Climate strategy and our future together

In December, we witnessed unanimous decisions by cabinet to adopt the Environment & Climate Strategy 20202025; endorse the Single Use Plastic Strategy; and formally approve for referendum the Windsor Neighbourhood Plan whose community-supported vision places significant emphasis on open space and green infrastructure.

Alongside other key existing and emerging ones, these documents clearly confirm a recognition that our natural environment is the fundamental context within which all other priorities necessarily sit and operate.

Two RBWM consultations taking place early in the new year – on the Draft Budget 2021/22 and the proposals supported by £335k of additional Government Active Travel Scheme funding – will have potentially crucial bearing on the achievement of the council’s climate, environment, health, social and economic aspirations.

Public responses and fair, insightful interpretation of them will be critical to the borough’s complexly balanced decisionmaking at the heart of these and all relevant issues.

Thanks to the crucial work and key contributions of numerous individuals and organisations including officers, lead members and others across the borough and beyond, RBWM’s vital thinking embodied in the Environment and Climate Strategy has at last been established.

The council should now be given our encouragement to consistently apply this constructive ‘wayfinding’ framework – for in no small measure, the quality of our collective future will depend on it.

SUSY SHEARER Bailey Close

Windsor