North Yorkshire County Council set to reject climate change action appeals
The Conservative-run local authority is claiming they could be counter-productive
A Conservative-run local authority looks poised to dismiss moves by Green and Liberal Democrat councillors aiming to accelerate the response to the climate change and biodiversity crises, claiming they could be counter-productive.
North Yorkshire County Council’s executive will consider two environmental notices of motion that councillors were prevented from debating at a full council meeting in July, with the authority’s chairman instead opting to refer the proposals to its cabinet members.
Both of the motions propose the establishment of a new committee specifically to scrutinise the council’s progress and leadership in tackling climate change and establishing biodiversity plans to ensure oversight of the collective ambition of the council.
Since losing its overwhelming majority at the May elections, the Tory-led council has been facing mounting pressure, particularly from the Liberal Democrat and Green groups, to redouble its climate change and biodiversity efforts and allow opposition councillors to play a greater role in shaping such policies.
An officers’ report to the executive states the creation of a new scrutiny committee would take the number of such forums at the council to seven.
It adds the council’s scrutiny function is under review as part of the establishment of a new unitary authority and recommendations would be brought before all elected members later this year.
One of the motions also calls for the creation of a new executive member to reflect the scale of the job, but the officers’ report highlights the executive already has the maxiumum number of members allowed under the county council’s constitution.
Liberal Democrat group leader Councillor Bryn Griffiths said the officers’ report failed to fully address the high priority and action needed to effectively deal with climate change an the ecological emergency in North Yorkshire.
He said: “I think the points we put forward to deal with that are still valid and worthwhile objectives that the council should be taking on board and should be fully debated by the full council.”
The council’s leader, Councillor Carl Les said the executive’s debate and recommendations to the next full meeting of the authority in November would focus on how the authority could best manage the impacts of climate change.
He said: “It is a hugely important issue to us. It seems to me that the Greens and Lib Dems are suggesting we have to have a special executive member and a special scrutiny committee, but we believe the climate change and biodiversity issues cut across everything that we do.
“The approach that we are taking by embedding it into everything we are doing, so every report we produce now examines the climate change impact, is better.”
When asked if the decision to reject specialist climate change roles and groups at the council was politically-fuelled, Coun Les said: “Not at all. All our scrutiny committees have the ability to look at climate change implications.
“If anything they have more influence and control over what we are doing than what is being proposed.”