Agenda item

Considered –

The written report of the Chief Executive to update the committee on the introduction of climate change impact assessment into the decision-making processes of North Yorkshire County Council.

Deborah Hugill presented the report. 

Deborah Hugill explained that climate change impacts in respect of the county council primarily focused on property and transport in view of those being where the largest emissions were that could be directly controlled at this stage.  She also referred in the report to the carbon reduction programme, Beyond Carbon, which was now being established as part of the Beyond 2020 change management structure.  There was also a one off £1 million fund for pump priming and development of business cases within the current budget as well.

The climate change impact assessment tool was introduced to not just look at the major aspects of work that the county council was doing, but also to take into account the impact that every decision that it made had upon making potential changes to the climate in the future.  The impact tool was based upon one used by Devon County Council. This was chosen because it was felt to be useable whilst being sufficiently detailed.

Deborah Hugill referred to the impact assessment tool at appendix one and the guidance at Appendix 2.  She explained that there was no intention that the impact assessment tool would replace more detailed statutory environmental assessments.

Whilst there was no legal requirement at the moment, the county council had examined what other councils were doing and most were in a similar position; all were trying to get a handle on how their decisions were making an impact and tweaking those decisions to ensure that we could mitigate any impact as much as possible., The tool was implemented last year as a pilot and then rolled out across the Council from August.

The county council’s democratic services department had incorporated the requirement  into their report template so that staff producing reports were prompted to use it.

Deborah Hugill explained that she was getting copies of many of the completed reports to scrutinise.  Overall the use of the template was most widespread within Business and Environmental Services Directorate as staff found it easier to see the impact of physical infrastructure rather than services related to people, even though there were impacts.

Climate change assessments were also expected to be undertaken in relation to the Beyond 2020 programme management projects and workstreams.  The County Council was also working with the LEP, North Yorkshire district councils and the City of York Council to develop a carbon literacy training program, with the intention of it rolling out to the different local authorities in the autumn.

The intention of the training was to help more people to understand the issues because all staff were contributing towards climate change and so needed to take responsibility for all the services that the county council delivered.

Deborah Hugill concluded by noting that the climate change impact assessment tool was a new concept for many staff, despite the fact that many people were very much more clued up on climate change and environmental issues than previously, but it was a new exercise for people to have to fill in and so it would take a while to embed, as did the equality impact assessment process.

Members made the following comments:

The Chairman noted that there were hurdles to surpass in relation to take-up but in his view the impact on climate change needed to be part of any decision that the council took.  This should be a mandatory consideration as it would be for financial impact or equality and diversity.  He noted though that the council was moving in the right direction backed up with the training listed in the report.  The training should perhaps be mandatory but clearly more discussion was required before a decision was made about that.

County Councillor David Jeffels asked if schools could play a greater role in this agenda, particularly in relation to primary schools, noting that it was usually easier to influence behavioural change amongst primary school aged children.  Deborah Hugill replied that there was a service through the county council’s traded service to work with schools to engage them to reduced their carbon footprint.  She referred to the ‘Powerdown Pete’ initiative backed up by a website and resources.  Grants were also being used to improve the fabric of school buildings to reduce their carbon emissions.

County Councillor Paul Haslam said he was pleased that the council now had a climate change impact assessment tool but had some concerns.  The training in the use of the climate impact assessment tool should be mandatory for all staff.  In relation to the budget of £1 million towards the environment, this year the council needed to be using a portion of that money to accelerate the programme.  A sense of urgency was needed and if this had been Covid-19, actions would have been done immediately, even though a lot more people were going to die earlier as a result of climate change.  He also queried why the council was putting its own carbon literacy course together when there were already good examples available.  He concluded by noting that cultural change would take time but felt that the council had not engaged with the agenda quickly enough and so there was perhaps a need to look back at what lessons were learned so that the process could be sped up.  He said that he was concerned that staff had not got to grips with the exercise.  He noted that some of the responses had been done in a tick box fashion and staff were not always sure which box to tick.  He had examples which he would be happy to pass on to Deborah Hugill.  He noted that there was a need for reports to be inspected.   He said the climate impact assessment tool needed to be part of the decarbonisation strategy, and was not sure from reading the report if this was the case. 

Deborah Hugill replied that she agreed in relation to utilising the budget to move forward as quickly as possible.  Pump priming funding was important in order to be able to lever in additional resources.  In relation to the training, she replied that she had not been involved in the carbon literacy training package being put together so did not know the rationale for the decision to go with a specific training course as opposed to adopting one in existence.  It would however provide the opportunity for the county council to be able to brand it with what it was doing, which would be useful for staff to know.  She said that she agreed about the lessons learned from embedding equality and diversity, and sharing best practice was important as all local authorities were aiming for the same objective.  She said she shared the concern about the potential for the form to be only seen as a tick box exercise and that could be because people did not understand fully the issues but would be happy to have a conversation with County Councillor Paul Haslam about individual reports where he had concerns.  She noted that there was potential for this to be a topic at a senior management seminar and would take that back to see if this could be actioned.   

Resolved –

That the Committee notes the progress in implementing climate change impact

assessments and that the suggestions for further improvement of the process outlined above are taken into account.