NORTH YORKSHIRE COUNCIL

TRANSPORT, ECONOMY, ENVIRONMENT AND ENTERPRISE OVERVIEW AND SCRUTINY COMMITTEE

10 April 2024

Annual Report of the Climate Change Champion – Councillor Paul Haslam

Championing mitigation of climate change is not purely about the planet, but about people, their health, wellbeing, ability to work and play. It’s about social justice and “levelling up”, not just across the country but across society. We know climate impacts on different sectors of the population in different ways.

In the first year of this new role, I focused on several key things.

1. The drawing up of a job description that included the key things that councillors and or the council can do if so minded. See attached appendix A - Climate Change Champion. It is hoped that this forms the template for the development of this role. I made it clear that this includes biodiversity and all that it encompasses.

· It reminds all Councillors that they are all climate champions now and that we, each, can make a difference

· To support Scrutiny Chairs to lead scrutiny of policies to ensure it is in line with the Council’s climate change goals

· Be inquisitive

· To engage in policy formulation

· Effectively engage with public to get more feedback

· To focus on the ability of the Council to convene meetings of the appropriate parties to solve environmental issues

· To Champion local environmental groups

· To Champion the SDGs where applicable.

2. Celebrating wonderful initiatives: I have visited many eco projects across North Yorkshire to select, sadly, only one winner. They were all winners, as was our county.

There are many projects,  from Resurrected Bites that uses waste food to serve up warm delicious, nutritious meals, to tree planting projects, to repair shops that all play a part on this journey to better use resource and protect and enhance the environment.

In the coming year I would like to see 4 prizes.

· For Schools (we only had one school enter this year)

· For Community (this year’s prize)

· For Business

· For Farming

3. Influencing: I put together a briefing pack on How the local plan, the local transport plan, the economic strategy, and the environmental / Climate /change strategy can work together to help reduce our carbon footprint across buildings, transport and farming which is proving hard to do. This was circulated to councillors through the ACC network, where in many cases I was able to present the work in person or online. I am very grateful to the Chairs of the ACCs that facilitated this. The work had been checked and verified by officers to ensure the document was not unintentionally erroneous (see appendix B). I have also called for the New Local Plan to be delivered faster than 2028 as each property that is built to higher standards is one less to retrofit!

4. Education and learning: I attended the UK100 Climate Change Academy which consisted of three residential weekends working with other councillors (from across the country) to understand how councils can use their powers and influence to enable the journey to net zero.

UK100 | Network of highly ambitious local government leaders for cleaner, more powerful communities

I have recently reviewed a new 2 half day online Carbon Literacy course that I am recommending be made available to all councillors.

5. Working with the officers: I have worked closely with Michael Leah and his team to promote various initiatives and engage with the North Yorkshire Climate Coalition on a regular basis.

· Monitoring of carbon footprints and plans to mitigate those emissions are now underway and should start to be delivered this year.

· An information exchange for all environmental groups to share best practice, seek new knowledge rather than reinvent the wheel, share resources, seek volunteers by geography and or project type is being developed.

I would request that this committee support my suggestion for four prizes for environmental / climate change initiatives even if sometimes mitigating climate change is a co-benefit of an action for social good. The prizes would be a £1000 that I am prepared to fund from locality grant but it’s much more about the associated kudos that these groups will receive from their efforts.

Unfortunately, I am unable to attend today’s meeting but am happy to provide written responses to questions sent before or raised at the meeting.

Appendices

Appendix A - Climate Champion Job Description

Appendix B - ACC 24 briefing pack

Councillor Paul Haslam - Climate Change Champion

March 2024