In accordance with Council Procedure Rule No 8 to allow members of the public to ask questions about the Council’s activities for a period up to fifteen minutes. The replies to any such questions will be given by the appropriate Cabinet Member. Questions must be received in writing or by email to the Monitoring Officer by 12 noon seven clear working days before the meeting.
Question received from Robert Purcell to Councillor J Kenyon, Portfolio Holder for Transformation & Climate Change
Recent polls have shown that the majority of people in Britain are concerned about climate change and want to do something urgent about it. In the last year Derbyshire has been affected by unprecedented weather events, including the dam failure at Todbrook, the worst year for wildfires and more recently storms and high rainfall levels causing flooding in Matlock, Derby and the Amber Valley area.
Tackling climate change through reducing carbon emissions and planning mitigating actions is a complicated matter which will require the Council to make difficult and challenging decisions. Although this Council has produced a Climate Action Plan it has done so without consulting the local community.
I understand that Derbyshire Climate Coalition have already called on North East Derbyshire District Council to consider the use of a citizen’s assembly to make decisions about how to cut carbon emissions in North East Derbyshire. A properly set up citizen’s assembly is made up of a representative sample of local people who are advised by a balanced panel of involved experts and stakeholders. By using this process local representatives are supported to arrive at recommended actions for their area. Some Councils in the country are already using a citizen’s assembly process.
The advantages of using a citizen’s assembly are that firstly, the decisions will be recommended by and in the best interests of local people and therefore are likely to be fully supported by the local population.
Secondly, although a citizen’s assembly has some costs attached, the costs of failing to act with urgency and without the agreement of the community are likely to be much higher.
Can the Councillor explain to me what consideration has been given to the use of a citizen’s assembly for North East Derbyshire Council, including what sources of information and advice have been used?
Minutes:
In accordance with Council Procedure Rule No 8 members of the public were allowed to ask questions about the Council’s activities for a period of up to 15 minutes. The replies to any such questions will be given by the appropriate Cabinet Member. Questions must be received in writing or by email to the Monitoring Officer by 12 noon seven clear working days before the meeting.
Question submitted by Robert Purcell to Councillor Jeremy Kenyon, Portfolio Holder for Transformation and Climate Change:-
Recent polls have shown that the majority of people in Britain are concerned about climate change and want to do something urgent about it. In the last year Derbyshire has been affected by unprecedented weather events, including the dam failure in Todbrook, the worst year for wildfires and more recently storms and high rainfall levels causing flooding in Matlock, Derby and the Amber Valley area.
Tackling climate change through reducing carbon emissions and planning mitigating actions is a complicated matter which will require the Council to make difficult and challenging decisions. Although this Council has produced a Climate Action Plan it has done so without consulting the local community.
I understand that Derbyshire Climate Coalition have already called on North East Derbyshire District Council to consider the use of a citizen’s assembly to make decisions about how to cut carbon emissions in North East Derbyshire. A properly set up citizen’s assembly is made up of a representative sample of local people who are advised by a balanced panel of involved experts and stakeholders. By using this process local representatives are supported to arrive at recommended actions for their area. Some Councils in the country are already using a citizen’s assembly process.
The advantages of using a citizen’s assembly are that firstly, the decisions will be recommended by and in the best interests of local people and therefore are likely to be fully supported by the local population.
Secondly, although a citizen’s assembly has some costs attached, the costs of failing to act with urgency and without the agreement of the community are likely to be much higher.
Can the Councillor explain to me what consideration has been given to the use of a citizen’s assembly for North East Derbyshire Council, including what sources of information and advice have been used?
Councillor J Kenyon, Portfolio Holder for Transformation and Climate Change, thanked Mr Purcell for his question. Councillor Kenyon stated that in recognition of the seriousness of climate change a climate change Cabinet Member had been appointed so as to give more focus to work in this area. Councillor Kenyon stated that he had read Extinction Rebellion’s guide to citizens’ assemblies, which was comprehensive and contained a lot of good information. Running a citizens’ assembly was a significant amount of work and the examples given in the guide were mainly national ones and a few created by London boroughs and county councils. There was a UK citizens’ assembly tracker which listed those already set up and showed that most assemblies that had already been set up were either national, or set up by counties or large cities. Councillor Kenyon stated that he hadn’t found any evidence that one would work at a much smaller scale, such as one run by a district council. The government was putting together a climate change citizens’ assembly and the recommendations of that assembly would be keenly studied by the Council. A Climate Change Summit would be taking place at Derbyshire County Council on 3 March 2020 and a citizen’s assembly would be one of the topics discussed at that meeting.
Councillor Kenyon went on to say that all levels of local government had a part to play in addressing climate change. The Council had already set up a climate change sub-group, which met regularly and a transformation group was being set up. It was vital to work with the local community and various initiatives were currently underway to do that. One project was to inform residents what they can do to reduce their own environmental impact and another was work with local Parish Councils. A climate change pack was being produced to give to Parish Councils information about what they could do to reduce their emissions and would contain what parish councils could do to work alongside other councils to communicate with residents about climate change. The Council would also arrange events throughout the district to engage with residents, provide information and also to hear residents’ suggestions and ideas about what the Council could do.
SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTION
Mr Purcell exercised his right to ask a supplementary question of the Portfolio Holder for Transformation and Climate Change, asking for further information on the local climate group that Councillor Kenyon had referred to and whether that meeting was open to the public to be involved.
In response Councillor J Kenyon stated that the Climate Change Sub-Group was a cross party council group of Councillors and officers and it had not yet been considered whether it would be open to the public but they would be inviting outside experts to come and speak and provide information to the sub-group.