Agenda item

To receive a progress report from the Environmental Coordination Manager

The Environmental Coordination Manager provided an update to the meeting on progress against the District Council Carbon Reduction Action Plan.  Horsham District Council’s aspiration is to achieve carbon neutrality for those emissions that are under the Council’s direct control by 2030.  This is principally through measures addressing the use of petrol, diesel, gas and electricity.  For more indirect carbon emissions, such as supply chains, leased buildings, water, waste and travel behaviours, a longer target of 2050 has been set.

Details of the progress achieved between 2019/20 and 2020/21 were noted.  This includes:

-          a 50% reduction in business mileage and reductions in electricity use at principal buildings such as Parkside and the Capitol Theatre. It was acknowledged that changed behaviours in response to the pandemic constraints was a factor in these reductions. 

-          A programme of staff and public awareness continues to be delivered

-          Environmental measures, including the development of a Tree Management Plan and measures to identify and enable habitat restoration are progressing

-          Measures to convert the Council’s fleet of vehicles to lower emission options are progressing in line with expected vehicle replacement timescales

-          Increased use of LED lighting in appropriate locations, such as car parks and street lighting

-          Reductions in fuel use were more modest since the use of the Council’s vehicle fleet was less affected by the pandemic. 

-          The fleet replacement programme will be accompanied by a plan for the location and types of charge points that need to be installed to power new battery electric vehicles.

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It was noted that works undertaken at St. Peter’s Hall & The RAFA Club have been a valuable trial to inform the retro-fitting of environmental measures to existing buildings, including insulation, heating and photovoltaic conversion of light as useable energy.  The measures at this site have reduced the energy saving footprint from EPC E/D to a more efficient EPC B rating.  Audits have been completed on a number of HDC buildings, including Horsham Museum, Southwater Country Park and Chesworth Visitor Centre, with reduction measures identified.  A trial group of residential buildings are also being audited.

A three-year Carbon Reduction Action Plan is due to be presented to Cabinet on 24 March.

Members welcomed the information and the subsequent discussion enabled further clarification and further views on a number of issues, including:

-          Cost recovery times on some of the necessary investment seem to be quite long but this will be factored into decision making processes since cost saving is also a major factor

-          Graduation of the period of replacement for vehicles – the principal vehicles – those used for waste collection – are not due for replacement until the end of the decade. 

-          Options for replacement vehicle technology – electric. hydrogen or hybrid – are under review and may vary according to the demands of the vehicles in question

-          Embedding environmental / sustainable principles into the wider range of council decision making and service delivery

Also recognised that use of remote meeting / home working is a factor in reducing the Council’s carbon footprint since less travelling is being incurred.