Climate Change Planning, Cornwall Economic Recovery & Renewal Plan, and Carbon Neutral Cornwall

This week I attended Economy Scrutiny for Cllr Olivier who has had an operation.

The Climate Change Planning document was discussed. This is the first draft of it -https://democracy.cornwall.gov.uk/documents/s136488/Climate%20Emergency%20DPD%20-%20Appendix%202.pdf This will now go to Cabinet and there will be a full consultation afterwards. If it goes through then it should come in in early 2021. Not bad going for a planning document! If you are interested in the Climate Emergency response, this is definitely worth reading and commenting upon.

The other large document discussed at that meeting was the Cornwall Economic Recovery and Renewal Plan – report here -https://democracy.cornwall.gov.uk/documents/s136500/Economic%20Recovery%20and%20Renewal%20Plan.pdf and the draft plan here - https://democracy.cornwall.gov.uk/documents/s136501/Economic%20Recovery%20and%20Renewal%20Plan%20-%20Appendix%201.pdf. This drew some criticism from councillors on some of the ‘command and control’ language. The consultation for the public can be found here - https://letstalk.cornwall.gov.uk/the-cornwall-we-want

We then had a briefing about the Council’s ‘Carbon Neutral Ambitions’ on Friday. The interesting thing about much of this is that the Council, in pursuing a Climate Emergency agenda (encouraging staff to remain working from home, stopping printing, commuting and business miles) is moving in the other direction from the Government who appear to be encouraging people to get back to their offices and workplaces from next month. The Kate Raworth style ‘decision making wheel’ is being rolled out for more council decisions. I suggested it is also adopted for when the council chooses contractors. I am discussing how to progress my Local Spend motion with the Cabinet member and key officer next week.
There are ambitious plans to retrofit Cornwall Housing homes, but so far the money has only been promised from government to ‘zero carbon’ 83 homes. With the hope of a less comprehensive retrofit on a further 600 homes. Still nowhere near where we need to get to considering how much our housing contributes to our carbon footprint. They are also looking at a biomethane pilot on County Farms and renewable energy. Nothing near as bold as ambitious as we need unfortunately, or that we would have with Labour’s Green New Deal.
For more info look at the ‘Carbon Neutral Cornwall Hive’ here - https://letstalk.cornwall.gov.uk/carbon-neutral-cornwall

To contact me – jayne.kirkham@cornwallcouncillors.org.uk