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City Council Environment Winchester

Winchester City Council carbon management programme – time for fresh commitment

Back in March 2006, Winchester City Council, then led by the Lib Dems, put forward a carbon management programme which committed the City Council to a 50% reduction in emissions by 2012.

It had clear targets.

It had a clear baseline measurement to compare against.

And it laid out a draft implementation plan to kick off the process of delivering those targets.

The Conservatives took over control of the council a few weeks later.. and since then – silence.

Their recently published strategy paper – Live for the Future: Tackling Climate Change – and the accompanying action plan – make no reference to these previously agreed targets – nor do they set any targets to replace them. Indeed, one of its most disappointing features is that the strategy paper sets almost no targets for anything.

So, while it’s good that the Council is thinking about CO2 levels for the District as a whole, it’s not enough. They need to start by putting their own house in order.

Rather than scrapping, sidelining or ignoring their CO2 target, the Council should be strengthening it.

Lib Dem-led Eastleigh Borough Council is aiming for Carbon Neutrality: I’d love to see Winchester City Council do the same.

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Chris Huhne Nick Clegg

Energised and optimistic

What an incredibly close result!  After much thought, I’d backed Chris, but it was a close decision.

I’ve worked closely with both Nick and Chris on a range of issues – with Nick on our crime campaign earlier this year – and with Chris on a range of local issues, as well as packaging, the environment and post offices. I saw them at their first hustings in Newbury. I saw them both in successive weeks at the Winchester and Meon Valley Annual Dinners. I watched almost every appearance on TV. And then I chaired a meeting of them both at the Tower Arts Centre in Winchester.

Almost none of this made the final decision easier. If anything, the whole process increased my respect for both of them.

I remain a fan of Chris. His leadership of our environment team has been an inspiration. He has put us miles ahead of the other parties in this area. His boldness, his ability to lead the agenda – to be a rainmaker – is a huge asset to the party and I very much hope that he will be a very close and core member of Nick’s team.

However, the last few weeks, and Nick’s first 24 hours as Leader, have also made me confident that Nick will be a great leader for the Liberal Democrats. I’m excited about his ideas for giving people more power over their lives and the public services that affect them and for finding new ways to connect with voters. I saw his real passion at the candidate meeting in Winchester for social justice, for improving education, for an effective and humane criminal justice system and for tackling the ramshackle and failing British constitution.

And he’s already delivering. I thought he was great on Newsnight (despite an especially fatuous line of questioning from Jeremy Paxman). At a time when Brown is once again in denial (Crises will be forgotten – Brown), Nick’s candour and honesty during the course of today’s interviews has been a breath of fresh air. It’s too soon to know what impact he’s having on voters, but he’s certainly energised me.

Categories
Elections Romsey

Good result in Romsey: Tory vote collapses behind Lib Dem victory

Good news from the Cupernham by-election in Romsey on my friend Len Gates’s blog: a 7% swing from the Conservatives to the Lib Dems and a victory for Karen Dunleavey:

Candidate Votes % vs. last time
Karen Dunleavey (LD) 793 59.7% +4.1%pts
C. Lewis (Con) 460 34.6% -9.8%pts
B. McCabe (UKIP) 73 5.5% +5.5%pts
Categories
City Council Environment Winchester

City Council Climate Change Plan: an embarrassment to Winchester

Back in February, Keith House set the ambitious goal of making Lib Dem-led Eastleigh Borough Council a zero carbon council by 2012. This builds on Eastleigh’s climate change action plan launched in 2005.

Given the recent coverage of Winchester’s environmental footprint, you’d hope that our City Council would be thinking in similarly ambitious terms.

Last Wednesday, the Conservatives in Winchester agreed their plans for Winchester City Council (‘Live for the Future: Tackling Climate Change‘).

And their target for CO2 reductions by Winchester City Council?

They haven’t set one. There is no target for CO2 reductions by Winchester City Council in the climate change strategy they agreed last Wednesday!

The document is an embarrassment.

It sets one overall target – to reduce CO2 emissions for the overall district by 30% by 2012 (even though much of what needs to be done to achieve this is outside their control and this target is barely more than the Government required minimum).

There are some specific targets on housing – although these are mostly inherited from the Lib Dem administration or mandated by government.

And then… nothing.

The officers have come up with a long list of useful ideas, but there is a complete absence of any serious overall framework and of any political commitment or leadership.

Almost all the feedback they have received has been fobbed off with waffle.

Overall, there is:

  • No target for any City Council activities.
  • No target for Renewable Energy.
  • No target for Transport.
  • No target for Adaptation Planning.
  • No target for community involvement.

The one encouraging decision from the Council was to provide some grant funding to Winchester Action on Climate Change. I’ve been involved with WinACC since the initial meeting back in July and working as part of the Communications team to get the WinACC website ready for launch. (One of my contributions was the abbreviation ‘WinACC’, after it turned out that the WACC web addresses were taken by the World Association for Christian Communication and the Wichita Chamber of Commerce). It’s good to see all the work by WinACC volunteers (from all parties and none), especially the Convenor Robert Hutchison, recognised with some funding.

But, funding WinACC is not a substitute for serious leadership on climate change from the city council. And sadly, that is now proven to be seriously lacking.

Categories
Alresford Housing LDF Planning Winchester

Consultation. What consultation?

The City Council has announced their consultation plans for Winchester City Council’s Local Development Framework.

This is a hugely important paper for the future of the Winchester area. To quote the paper itself, it covers:

what need(s) to change across the District over the next twenty years

and covers:

  • The broad location and balance of development across the authority’s area,
  • Management of the housing supply,
  • The balance between employment and housing
  • The delivery of affordable housing

Despite the critical importance of this strategy, it is currently proposed to have only two consultation meetings in the new Winchester constituency – one in Alresford and one in the new Discovery Centre. And the one in the Discovery Centre is in a room that contains fewer than 180 people (or 120 people if it’s organised for a workshop as planned).

The proposed consultation in Alresford makes sense, but the proposed consultation for the rest of the area around the city of Winchester is completely inadequate.

For perspective, over 450 people turned up to discuss the Tower Arts Centre in the Guildhall and over 200 people turned up to Littleton Village Hall to discuss the closure of their post office. Over 100 people turned up to discuss the Oliver’s Battery village design statement!

The proposals on the table (including an effective assumption in favour of developing on Barton Farm, Abbots Barton and Pitt Manor, and including possible further expansion north and east of the current Barton Farm site, on Teg Down, on Bushfield Camp and further into Pitt Manor Farm) are going to be hugely controversial across the city and also have a potentially huge impact in areas outside the city, such as Oliver’s Battery, Badger Farm, Kings Worthy and Compton.

There’s also a problem that not every option has been properly examined. Some villages are asking for faster expansion than proposed in the paper so that they can continue to support their local school. And important issues such as the Micheldever ‘eco-town’ are not being given the scrutiny they deserve.

In light of this, the proposal to have a single meeting in the Winchester area, in a room that holds 120 people, to discuss the future of the Winchester area over the next 20 years, is a total joke.