By Local Democracy Reporter, Jude Holden.
MORE urgency is needed in tackling climate change, a Wiltshire councillor has said. Leader of the Liberal Democrats, cllr Ian Thorn said Wiltshire Council’s work on climate has not gone far enough, at a full council meeting held last month.
At the meeting, the council also presented a list of what they had done to fight global warming recently.
This included actions such as retrofitting 90 council homes to be more energy efficient. The council said that between August 2022 and January 2023, more than 58 tonnes of reusable items were collected at household recycling sites. Also, a pop-up reuse shop in Devizes prevented 2.1 tonnes of waste from going to landfill by selling items collected from recycling centres such as bikes, tools and toys.
Speaking on the council’s work, cllr Thorn said, “I think the list of highlights are very impressive, but I’m not sure they go far enough. I think there are issues around the urgency that we need to apply.
“More broadly I have two specific points. One is how we engage the general public. I wonder if there are other opportunities to engage the general public more widely. I wonder if there’s an opportunity for a road show around all the things that we should all be doing in in terms of delivering our climate change objectives.”
Cllr Thorn said his second point was about creating more partnerships with Wiltshire organisations to fight climate change. He added that he was concerned how much more work was needed for the council to reach its target of making the whole county carbon neutral in the next seven years.
Cabinet member for climate change, cllr Nick Holder responded saying, “One of the many benefits of the meeting that we had with the Wiltshire Climate Alliance group was that they are actually an alliance of 40 disparate groups across the county.
“They have 500 active members and they’re a bit like a spider’s web. They have contacts into parts of the county that we can’t reach as a local authority.
“So, one of the things that we took away from that meeting is how we can dovetail our council comms into the Wiltshire Climate Alliance comms to make sure that we are hitting as many bases as possible.”
Leader of Labour, cllr Ricky Rodgers echoed cllr Thron and said, “You’ve got to welcome this report. It’s positive news moving in the right direction – maybe not as fast as we all want – but it is positive.”
