction from 5.8 tonnes CO2 (or equivalent) per head of population to around two tonnes per person, which they believed could be offset so as to reach net zero.
This reduction is the core of the strategy and it’s a major task.
The strategy contains five sections but only the first, Carbon Neutral by 2030, specifically responds to the climate emergency.
The Delivery Plan takes the five headings and puts actions against them.
But in doing so it dilutes the essential core objective of reducing emissions per head of population.
Of the 25 actions in the section on achieving carbon neutral by 2030 only five are on activities to reduce overall emissions.
What has happened to the focus on the emergency?
What does this say to us?
To me, it says that WBC are only going through the motions with their environmental obligations and they lack the ambition to ensure they deliver carbon neutrality.
They will do what they can within their budget and their other constraints, without rocking the boat. Well that’s not enough.
Part of the answer to that question is in actions in the Responsible Economic Growth section that relate to buildings standards, and cross refer to the Local plan.
WBC has recently consulted on its Draft Local Plan, the document that has 2,500 houses for Thatcham at its heart.
We have been promised that those houses will be designed and built to high environmental standards, but when you lift the lid on that, you find it’s not the case.
If WBC were serious about their environmental delivery plan, they would be determined that all new housing would be built to carbon neutral, or Passivhaus, standards from now.
Only then might they have a fighting chance of achieving their 2030 net zero target.
Instead, the Local Plan sets a three-star standard (out of a maximum of fivestar) to 2028, followed by four-star from 2029.
In neither period is there a requirement to be carbon neutral or an aspiration to reach five-star quality homes.
I know that many people who care about climate change do so because they don’t want their grandchildren and great-grandchildren to inherit a planet devoid of much of the natural diversity that we enjoy now.
No-one can formally represent those grandchildren and great-grandchildren now, at the time when they most need it, so we all need to.
That’s why this is a time for bold decisions, for change, for challenging the status quo which is failing us and for ambitious leadership.
One change that is clearly necessary is for WBC to elevate the status of its environment portfolio so that it stands above the other more traditionally ‘senior’ portfolios such as finance and planning.
When central government requires more houses built and tries to encourage developers by reducing building standards, WBC needs to be pushing back, demanding higher standards and, if challenged by developers, taking them to court.
It has a duty to those future generations, as we all do.
As a start, it should re-write its Environment Strategy Delivery Plan so as to give a clear focus to those actions that are designed to reduce per capita carbon emissions so as to achieve carbon neutral by 2030.
Secondly, it should be very clear with its planning directorate and planning staff that they should be as ambitious as possible in the drive to secure Passivhaus standards for all new housing from now, not from some future date.
We residents, and future generations, deserve that as a minimum. RICHARD FOSTER
Chair, West Berkshire Green Exchange