Agenda item

INFORMATION NOTE OF THE POLICY & STRATEGY TEAM LEADER

This note highlights the topic for this Panel meeting as well as a Council Activity Update, and Action Tracker Review (at Appendix A) for the Cabinet Panel on the Environment.

Officers from the Policy and Strategy Team provided a verbal update on the Information Note entitled ‘Council Activity Update and Action Tracker’.

Audio recording – 7 minutes 2 seconds

Officers from the Policy and Strategy Team provided a verbal update on the Information Note entitled ‘Council Activity Update and Action Tracker’ and advised that:

·                The third round of Solar Together had closed, but more installations continued to be completed with 73 done so far, totalling over 700 panels.

·                Hertfordshire County Council were expanding their Flood Kit Pilot Scheme by inviting more communities that had experienced flooding or were susceptible to register their interest.

·                Flood kits comprised equipment tailored to meet the risk profiles of each community, and they were designed to be kept in an accessible, central storage unit on public land.

·                All actions on the Action Tracker had been completed but any actions arising from this meeting would be added to the tracker in consultation with the Chair.

·                The Council were working with Hertfordshire County Council to deliver the priorities and actions within the Local Nature Recovery Strategy which had been published and launched in January at a nature summit event.

·                The project to decarbonise leisure centres was progressing, and design work for the decarbonisation of other Council facilities such as North Herts Museum had also progressed as part of phase two of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.

·                The Council engagement hub for climate change and sustainability, known as the Climate Hive, now had 985 subscribers and continued to keep subscribers updated on the latest consultations, eco events, Council activities and more.

·                Over £63,000 had been awarded from the Sustainable Communities Grant to six local organisations to carry out sustainability projects last year.

·                Updates on those projects would be provided soon, except the project at Royston Museum as they had already installed a heat pump system, which they were feeling the benefit of.

·                Monthly sustainability briefings which included information on funding, upcoming events and Council activity were available to view on the Council website.

·                Actions in the Sustainability Strategy continued to be monitored on a quarterly basis by the Climate and Sustainability Officer Group and Political Liaison Board.

·                Decarbonisation works to leisure centres across the district were targeted to be finished by the summer.

·                Hydrogenated vegetable oil was in use in all refuse vehicles, and new electric vehicles had arrived and were in use for street cleansing purposes. 

·                A sustainability e-learning module covering sustainability aims and how Council staff could contribute to these had been launched internally. 

·                New EV charge points had gone live across Council car parks.

·                Work on the Warm Homes Local Grant continued to progress, and the scheme had been advertised in the Winter Outlook Magazine.

·                The new Council App had almost 16,000 downloads and continued to contribute towards improving recycling rates.

·                A process to record and monitor the impacts of extreme weather events on services had been implemented across the Council.

·                More updates on Council activity would be issued at the next Panel meeting.

·                If Members or members of the public wished to contact the Cabinet Panel outside of meetings, they could do this through the dedicated email address which had been provided.

In response to questions from Councillor Claire Strong, Officers from the Policy and Strategy Team advised that:

·                Two flood kits had been provided to communities in Kimpton and Hitchin, who were at different stages of the pilot scheme.

·                An extreme weather event was assessed through warnings and alerts issued by the Met Office.