CLIMATE strategy at BCP Council may have been knocked off course by Covid – but is now improving, councillors have been told.

A draft strategy and action plan are expected to be approved soon, although many acknowledged that there are still gaps in the authority’s climate programme which need fixing.

Net zero portfolio holder Mike Greene denied a claim from Cllr Judy Butt that “not much had been done over the past four years” and more effort needed to be made to nail down what the council was going to do and persuade the public to engage with the proposals.

“This is really, really serious and we need people to be onboard…is it (the plan) feasible? Are we going to land this?” she said, making a plea for the council to improve on what she described as the ‘golden thread of public engagement’.

Cllr Greene said that while it was likely not quite enough had been done to get on the trajectory the council wanted, real progress had been made, including some actions, and he welcomed the council working on the issue in a cross-party way.

He said the work already done would give the council the structure and discipline to proceed and, if not world-beating, its plan was better than most councils had achieved and could be considered an exemplar.

Earlier in the meeting Cllr Vikki Slade complained of a lack of up to date information on the council’s website concerning climate change, including incorrect claims about the council’s own energy use; a lack of engagement with ‘expert’ groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, and what she said was a weakness in planning policy.

She said that Bath and North East Somerset Council had managed to get a policy in its Local Plan that all new build properties had to be carbon neutral, yet BCP seemed to be not discussing the idea.

Cllr Slade also complained about a lack of information about an area-wide Climate Partnership which was expected to have been launched by now.

Cllr Greene denied claims about a lack of public engagement, adding that he had doubts about including ‘green’ groups in partnership meetings, fearing it would dissuade key partners, especially the big energy users, from attending.

He told an overview and scrutiny committee that he hoped to have a ‘leaders’ group discussing climate policy with the council, including the University, big employers such as Lush and companies like J P Morgan, with a second group drawn from a wider community, which could include the ‘green’ groups.

Poole councillor Andy Hadley said that while the council’s strategy and action plan had improved the authority should not shy away from warning people there was a real risk if climate and ecological change was not soon tackled.

“We haven’t been out there pushing this enough.. the world is burning, we’re getting more extreme weather and there are risks to life in our area if we don’t change what we do. People need to hear that,” he said.

Cllr Mike Brooke said some of the language in the council documents was not strong enough – using phrases like “sufficiently taking account of climate change’. He said ‘fully taking awareness of climate change’ would be a much better statement of intent, if the council was to be taken seriously.

He was also concerned that the cost, and further impact, of any coastal work had not been thoroughly worked out: “often we do work on the coast and it has a knock on effect somewhere else,” he said, suggesting that the whole coastal strategy needed to be re-examined.

Other calls were made for more emphasis on food policy, better drainage and widescale electric vehicle charge points to be installed throughout the area.

A further discussion on the council’s climate programme is expected at the next Cabinet meeting on March 8th.