Minutes

Councillor Catherine Houston welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Apologies for absence were received from Marcus Harvey and Kelvin Mills. Adie Byatt attended on behalf of Marcus Harvey.

Since there was no Democratic Services Officer available to attend the meeting held on 18 September the Climate Change Officer had drafted a summary of that meeting.

The following matters were arising:

a)     Steven Toplis to progress the work on the webpages. It was noted that the annual scorecard[1] process would be taking place soon.

b)     Cllr Potter and Alistair Atkinson had not met to discuss the Ash Dieback and this action should be rolled over.

c)     It was noted that the proposed six-week meeting schedule for the CCB was not to be implemented due to available resources.

The Climate Change Officer reported minimal change since the previous meeting. Page 9 set out the completed actions which, it was agreed, could be removed.

Carrie would send out a reminder email to those external members of the Board with outstanding actions.

There was a discussion about the calculation of carbon costs and how it should be approached. The matter had previously been discussed with the CFO. There was a consultancy budget available. Martin kindly suggested that there might be some help and guidance available from the academics at the University, especially initially which could save some money. The Chair and the Board were very grateful to Martin for his kind offer. Carrie and Nat would progress with Martin and report back to the Board.

Carrie would add carbon costs to the CCB work programme and this would be removed from the Action Tracker.

The LNRS action for Cllr Shaw would be removed.

The update had been circulated in advance of the meeting and the Chair called for any comments. It was noted that:

·        Third party stakeholders had been sent invitations to attend the GBC corporate strategy launch event.

·        The right to reply to the Climate Emergency UK Climate Change scorecards was ongoing. The adoption of the Council’s Action Plan would be acknowledged this year.

·        Climate change integration with services work was ongoing and included the creation of dashboards for asset energy use.

·        The Council had been approached by a consultant to produce a heatmap. External funding would be applied for next year to progress the work.

·        The Council was in discussion with SCC to discuss potentially hydrogen charging the fleet.

·        Discussions regarding community energy schemes were progressing which would help with offsetting.

·        The Council was currently awaiting news of success in respect of applications submitted to the SCC Empty Property Reimbursement Fund.

·        Nat would update the Board following meetings with Service Heads to share what progress and what challenges were being experienced operationally.

The Board was encouraged by the work underway.

The energy dashboards would be shared with the Board after being shared with councillors.

Martin reported that the University had just published its annual sustainability report - can be found here https://www.surrey.ac.uk/sustainability/about

And the Sustainable Development Goals report at https://surreynet.surrey.ac.uk/news-views/news/202411/progress-continues-meeting-uns-sustainable-development-goals 

The University had just published its sustainable procurement plan, scope 3 plan and was in the process of writing a climate resilience plan.

Martin would be happy to do a short presentation at a future CCB meeting on the work the University is doing on sustainability, especially the University’s Net Zero Cities plan.

Gary Durrant, Environmental Protection Lead and Anjana Papnai

Compliance Officer – Environmental Protection attended from Regulatory Services. There was an introduction to the draft strategy and a question and answer session.

It was explained that the Environmental Protection Team was small and needed to attend to a great many regulatory requirements on behalf of the Council.  The new strategy was an update to the existing one. The CCB was the first group to review the draft. Thereafter, it would be submitted to the Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee and to Executive for adoption.

It was noted that since the last strategy was written there were now three designated Air Quality Management Areas (AQMA) in the borough. Those were Shalford, Compton and Guildford Town Centre. There were two action plans in place. The Guildford Town Centre plan was currently at feasibility stage and would be merged with the Shalford plan as the areas were so close.

The Council had a statutory requirement to produce a monitoring report every year that was submitted to DEFRA.

The new strategy must reflect the requirements of new Environment Act 2021. The Environment Act 2021 which came into force in November 2021, required the UK government to set new legally binding air quality targets for England. The duty to set a PM2.5 target was specified in the Act. There were two new targets to be reached by 2040. One was to set a maximum concentration to protect those living in the areas of highest concentration and another to reduce average exposure across the country.

The new strategy would include the ambition for the Council to have its own monitoring system. However, the Council might update its dataset from working in partnership with SCC which would be updating the 2017 Particulate Study for Surrey next year.

Overall, the strategy would set out the Council’s statutory duties and responsibilities and the areas where the Council would like to do more.

A degree of weight was given to wood burning and a forthcoming Anti-Idling on Council Premises Policy

A Comms plan would be put together.

Transport and wood burning were the two biggest contributors to particulates in the borough. There were five smoke-control designated areas in the borough and all of those were in the town centre all north of the A3. Castle and Holy Trinity wards were not well covered.

In terms of funding, it was noted that the actions to tackle air quality issues in the town centre were currently well funded by Government (National Highways) running schemes such as the Active Travel programme. There was an annual fund awarded by DEFRA for the smoke-control areas. A Clean Air Zone could be a possibility for Guildford Town Centre but designation of such would be the responsibility of the County Council.

Comments:

·        The CCB noted its disappointment over the cancellation of the Burpham Active Travel.

·        The Regulatory Services team were working with other partner agencies and voluntary groups.

·        The meeting heard that a significant number of particulates in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

Steven Toplis from the Comms Team was in attendance and spoke to the CCB about work underway by the Council to inform and support residents in respect of the climate change emergency.

The Comms Team was working on:

·        Resident engagement

·        Sustainability messaging

·        A Comms Plan would be produced to target the public, stakeholders, businesses, interested groups, councillors and staff.

·        The promotion of the new corporate priorities was a good time to push the agenda.

·        The website and the scorecards would be key. Pages must be kept fresh and relevant.

·        There would be strong communications supporting the next CC annual report.

·        The subject must be kept accessible.

·        National and international events would be promoted and used as a hook to stimulate interest.

·        A climate change glossary would be written and put on the website to help people to understand the terminology.

Comments

·        Climate change have its own social media feed would be taken forward for further discussion.

·        There was a call for all local climate change groups to share their information and events news with the Council.

·        There should be a link to the climate change pages on the Council’s homepage.

·        The website should have a focus on adaptation – what residents can do themselves.

Steven would be invited to every CCB meeting in future.

·        Carrie would check the LNRS schedule with Dan Knowles.

·        The priority actions should be reviewed again earlier than July.

·        Martin’s University of Surrey presentation should be scheduled.

·        Carrie would send out calendar invitations for the new 2025 dates.

26 March 2025

21 May 2025

16 July 2025

10 September 2025

19 November 2025