North Yorkshire climate change plans delayed by four months
The proposals aim to ensure robust and immediate actions are taken
Conservative politicians responsible for England’s largest local authority area have postponed moves aiming to ensure robust and immediate actions are taken to tackle the climate change and biodiversity crises for about four months.
A meeting of North Yorkshire County Council saw a majority of elected members agree motions for further environmental measures should be referred to the council’s executive and constitutional working group for consideration.
Liberal Democrat, Independent, Green and Liberal councillors had proposed the authority establish a dedicated scrutiny committee, an executive member to oversee climate change and the development of a biodiversity action plan.
The calls came just days after the council’s executive declared a climate emergency, several years after numerous neighbouring councils, following mounting pressure from councillors.
Coordinator of the council’s Green Party group, Councillor Andy Brown, said while the executive’s recent decision to declare a climate emergency was welcome, “we all know good intent needs a clear, costed, timed action plan” to be approved by the same councillors.
He added a scrutiny committee was needed as it was the role of councillors to examine plans to tackle climate change and that residents suffering record high temperatures would struggle to understand why the authority was not taking more immediate action.
Coun Brown said: “Let’s be honest, how does it look if we say we declared an emergency, but say we’re only going to discuss the scrutiny arrangements in about four months’ time and we may not discuss them at all or we may not set up any scrutiny yet because we think our organisation is more important.
“How are we going to explain that to the people of Tadcaster who lost their bridge for so long, how are we going to explain that to people in Richmondshire who suffered those appalling floods that damaged their livelihoods?”
The authority’s chairman, Councillor Margaret Atkinson, who is tasked with controlling debates at full meetings of the authority, told the chamber the temperatures of the past few days had underlined the need to tackle climate change.
However, she said it was important the authority gave the motions “appropriate consideration”.
She added the council’s staff were already under a lot of pressure due to local government reorganisation.
The council’s deputy leader, Councillor Gareth Dadd, said the proposals had implications, such as financial ones, that needed to be fully understood, with a report by officers, before the motions could be properly considered.
He said it was possible creating an extra scrutiny committee could dilute the efforts of the authority’s existing scrutiny committees for matters ranging from health to transport.
Coun Dadd said: “Policy and organisational issues are often worse for being delivered on the hoof. Good policy may well take a little bit longer to deliver.”