 Hi, Siobhan. Hello. Can you hear me? Hello, yes. Yeah. Hello. Good afternoon. Welcome to this meeting of the South Cambridgeshire District Council Climate and Environment Advisory Committee. I'm Jeff Harvey, I'm the member of Borsham. I'm also vice-chair of the committee. Unfortunately, the chair, Councillor Pippa Haillings, is stuck in traffic, but I think she may be joining and taking over from me when she arrives, but in the meantime, I'll get things going. So I think we are caught in the chamber so we can continue. I don't know, Patrick, do we have any apologies for absence? I guess we do have some. No, I see chair, we haven't received any apologies yet, apart from, as you said, the chair we know will be laid. I'll say here we, okay, this is, yep, okay. Any declarations of interest? Okay. Okay, so now on to the minutes of the previous meeting, and can I just take that page by page and if anyone has a point to raise on the minutes, maybe they could let me know. So page one, page two, page three, page four, page five, page six. Okay, so could I start actually by welcoming Paul Fairfark to the committee and congratulations for your successful election. Now, I think the next item on the agenda would be matters arising. Are there any matters arriving from the previous minutes? Chancellor Harvey, I have an update from Peter Campbell on the action around setting up a working group which SEAC members can be part of arising from the housing asset management strategy that he talked about at the last meeting. So Peter says, we've just introduced a new way of working with tenants and he will be asking volunteers from them this week. He's also aware that he's, that they are looking at a new repairs contract which also involves tenant and he doesn't want to overburden them. So I guess that's, yes, this is happening, but it's yet to come. Unless there's anything else. Is it Siobhan or are you taking this item or is it Emma, the item five of the agenda? It's Emma who I believe is here, is that right? Over to you then, Emma. So this will just be a summary of our excellent climate and environment fortnight which I thought was a tremendous success and well done, Emma, indeed. I thought it was splendid. So if you'd like to talk us through it. Thank you, Chancellor Harvey. I'm just going to try and share my screen, to spare with me for two seconds. Okay, can everybody see the table that I provided? Is that showing? Yes. Yes, that is. Okey dokey. So I would like to give an update on the recently held climate and environment fortnight events. So I'd like to provide members with a brief update on the climate and environment fortnight events held in February and March of this year. The free events aimed at a variety of audiences took place from the 25th of February until the 5th of March to help people think about how to live more sustainably, reduce carbon emissions and in turn help tackle climate change. We decided to partner with various organisations who were able to offer their expert advice and tips whilst also allowing for audience participation. This method of delivery did not require extensive resource to put on and demonstrates the benefits of online events in terms of officer time and accessibility. The table that you can see shows the webinars that we provided, the partners we partnered with and the number of attendees and page views. So as you can see these figures highlight the benefits of online events. And these recordings obviously were from February. So I'm expecting that figures would have gone up since then. And the recordings and information from these events indicated the council's involvement that were also featured in the solution sphere as part of the prestigious Earth Optimism events organised annually by Cambridge Conservation Initiative. And that ran from the 26th of March until the 4th of April 2021. And this involvement increased our viewing totals further still. So I would like to invite the Climate and Environment Advisory Committee to note the delivery of the climate environment's fortnight of online events and or highlight any concerns or comments. And if you agree that we could repeat the fortnight again next year. Thank you. I've had to apologise. I realised I missed item five on the, was that Siobhan who was going to comment on our success? I think Councillor Haylings was just going to note this. But as you can see from the background I've actually come into the office today and I have discovered the missing certificate which we couldn't find. So here we go. I hope you can see that. This is a certificate of excellence awarded by the IESE who do a lot of work on transforming local public services. And this is awarded to the council for being green to our core programme of work. I mean I think that was probably as a result of quite a lot of time and effort filling in the application form as with all these events. So well done everyone involved in that. Okay, I don't know whether I just feel, I should say a little bit more about just following on from Emma's. And I just, I felt that that fortnight really inspired so many people and kicked off so many and especially, I mean that amazing film that we all saw. Talking about new techniques in agriculture and direct drilling, cover cropping. And I think that's really set a lot of people thinking about the possibilities for the future. So I just, Emma wants to sort of thank you again but I thought it was just a terrific fortnight. Okay, right, so now item seven. Sorry to interrupt, Chair. I think we need to say we want to have that event again next year. I think that was just a decision for the minute. I apologise, I think it was probably accepted as we were going to do that. I just want to make sure. Okay, so shall I just express a wish that we will have the same event next year? Okay, and now we've got item seven. So do we have Katie Williams there to talk about the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill? Hi, hi, yeah. So I'm here along with my teammate Serena from UK Youth Climate Coalition. So Serena is going to give a bit of an overview about what UK YCC does and then I can talk a little bit about the CE Bill. Okay, welcome, well thank you very much for coming to talk about this. Thank you for having us. Go on Serena. All right, amazing. Thank you everyone and thank you Katie for the little introduction. So my name is Serena and I have been a part of the UK Youth Climate Coalition for five years now, very long time and it's the most amazing NGO I have ever come across. So what it is is a space for UK young people aged 18 to 29 to engage in climate action on different levels, local, national and international and we're a non-profit NGO. Our mission is to empower and mobilise young people to take positive action for climate justice and we have lots of different values surrounding anti-oppression, transparency, all about youth voices and amplification of inclusivity diversity. These kind of different things. A bit about UK YCC itself. We're split into four different working groups and then on top of this also an operations team. So I'm going to talk a bit about the first two which is systems change and the COP working group and then Katie will talk about the other two which is communications and community. Okay, so first let's start with systems change. This is not my working group but it's just one of the amazing ones and systems change is all about I guess going right down to the very, very core of the issue and recognising that climate and the climate emergency is this that's tied and associated with climate change and it looks at things like capitalism and again these values that I already talked about anti-oppression and this kind of thing. I guess one really, really cool campaign that just happened was one it was a prank campaign around and I just I want to highlight it because it's so interesting in Cornwall. So it was highlighting the hypocrisy of the UK government doing fossil fuel extraction in Mozambique and what this was was a completely fake fabricated campaign of fossil fuel extraction in St Ives in Cornwall and there was a fake protest, fake Facebook page, a fake brochure thing that was spread around to all the local residents and gained a lot of traction in this way and then of course it was completely fake so then once it was then found out all the residents were contacted and then directed to the actual issue in Mozambique. So this is just one example of something that this working group works on. A bit about the working group that is my home the COP working group COP is short for conference at the parties in the United Nations climate change space so what we do is we go to the UN we go to UN climate conferences so doing loads and loads of mobilising and activism for COP26 we really push for the youth voice and really we're kind of like there are ones pushing for the against the moral compass you know and just pushing for raised ambition and as high ambition as possible so it's yeah super super amazing and really really excited to work with this organisation always have been because it's so fantastic. I will now pass on to Katie to tell you a bit more about some other working groups. Yeah so the two working groups I'm part of are the communications and the community teams so communication is kind of what it says on the tin we do all the social media stuff and we run blog series things like that and then the community team is the first team that I joined in UK YCC and we do more sort of you know activities within our local communities which has been a bit harder to do virtually over the last year or so and so our main project over the last year has been we've developed a website where people can look up their MPs voting record on particular climate change bills and so the CE bill is on there so you will note that our MP Anthony Brown is not supporting the CE bill just yet um yeah and so you can look on there find out you know oh my MP did vote for the climate change act in 2008 but they didn't vote for this thing and then you can write to them and say oh I see that you did this that was really good maybe you could do more you know support the CE bill do something else um yes it's a good way of getting people to sort of think about how they can engage in different ways because you know it's you know protest and things are one way that people can engage with the climate movement but at the same time it's important to be engaging directly with MPs and asking asking them to do more um so yeah and onto this CE bill which is kind of how I ended up here um so UK UK YCC has partnered with the CE bill campaign team um so we are supporting the climate and ecological emergency bill um and I wrote to my local councillor about it and that's how I ended up being invited to this meeting so thank you for having us um now asking you guys to support the CE bill which basically the bill sort of aims to fill in a lot of the gaps that we currently have in climate and environmental legislation so um I think you've got the 2008 climate change act which asks us to you know reduce our emissions based on 1990 levels um but then those emissions don't include things like international aviation or the emissions from all of the goods that we import that sort of gets dumped on other countries usually poorer countries than Britain who don't actually have you know the right infrastructure to either reduce emissions quickly or to you know deal with the impacts that climate change is already having on their communities um and yeah there's a lot of other stuff in it um one of the main things uh it involves a citizens assembly so that would kind of help inform um yeah how there'll be a citizens assembly made up of like a range of people from all over the country who would then get you know advice from a panel of experts and then they would make suggestions to the government about how they should tackle the climate and ecological emergency and the main thing which I should have said which is really important about this bill is that it kind of it recognises that climate change and other ecological problems are really linked and you know they're all part of the same problem because often it's like oh yeah let's reduce climate change we don't necessarily think about how how that impacts biodiversity and other issues so it's kind of trying to ask the government to have a more integrated approach to how we tackle environmental problems um I think that's all I have to say about this so if anyone has any questions for either me or Serena far away well thank you very much for that but are there any um questions I um I do note that um our chair Pippa Haleings has just arrived in the chamber I don't know if this is a good moment to swap around Pippa so are you um if everyone can just um be patient for a few seconds hello I'm really really sorry for being late I was delayed in traffic I've just come up from Yorkshire I'm looking after things and caring for my mum so the fact that we have to do in presence in person meetings means I can't juggle so easily all the different things but I did hear the great thing about technology is while I was um I could hear everything that you were saying and the beginning of the meeting as well um while I was driving so first of all can I just say hello to everybody apologies apologies and thank you so much to Serena and Katie for coming here and really bringing this message to us which you've heard very clearly and so Serena what I'd just like to say in terms of the COP26 working group that you're in very much we'd like to know a little bit more I will be at COP26 accredited not through the council but through my professional work but we are hoping to be able to showcase local council work at COP26 and so it'll be very very nice to know what are the messages that you have that you think are very very specific to local government and any that you would like us to raise to national government as well in COP26 so please do let us know either now or later any way that we can take that forward because we do agree with you that this is about transformational societal change so very very good and I had seen that protest that was in Cornwall very innovative so well done and Katie in terms of the CEE bill and that has been brought to us by Councillor Peter Fein and it is something that we've looked at and we wanted to be brought here to the committee to look at going forward as a motion to full council there are councils around the country that have already put this forward as a as a motion to their council to see whether they support that and I'd like to know sort of what what other members of the committee feel about that because that is what we do and Alan and I is here carefully I've also read the response of the MP for the city you know Daniel Zeichner and also MP Anthony Brown their response to this so I'd really open this up to the committee now it's a serious point on the agenda that we've brought forward and thank you very much for Katie bringing that towards us as you'll know we have declared both a climate and an ecological emergency here so we've linked the two from the very beginning we've got a zero carbon strategy and we've just adopted a doubling nature strategy which we call the sister document so if you look at those two documents one is the zero carbon it does make some reference to adaptive ways the natural resource ways in which we're looking at adaptation but the doubling nature strategy says they're interlinked with there you know they're indivisible these two emergencies and we need to look at both of them which is why we've we've linked together and twin together these two documents and today during this committee meeting you will see that the action plans for both of those strategies are merging into one for us as a council now so we're actually showing you that everything we look at will be through this twin lens that that's inexplicably interlinked and what we have viewed and we've looked at the proposed motion that you've draft motion that you sent to us as a proposed motion to us and our view at the moment is we do support absolutely in principle what is there in the motion in terms of the CE bill we think there are definitely ways in which ambition can be pushed on both of these agendas and we do think that they need to be um I think going back to Srin's point there needs to be this transformational shift to being holistic and much more integrated in in the two of them I don't know if anybody else wants to speak to to that item then as I understand it the bill depends upon one MP taking forward in the private members bills I don't know that one has so far adopted it but um uh and it seems unlikely at the present that the government will take it forward what ways what avenues do you see to taking it forward how you see that um how do you propose to um persuade the other ways persuade the government to actually take it on or a private member private member to take it on um well I think that the local council support is quite an important one in terms of getting individual MPs to change their mind because I think that demonstrates that there's there is local support for the issue um yeah because I think you know Anthony Brown in particular has come out quite strongly against the CE bill um I mean they have um that's something actually that I perhaps should raise I've also written an open letter to Anthony Brown that if anyone is interested in signing drop me an email I can put my email in the chat and I can send it to you um but yeah I think kind of the more the more people we get behind it the more likely the government is to to kind of change their mind and the more people we can engage to sort of approach their MP particularly if the MP is you know in government and currently opposed to the bill I think the main CE bill team are trying to work with a few Conservative MPs because the um so it was introduced as a private member's bill in the last parliament session and then that session ended and it's restarted in May and um they're looking to reintroduce the bill in a slightly different way to last time and it's been redrafted so actually some of the things that were in it that um Anthony Brown was against have kind of been taken out was sort of changed a bit so actually I think there's more of a case to change the mind now um yeah sorry I hope I answered your question in fact uh among the members of this committee I think all of us represent wards which actually in the constituency of Lucy Fraser have you had any contact with her sorry I think a little bit MP for south south east temperature southeast the south temperature covers two constituencies the majority is in Anthony Brown a lot of actually also in south east temperature okay um I haven't because I'm in I'm in south temperature constituency I haven't really engaged with the south east temperature constituency yet but yeah I can look into that I think it would just be the same so you'd be actually you know providing the same kind of information to both of the MPs and and we have councillors as Martin says that cover both of those constituencies within south camps district council it covers both constituencies in quite a way so it could be an approach to to both does anybody have any thing they want to say about this in particular yep um and so I think that what I would like to recommend to all the members of this committee is that we review do you have a copy of the newly drafted CE because I haven't seen any new drafts um yeah I can I can send a link in the chat can you do that please and so what I'd last we should all see the new draft because we can't ask to do anything on the basis of the of you know a draft that we haven't seen yet so I would like to recommend that you know following this meeting we all review the the new draft and also the proposed motion that I think councillor Peter Thane has drafted which would be for full council so we need to check both of those documents together and then to provide any comments to us about whether you support that or not but what I would like to say is that we absolutely welcome activists like you to come here and talk to us and speak a bit of truth to power and tell us what you think we should be doing as your councillors and there's the committee you know that does have power over policy in indirect policy you know powers over indirect policy too so thank you so much for your time um and speaking to us and we will get back to you as soon as everybody's reviewed the draft document and the draft motion thanks for having us no thank you and serena as I said do get get in contact with us about cop 26 as well thank you yeah that would be fab thank you so much no thank you for everything you're doing that's fantastic really thank you thank you and we'll move on to if you want to stay listening in then please do and you can hear about the rest of the work that we're doing in fact but we've got the two things which are really important around um biodiversity and short streams and with waste strategy um and then also our action plan which brings the two together so please do feel free to stay and we'll go to agenda item number eight which is the biodiversity supplementary planning document and do it john are you with us john cornyn i'm indeed hello how are you very well thanks and you good hello jane as jane green is with us as well who's the head of um built natural environment in the planning service thank you very much do you want to introduce us to the report that you have here john yes indeed um so what i'm going to do today is talk you through um briefly using a powerpoint the um biodiversity supplementary planning document we are proposing this advisory group recommend on to cabinet for um essentially approval of the next stage which is the public consultation that we anticipate for july so i was going to do a sort of a quick song and dance a few slides with powerpoint and then open the floor to questions if that's agreeable paper absolutely thank you very much okay do you want to get off i'll share my screen and uh let's keep our fingers crossed the technology does what it says on the tin okay can you all see that i'm hoping you can thank you yes we can see it thank you very much all right lovely um so as i said just a few slides to explain um what this spd is all about so it's a it's a new biodiversity supplementary planning document for greater cambridge um well what is a supplementary planning document for those of you that don't know anything about planning supplementary planning documents or spds as they're known build upon and provide more detailed guidance and advice for those seeking to undertake development schemes and they they give advice on whichever particular area of the local plan they're focusing on in this case it's biodiversity they don't form part of the development plan per se and as such they cannot introduce or we cannot introduce new policies through this documentation so they're really just intended to amplify and guide users on the relevant legislation as it relates to whatever particular topic and as i said in this case it's biodiversity so they're quite important things and um i suppose the question is well why is a new biodiversity spd needed for greater cambridge why why are we why are we here talking about this our current biodiversity for south cams district council our current spd for biodiversity is from 2009 and therefore it reflects policies which were drawn up probably in the years before that in 2007 and on possibly even older in some cases and so it's really very out of date our current policy guidance is just not in step in line with existing policy also we're now a joint planning authority with the city of cambridge and the city don't even have an spd for biodiversity so it's a it's a quick win for them as well as i've said policies have changed quite a lot since 2009 and so the guidance really needs updating otherwise we're just sending people off to look at old guidance which isn't relevant and that's really not very helpful currently our ecology officers dan and guy really sometimes struggles to sign post developers to all of the recent and relevant guidance and so um this document will help them in their jobs it will help developers to better understand what they need to do and and why so that that's why it's needed um but you might ask yourself well you know here we are in south cams we're not in in greater london we're surrounded by fields of green why do we need got biodiversity guidance it's already green you know what's the problem um of course the problem is in part that 70% of what you're seeing 70% of land cover um is agricultural land agricultural land looks very green so the loblies are driving down the down the road looking out the window but monoculture um you know fields of wheat or barley um they might look nice but from a biodiversity perspective their deserts um and this is what we've done to our countryside since the end of the second world war essentially so this is why we need good up-to-date guidance what does this change um well change a number of things obviously it will make reference to more recent and relevant local and national policies so it will reference the local plan from 2018 um for south cams but it will also reference um national legislation such as NPPF which talks about things like biodiversity net gain very important if we're thinking about improving biodiversity as i've said it highlights requirements to include measurable that's the key measurable biodiversity net gain on new developments and suggests a figure of 10% now the reason it's suggesting 10% is that we anticipate that's what's going to be in the environment bill um scheduled for the autumn um but there is also an aspirational piece in this spd that says these councils this lpa you know it's looking to 20% that's not our policy currently but we have this aspiration as you've already said paper there's the the doubling nature um uh document which was released in February so it's very much looking to the future while also at the same time being clear these are the existing policies and this is the existing guidance on those policies um it confirms the dephrometric the reason that's important is that we know that some developers come to the table with sort of them ad hoc means of measuring biodiversity before they develop and some of those things some of those um metric can be funged uh they can that's not a technical term but they can they can funge the numbers and make it look like it's better than it actually is so we need them to use the dephrometric um it explains different district level licensing for great crested mutes it's another introduction but it explains non-binding biodiversity enhancements such as back bird insect boxes on 50% of dwellings in major developments so that hopefully the large house builders can sort of get there get their game together with that and it introduces uh importantly a clear and common process for standardized nomenclature for the respected councils so this means we'll be speaking the same language whether we're in the city or in south cairns and it's just it's standardizing that language for the reports which i think will be very helpful um the process for developing this spd you may or may not remember i was um i was here before you on the 12th of january before we started drafting proposing uh this is what we do um and saying i'll be back in summer here we are hasn't time flown um but essentially this is the process on the screen uh we start with the justification of need always the always a good idea project planning uh the drafting process which has been going on since about january the end of january then on to the member committee's phase which is where we are now um hopefully you guys will approve this for public consultation which is going to take place in july and august then on to the amendments which will come out of that consultation process and then hopefully member adoption towards the end of end of this year for anticipated use by the beginning of 2022 so that's the process and that's the the rough timeline for the spd um just a couple more slides here uh so what difference will this make to developers well we'll give them an ambiguous up-to-date consistent guidance across the lpa which is obviously a good idea uh certainty that their schemes are being built in line with current regulations and not not referencing documents which are out of date that's no one's uh no one wants that but it will also give developers whether large or small the opportunity to demonstrate that their schemes are following best practice and they can they can use that as a platform if you like to shout about their good work so it's you know it's not just a stick it's a carrot too i would hope okay um what difference will it make to biodiversity well we can we can begin to deliver on the doubling nature vision which was in the strategy which uh came out in in febru 2021 we think that through biodiversity net gain that's really the most robust vehicle we have for delivering that doubling nature vision um obviously this will hopefully result in the inclusion of more habitat for biodiversity across our developments and of course importantly it reinforces it reaffirms the importance of biodiversity to both councils it's another indication it's another uh uh it's it's more evidence that you're actually doing what you've promised to do uh to the public and you're setting up your stalls so it's it's a win-win i think and what difference will it make for us well there we go fabulous development that's a camborn i'm sure many of you in fact you can see the building that you're you're currently in just the up or say in the uh in the top left hand corner and of course camborn's a great example of um a new development it's not new anymore it's ongoing but um it does have this fabulous balance of a master plan new community but with space for nature and space for people something so very important uh we've all learned over the last year have we not um through COVID the importance of accessible natural green space for everybody so it will make a massive difference last slide timeline for this process essentially this uh the pts chair's briefing was last week they didn't want to see it because that they had no questions i think they were they were happy for it to just progress um this morning the formal cabinet have seen have seen this and some of you were there um climate and advisory uh the next member meeting will be the end of june for ptsc which is the city uh and then the cabinet south cams on the fifth of july and that that's all i've got for you so if you've got any questions for me i'll be happy to happy to take them i'll just stop sharing my screen and um if i can remember how to do that and uh we'll be on our way okay fantastic thank you very much jordan and jane and the whole team for for this um it really really is important to see this i think in fact in 2018 we talked about updating this this spd so it's fantastic to see it here now on the back of the doubling nature strategy as well and so i open it up to committee members in terms of any um comments or questions that they might have on this particular draft or on the process going forward yes thank you chair um i cut to me um this document as you might expect is is mainly focusing on um well not any mitigation but also obviously um a net gain of biodiversity where we're looking at um development which normally would mean housing um but but given our sort of call for green sites um as part of the local plan i wonder how this fits in with that and i i wonder how this would sort of talk to the kind of application where um the biodiversity net game is the primary objective of a development rather than something that needs to be part of a mitigation and i'm thinking of you know for example a solar farm for example um if you look at the cost of the panels versus the farmland cost at this approximately um the panels themselves per unit hectare are five times more expensive than the farmland so that suggests that actually it's possible to combine an array of pb um with a very significant sort of margin if you like around the the actual array that provides biodiversity as the primary objective and i just wondered how this would sort of play to that um as as a a kind of slightly different situation that's an excellent question because essentially well these things are created with primarily what i say primarily um yeah primarily in in mind the kind of development that takes biodiversity away from us and that we need to replace and in this instance not just replace but go go higher and replace plus so when we have developments which of the kind that you've described which come forward and in a way have already offset that need i think it's a it's a valid question to ask i'm not sure i have an off-pad answer for you other than um within the deferent metric which is the method by which we measure the baseline for biodiversity um there will be a very clear unambiguous calculation as to what the biodiversity take is for that site and through that process we can arrive at um uh a transparent um an unambiguous figure which we can use to plug in and say well okay it might look like uh you've done this however the maths the sums the process as approved by deffra not the local council thing that we've cooked up suggests that actually um there's been a loss of x y z and therefore you have to it might not be the case that that that we have that kind of loss though so there's a very good question council harry i'm not sure um i'll defer to my boss jane what what do you think on this one the nature of the application so if we're talking about a solar farm it will very much depend on what comes forward what is actually being proposed and what harm there's been caused by that so for example i mean we talked um if we've talked previously about north stove for example and the loss of land availability for farmland birds you know if in this instance um in the case that we're considering now had we had a lot of lot of land because of for farmland birds you know there would still be an impact which would need to be mitigated so i think it's looking at every case on its merit um so that a solar farm would have a lot of um things in its favour in terms of you know the renewable energy but actually you know we still need to look at the impact it has in terms of biodiversity and so that might absolutely still be necessary in in that case and we would look at that um as when we've got an application council gun it's very interesting i would have made some some direct comments to mr cornell but i wanted to know one thing i i felt i mean it's something i generally feel is that there isn't bit more of a need for an introduction to the the setting of our biodiversity the uh not just landscape but the biodiversity in the area um the it seems to have been lost a bit of because of our the way we've talked about this geography perhaps in schools we can go back uh that uh learning about the structure of the land the geology the how we set in the geology of the whole of the region um is important in understanding our area and uh also explaining priorities i think that would actually help um in in this um i mean learning about the way that we have the the various sedimentary layers that being exposed by serious over exposure from from uh east to west across the region um and something about the structure helps you understand the context also the adjoining areas for instance i commented about the the woodland in the south east of the county on the chalk which is uh not really mentioned as an area but it is ancient woodland but part of a much larger area so you can only understand it in thinking in terms of suffigan Essex um and i think somehow that needs to be put in as a context particularly if we we're not quite sure how agricultural policy is going to go in the future and it may be that we become more involved in the determination of agricultural grants and the way that agricultural policy settles and this will provide a framework for us in doing that and i think that will be helpful um but that's just a thought and there's no doubt coming to the god station stage i should perhaps mention i don't think it's a formal a formal interest but i do know one of the people who works for the agents of the consultancy that works throughout many years ago through an organisation called the time the working panel of local policy ecologists but uh just as a acquaintance okay that's nice thanks very much councilor karn um i did receive your comments um you'd clearly read the document given some um a good amount of thoughts of this and i would completely agree that the setting out of the context within which this sits within which our our landscape sits is incredibly important for just painting the picture correctly um in a in a way that um helps folk to understand um we have had i would i would say um in the various drafts as we've gone through the drafting process we have had um an introduction section which was much broader than it is currently configured and currently written and the reason that we have um that um a somewhat shorter introduction now and more focused introduction is that we were made aware primarily by our policy colleagues that this is a policy document and there are um not limitations but the envelope within which we can write about all all the kinds of stuff which are for instance in doubling nature doubling nature is a really excellent document but it's not um intended as sort of a hard-nosed policy document and so there was there was somewhat of a steer as to you know try and keep it focused and not not go to too broad and too wide and so it's been quite a balancing act to do and possibly there is um i'm obviously out of this process we're going to get a steer and if the steer is we need more context oh i'm very happy to take that forward um yes good yes councillor part yes thank you very much yeah um yeah i mean this was a obviously a lot of hard work on into this document um it's very thorough and i learned a great deal so thank you very much um i have a specific question um just about targets really um in terms of uh it was actually section um 5.5.26 i think talks about the um the land managed for nature increased from 8 to 16 percent as that as the target and that a value of 20 percent is probably likely to be needed in terms of net gain in order to achieve that but then in 5.5.19 um it's a it it says the 20 percent level um it doesn't set this figure as a fixed target um and it might be an aspiration and depends on the environment bill i mean does that does that target need to be consistent with what will come in the environment bill or has the council got the flexibility to be able to set its own target gosh that's a very good question and this forms the basis um many of the early discussions that i was having with our policy colleagues um the reason being that environment bill we think will contain a clear 10 percent mandate um therefore um remember this is an spd we cannot make new policy in an spd right so we can't mandate 20 percent in this spd because that would be seen as creating new policy what we can do of course is we put 20 percent in the new local plan as it comes forward over the next two years and i'd encourage you to have you know 20 percent um you know knock it out of the park but we really must um in terms of the guidance in this spd really the best we can do in terms of a mandate is 10 percent but we can advise aspirationally that 20 percent should be best practice or you know a good a direction worth going in but it's it's tricky i had to go to legal actually for the language on that um because it we can't be seen to be supporting things which just don't exist in policy at the moment and with all our policy if i can just add a few things whenever we're bringing policy forward there's got to be an evidence base so at the moment behind the scenes a lot of your officers are working on that local plan getting the year various evidence base so a decision will come before you as new members later in the year about the sorts of things you want to put in the local plan but it will have to have an evidence base behind it so as john said we can't do it at this point in time but we will you may you know you may well be able to do it next time with the local plan which isn't that far off now members thank you very much thank you castle bow part and yeah and i'm sure we need the evidence in writing but i think our the biodiversity opportunity mapping that looked at it and said that you know we are one of the poorest areas in the country for for biodiversity and tree canopy cover and land managed for wildlife um is part of the evidence but i know that the bringing forward even more more evidence um and so i i would just hope that this is a little bit that we can be as strong as possible that's what i would like to see with legal advice you know following on what from council beer park says there which is a little bit like when the government said we will be bringing forward policy that says no gas will you know soon be in housing now that's a message to the market and that starts things changing already everybody gears up for it and that's why we put in the doubling nature strategy we aspire to 20% and we you know we're letting them know that in the local plan we aspire to 20% so everything we say must be gearing them towards that's what we want to do in the local plan and in the local plan we can set our own target as i understand even though the government will maybe 10% yep that's what i understand right um the oxcamark has put 20% as one of its principles and we'll be looking to see that being rolled out across the oxcamark so what we're hoping is everything locally we'll be pushing that that ambition but thank you for bringing that that forward and we must make sure i think in the forwards and wherever possible just please make sure that we push the language as far as possible so that we're sending the signal that that they know is the minute we can that we will be there and many of these are about major developments that have multi year build out periods so they don't want to start with something and then get caught that the policy comes in in the middle and they're not actually compliant then so you know with our staggered sustainability um master plans that say you have to review in light of policy every couple of years so hopefully that message will be very strong and they would see that as as rational to be already aiming for that that would that would be very very good and and i noticed just just this morning i think that's one of the comments that will be going to the the the water treatment relocation would be you know if they're speaking 10% no it's 20% if you're going to provide anything it would need to be 20% does anybody have anything else council having yes thank you chef um i had a quick look um and maybe i missed it but i know that the um a lot of people are worried about um deliberately degrading the um baseline biodiversity as a way to avoid actually ending up with um a higher amount of biodiversity for example you know you could take some farmland or some woodland um chop the trees down you say well actually my baseline is now done and i think it turned out that um this this is kind of coked or um foreseen because actually it's it's from when the environment wheel was first presented to parliament um i didn't notice that was mentioned the sbd and i wondered whether that was because actually don't want to encourage people um to kind of take that kind of action from piece of land that it would date from before um when the uh yeah um i just wondered if um if it should be mentioned we can certainly put it in um i think that there's uh it's always a balancing act isn't it you don't want to um introduce ideas into that you know but but equally you're absolutely right it is um the the the baseline as we're calling it is benchmark as uh that date from when the environment builds and first introduced which i believe is the beginning of last year uh correct me if i'm wrong i can't remember the exact month um so there's no way around that but um and we we can certainly we can certainly put that in there Councillor Harvey i think it would be a good addition and it wouldn't take too much space so um i can note to that. In terms of location so um and how far away the mitigations for biodiversity needs to be for new applications that come in through mentioned the uh so for example the water treatment plan or a new housing development um when we look at sort of offsetting that that the biodiversity is somewhere else it is there um sort of constraint as to how far away from the application that biodiversity needs to be offset or is it acceptable to just to offset that anywhere in sort of south cams um you know within their sort of council area or or should i didn't sort of get a feel for sort of how close and proximity it needed to be. Well i think what we'd be doing um within under the auspices of best practice is to site that offset as close to the area of damage or biodiversity take as possible that i mean that that's what we'd always seek to do however um with smaller sites so with smaller developments we know it's going to be a massive challenge in a way that possibly isn't for places like cambourne and water beach so smaller developments might not be able to offset within the redline boundary therefore we're going to have to look elsewhere. Your question is do we have a number i'm guessing that we can say well it has to be within five miles or it has to be within 10 kilometres or whatever i'm not sure we do i can certainly look into that i think it's i think that the the term or that the working logic is within a reasonable distance and we can look at north stowe as you know north stowe allocated a farm for farmland birds to its north northeast and that was within about someone's going to correct me on this but i think it's within about five k might might have been even closer so we're not looking you know if you're developing something in southeast uh southeast part of the district we're not going to block something on the you know the completely opposite edge that wouldn't be best practice um so you know within within a reasonable distance but i'll take your point should we have a metric should we have a number jane i don't know is there is there some precedent for that i don't think there is because i think it will also depend on you know what you're trying to mitigate for example if there's a particular species where is the best place for that habitat to go so for example there may not be something suitable within safety today i think you know honestly over time as we go forward in future years biodiversity net gain gets um you know great attraction there will actually be a whole series of schemes so we'll be working with partners to actually put in place opportunities all this information we talked about in terms of you know the biodiversity opportunity mapping that's been done as part of the evidence base that will give us some direction about what can happen where we'll you know through the next local plan there will be a green infrastructure strategy coming in parallel with that so that will give you opportunities so i think the thinking about where biodiversity offsetting should happen will develop and be sort of galvanised over the next coming next few years in parallel with the local plan as we work with partners and see what can happen where where the land is where's the most appropriate for the species or where the land is right for the species to take place thank you very much that answers my question i think just sometimes residents um you know do have a concern with new developments and bits of infrastructure that they you know they won't see the biodiversity net gain in their locality so um you know i think they worry about it being put in the easiest or most affordable or place rather than a place that's actually close to the proximity where that sort of you know development is taking place so um i get the reasons for not having maybe an exact um sort of formula for that given you know different species and so forth but i think um you know really needs to be clear within that document that the um that the net gain is put very close in proximity to the um the developmental infrastructure that is taking place thank you for that answer good thank you and i think this really is designated for example you know that some of the a14 biodiversity offsetting that happened was even outside our district never mind close to wherever it was happening so this is really about your absolutely it's about making sure that we've got greater control of it and i think also about the maintenance and management of it so it's somewhere you know where it can thrive you know and therefore can be um and accessible i suppose so can i um what was the point before that what did you what was your point Jeff was on the base lining base lining i think that it's a bit like this messaging isn't it so i think it would be a little naive to think that most developers don't know all the tricks in the book already and and the other point is this is something they may not know and this is what's called a deterrent at least so it's in the other way as we're sort of trying to message and incentivize good behavior i think letting them know that bad behavior you know what won't go anywhere i think would be important to be in and i don't i don't think it would be um necessarily opening people's eyes to a new trick in the book or anything like that but i do think probably i'm not sure that everybody does know about the the base i'm probably they do but i think it's good to have it in the document as Councillor Harvey says um could i just bring a couple of things and i'm sorry that i didn't send these before so um we don't make a mention of section 106 in here and i was just wondering um even just as something that's that's sort of happening you know locally in an area where the community has come together to through a neighbourhood plan to identify designated place and then purchase that place and make sure it can be accessible um in perpetuity forever for the community um and it now therefore is something that they've just seen in a section 106 agreement could be support is when we're looking at the maintenance and management of these areas that's the difficult thing isn't it when you're looking at it being close so if this is then becoming a community asset and section 106 can help maintain that i don't know whether that would come into something because it's part of the planning policy it's part of that you know what might be happening around the development that could also be positive to support our biodiversity enhancement not through the net game piece of it but actually how planning developments can can support in other ways i don't know if that could go in there absolutely it could yeah we can do a cross reference that's not a problem um and then the other thing would be you know on the agenda today we've got chalk streams and i think we did mention this before where is the role of water in this in in terms of water and development and abstraction and biodiversity to do in the doubling nature we had a big discussion the strategy about where water came into that and we decided we would include water within the doubling nature strategy so i'm just wondering here i know it's difficult but you know is there some way of including that we've got the suds and the suds does you know what the suds do and i see in the document that the suds is sort of looking towards that but is there any other way that we could look at that way we're looking at reducing abstraction because that's a necessity in many different ways or that you can actually contribute to the enhancement of the groundwater and the chalk streams where they are it's a very good point cwelsa hailing and of course it is something that's foremost in our minds when we think about development and this area and it's also a very hot topic isn't it politically i think and again jane please correct me if i'm wrong but we've been led by existing policy and have shied away from making any well i mean we simply can't you know create new policies or you know give a steer for things which aren't absolutely black and white and in existing local plan policies so in my mind when i think about the water issue i think about the emerging local plan policies which of course we can write and and make robust but beyond suds which is in which is in there already i'm not too sure how we would make that more robust in terms of amplifying the message around the aquifer for instance the chalk streams and all of the challenges that we have there i'm ready it's just it's that it's that fine line between you know amplifying existing policy or being seen to sort of stretch that envelope and so i suspect that the reason it's it doesn't come it doesn't come through more clearly is because because of that that difficult line we've had to trade but um yeah i don't know we i mean we've actually got go in terms of i'm just trying to think about the biometric the the metrics for biodiversity what what water what water plays in that i mean certainly it's a key issue for quality maker when you're talking at very strategic level about actually what you know how much growth could an area take away just from water come from because actually we're not in control the local authority the local planning authority is not in control for the abstraction licenses that said obviously we are absolutely having conversations with um the water bodies and the water system to have those to have those conversations but i'm not sure other than suds what more we could do or expect any individual you know developer individual householder to do because actually they're not actually necessarily in control of where the water supply comes from but did it and go with you on to add anything at this point thanks shea now i think you've covered it it's um when we're using the biodiversity metric it's about um area mainly for the land-based stuff but water courses it's a linear metric that we use but again it's very much about the habitats along the banks or a pair in habitats that will be actually fed the gym or follows you in the river rather than the water that's coming or not coming so yeah it's not an ideal system for looking at water courses and particularly picking up short stream issues so i think the answer in nutshell is we will be doing it but not through this document paper okay and so maybe the one one small thing i was wondering it's a bit like sort of with our back boxes or whatever and i don't know if this comes in but it is around design and which is that the issues around guttering and rainwater storage um into gardens which of course you know with the increasing heat waves and droughts that we will you know potentially to come that that would be something that could help improve it and just makes that link and i know it is in our existing place just sort of beefing that up a little bit i don't know if that's possible that's absolutely can i find out yeah can i go i do you want to tell me about water butts sorry if you want to add anything about water butts and what we trying to do yeah well i mean yeah it's sustainable it's pushing the sustainable urban drainage and yeah much more of course you know much water we can get infiltrating and sort of filtered through the land that ultimately ends up in our torque streams then so much better suds and butts could we have suds and butts when we can try great okay council can um i want to reiterate the point that people was making regarding um the proximity of the the role of natural areas um i think that is important uh we do have a tool in terms of the need to provide for informal recreation and this area apart from being uh very intensely but partly because it's very intensely farmed area has already low uh accessibility to large areas areas of informal recreation in the countryside which hasn't really i don't think been taken into account except in the very large developments but in terms of the other developments it is it's difficult to normally take into account but i think there is a policy basis for it and that ties in also with biodiversity and access to natural areas and by the diverse areas so i think it's important to draw the link between those two because it might give you a tool for for in terms of planning terms when you're coming up to policies um but if it's i think there is justification in the existing policy um and but it's important to draw the link otherwise you may find difficulty when you actually come to uh dealing with natural applications that's just a thought okay one what kind of idea that yeah thank you chair um i think just coming back to the uh water use question i think this is really a question about kind of indirect impacts on biodiversity of new developments so the water use is obviously one um i mean just to give another example um near where i live in more speech a lot of the fields are growing turf um which probably has lower biodiversity reduces the biodiversity compared with even arable fields and you know i think possibly a lot of that turf is going to uh new developments or gardens open spaces that sort of thing um i just wanted to raise a point really that i think you know a lot of the biodiversity impacts of new developments can be indirect rather than direct i'm not sure it's necessarily for the scope of this document but it was just something i wanted to plan thank you good and again um echo the words that said congratulations for a huge excellent piece of work in in this document so as i understand as the committee what we would be doing is to you know recommending um that you know this goes to the next phase which will be public consultation but i understand it goes to first of all to city um and then to cabinet and then it would be public consultation yeah and then it would come back we're looking at late 2021 and in this timetable you had to get it all done in one year which would just be fantastic which means it has some effect before we get to the new local plant you know so we're not just doing a supplementary planning document there'll be one that can actually be implemented so thank you for driving this forward and it looks like you're keeping to the timetable so far so excellent thank you very very much thanks for your support thank you hello sorry councillor Hawkins sorry good afternoon hello you look surrounded by biodiversity wonderful if not why not um thank you for letting me speak um i just wanted to uh note formally in your meeting my thanks to um john and to jane and to the team for putting this document together obviously a lot of work has gone into it um and um look forward to using it once you get to the stage of adopting it um there's a couple of things i just wanted to highlight the fact that one of the themes of um evolving local plan is biodiversity and local spaces and so of course we're looking at uh the future of this document has been able to be used um you know with the new plan once it's adopted so in regard to um the net gain figures that you've you've discussed before which is you know 10% is stated here but we are aiming for 20% i just wonder if the wording couldn't be tweaked so that even if we stick with 10% now it's not the BNNN rule um and that this policy can be applied with the new um local plan whenever that's adopted even if we're not reviewing this SPD sort of you know before then if you see what I mean so it's applicable to the new plan when that gets put in place because I I just remember what's happened with um you know the minimum spacing for housing where we grant a plan in permission at a time when it was you know it wasn't specified and then it came to reserve matters and developers were saying well you didn't specify that in the conditions when it was in permission so you can't tell us to do that now you see why I'm going with this yes and it wouldn't be difficult to do because we could say something along the lines of uh you know the mandatory 10% within the environment bill or anything coming forward in new local plans whichever is higher or something on you know what's that like yes something like that that wouldn't be difficult to do it's a great idea to me absolutely we can do that please please do okay that's great thank you and um the other thing I wanted to uh touch on was how we can get local communities engaged with this especially when they have developments coming in their areas um I don't know you know have a think about it um because an example another example which I can give even though within the BNE team is when um play spaces are being developed and I know that the urban design officers actually engage with primary schools and secondary school students and get them involved in designing the play areas because you know it's their generation that's going to use it right so I wonder if we could engage with communities in a similar way either with you know the group that is doing biodiversity things or the parish or the school something away in which we get the community actually involved so it's not just a document and this is something for POP it's something they've had um engagement with and can relate to and have had an input into because then they feel like it's theirs I think we'll take that one away if we make um we've got all sorts of ideas but obviously things like you know as through the consultation process we'll be wanting to highlight this with all sorts of people not simply you know our um you know the nature and nature partnership but actually you know the community at large schools etc to actually comment on it to actually help to we talked a little bit this morning about having some sort of launch event as well and I think the other thing is to making sure we're showing Brett's practice which again there's lots of good things happening on the ground your office is already asking developers for 20% but what we're not very good at it's actually celebrating where we've got it and actually showing that so I think it's a combination of things so just getting a bit of a plan around this side of things to show what's actually happening on the ground and what we intend to achieve but actually as you say what communities can do because some of this through the planning process but there's not to stop people doing things for themselves and a lot of the parishes are really any of you know any involved with ourselves I mean this team works closely with Shaborn as well obviously we've got the action plan that will be coming from the um doubling nature strategy as well so there's quite a lot of crossovers between what the planning service does and other parts of the council which again we're very mindful of and we're very much working together and in partnership of course thank you chair that's my input thank you very much so i'm completely support um what obviously our lead cabinet member for planning says on the wording which sounds fantastic as long as we don't lose 20% it's even though it's still it's what could come in future what could or any higher amount but let's make sure that the 20 is in there as mentioned as well but somehow I'm sure you'll come up with a way of doing that but thank you very very much for that for all this great work thank you thanks and we do move on to agenda item nine which is the chalk streams report and guy you're with us I am hi there yeah I'll just quickly say a word thank you guy for for coming so just to say that um that guys the Cambridge city council by a diversity officer and is introducing a presentation on the greater Cambridge chalk streams project and this came up from a cross boundary water summit held in 2019 um and Cambridge city council and Cambridge water commissioned the wildlife trust and the wildlife trout trust to assess the health of the 17 main chalk streams emerging from the aquifer in south camurcha and so this is around the report for that and the purpose of the item is to start this conversation about what needs to be done where and by whom um and and where the council comes in so over to you guy and I will just attempt to share my screen because um I need to do that for your presentation let me just bring that up well whilst you're around we'll just there we go yeah excellent guy you will need to tell me to pull to um when you want a new slide of course no problem at all yeah thanks again for inviting me um for those of you don't know me I'm a diversity officer um and I do give advice um to the great Cambridge shared planning service as one of your ecologists um but I also managed 12 local nature reserves across the city um some of which such as nine wells actually sit within south cams um and are the source of chalk streams like Hobson's congryth and vicar's brook which we will talk about um I hope we can all hear a bit because my screen has frozen a little bit yeah yeah good so um yeah as the report says in 2019 um there was an awful lot of concern after this accession of very dry um winters um of the state of our chalk streams and it was really highlighted by our communities the likes of the can valley forum lots of friends groups were already doing terrific work on these water courses just want a pair of the state they were in um really really you know it was it was that these got 200 in the world chalk streams um and many of those are in England and quite a number 17 have been identified within our immediate sort of uh care so uh like to do the next slide please screen is not moving but I'm hoping everyone can hear me uh can everyone hear me yes we can yeah yeah sorry um okay so the next slide should should read it's not changing on my screen but the chalk stream project we've highlighted it's 2019 um so on the back of the 2019 summit um we realised that there are some awfully big issues which will all be very aware of they're coming up in the local plan they're key issues for the local plan about uh water resource where the water comes from um all of our water coming out of the chalk aquifer is obviously impacting fire abstraction on our chalk water courses and that has been established um there since 2019 water resources eat has been set up and actually dealing with this very big sort of hypothesis in the room if you like around uh where the water is going to come from to restore these walk trips to chalk streams and um and there are many activist groups who are saying without any sort of action it's not worth doing anything the chalk streams will die we very much felt like yes we need to get on top and embrace water resources these but there is stuff we can do here and now on these water courses many of which have been neglected and degraded over the years through poor management practices um so we we went to the best local experts really and asked the commissioner a report so that's Rodman Govern who many of you will know very well um as your former ecology officer uh absolutely passionate about um our water courses in south cams he now works for the wild trout trust um delivering projects across the whole region actually but still focused very much in south cambridge and the city um and he has got so many he knows intimately these water courses and also the groups that people would work on them and the landowners as indeed does Ruth Hawksley the co-author um who's the river officer for the local wildlife trust so together they produced the baseline report um in december 2020 um which we consulted on um in march 2021 we had 32 responses from um uh the local groups i mentioned also individuals and landowners um all very positive quite quite a mixed bag of how they would like to sort of take this forward some would like to try and join together join forces others would like to continue to work as they do but it was smaller sort of easier to access grant funds that kind of thing um and then we have actually uh started to action for um water course projects um in the city and well three in the city and one in south cams which i'll go on to talk about uh next slide please of all okay you will see a map now sorry i'm just having difficulty getting it to come up on the right screen but well there we go can everybody see a map now yes all right sorry about the technology um so this is a map straight from the report and it identifies the 17 sort of major chalk streams now some of the correspondence we got back during the consultation is well what about our chalk stream because there are an awful lot of water courses emerging from the chalk feeding into these sort of larger streams and many what are known as sort of winter born so they're quite really quite ephemeral springs which arise all really important all have got lots of good ecology but we um Ruth, Rob and I did feel we needed to focus you know our attention on on the key major assets um so and also some people were sort of saying what about the likes of bin brook there was those technically not a chalk stream as it rises in the clailins um it is equally as worthy of our attention so i do not dispute that at all and we indeed we are looking at actively with our own sort of biodiversity strategy in the city but um for this particular project these were the 17 we chose next slide please of all so you should now hopefully see another extract from the report um which shows a more detailed map um so we go section to sections of each water course and Robin Ruth have done a rag rating uh red amber green uh on a whole selection of preset criteria about uh whether it's about poor water quality geomorphology um uh over widening um whether there's community groups already active so as to really just start to build up that baseline and then you'll see some sort of key imagery on there and sort of target notes then next slide please there's then quite a detailed commentary um from one or both um detailing sort of again you know it's a narrative of exactly what's going on with water courses constrained opportunities and sort of challenges and then you'll see at the bottom the bullet points there are the real key sort of um projects which could be taken forward with some broad figures put against them um so often they are quite small scale um and they are things we can sort of crack on with now we know what needs doing um but there's also quite a lot of feasibility studies um that are referenced there quite often the feasibility costs more than the actual doing um and that I think is quite often what we're seeing we're coming up against when we're looking to get external grants and things for these projects um whereby communities are ready kind of know what needs doing but need that information that sort of data behind it to inform any consenting things we need um and then that's the sort of challenge that we're capturing too. We've just lost you Guy, how's your run? Um I wonder if Guy can come back in um I can take you through the the his slides but uh let's see I think it's not much used without Guy's would it be worth moving on to the next item and then coming back when we can get Guy back into the meeting? Yes I think that's a good idea. We just move on to the next item on the agenda which is the resources and waste strategy consultations and we have Briani with us from Recap Waste Partnership. Hello. Hello Briani, thank you for coming and speaking to us. No worries um so I've been asked um by colleagues in the Greater Cambridge Shared Waste Service come and give it a brief overview I believe of um the resources and waste strategy and what that means for waste services in general and obviously what your what your waste collection authority changes might mean. I'm aware that Trevor I work with in the partnership and you as a committee may have had some input because this has been a strategy that was published in 2018 initially and the changes that are coming from it are have been around sort of for quite a while but we are in the midst of the consultation period at the moment because they were delayed due to COVID. So um we have um I've got some slides I'll put up Trevor you'll recognise these because these are your generic uh slides that I've borrowed um so forgive me if you've seen these previously uh let's put them up. Can you see those? Yep we can see them. You can see those fam. Let's do present. So um the resource and waste strategy came out in 2018 and it's um a strategy that is part uh the legislation one part of the environment bill and it's the biggest changes that are coming um for waste management service in about the last 20 years and it's changes that we have been calling for as an industry for a long long time um and what they're looking to do is um move us from um a linear economy to a circular economy um so forgive me if you're all very aware of this but this is is just sort of some background to um what what I'll be talking about um so this is obviously looking at the resources that we currently um use and making sure that more of those resources are actually reused and um you know not going into landfill or put into energy from waste until they've actually um served served their purpose um so um it's it's uh this in detail on the slides which I can let you have um and it's obviously looking at um the amount of carbon that we can save by utilising more of the materials that we actually um use for things like packaging um and any of the materials that we actually have in the waste stream that currently are either ending up in landfill or going into an energy from waste facility um the uh pandemic has obviously affected this timeline quite considerably but um when the first uh strategy came out in um 2018 this was the aspirational timeline and DEFRA have been quite firm all the way through um the pandemic that they actually are not going to be moving from um any of these times um of implementation so we are still working to this program and at the moment we are um at the point of consultation for um the consistency element of um some of these changes so if you look at the timetable uh in 2020 we were supposed to have had um a number of things happen but obviously those have been compressed into 2021 because of um all the changes that have been going on um nationally um but we're looking now still at a rollout um if you look at 2023 the rollout of um a deposit return scheme extended producer responsibility and consistency changes within um uh the collection from materials in waste in 2023 which is not far away at all um and so even though we are not certain of what those changes are to come because the legislation has yet to be confirmed we have had two consultations on deposit return scheme and extended responsibility extended producer responsibility and we're in the midst of the consistency one for um waste and I'll I'll explain what those are in a moment um but with the aspirations to include materials that we have in um uh business premises as well as in the household that is currently just going into the residual waste and not being captured and recycled um so the definition of what should be collected and recycled is likely to be changing and um any household type waste that is produced now in business premises will be captured by this is changing legislation and there'll be a responsibility to ensure that businesses are actually recycling that material um um using reusing more of it than there was previously um and the long term aim is that they wish by 2030 to have 75 recycling rate for all packaging um and that's that's quite elite because um friend of you that are aware we currently have um about 55 recycling rate in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough um in the waste partnership um and that's across the board taking into account all the recycling that's done at the household recycling centres um and that material is obviously broken down into much more constituent parts at the household recycling centres they have a very high recycling rate at those centres um the uh average sort of recycling rate in the partnership at the collection level for household waste is a little lower than that we're around sort of between 52 and 54 55 percent um depending on um the types of collections that the district councils have so you can clearly see there's a lot of work that's still to be done to capture more of the material that we're collecting um and recycle that material um and the long term aim is obviously what they're trying to do is send a minimum amount of materials um in the waste stream to landfill um and to recycle much much more of it and to create a market for those um materials so the way that they want to to move the whole um uh community to to shift to this change is that we are looking at uh polluter pays principle initially for the the companies and organisations that are producing this material and um putting it onto the market in the first place and this is something that many people have been calling for for a long time um what they are doing um to engage the companies and organisations that produce this is to uh put the responsibility onto them to pay for the whole life cycle of their packaging um so currently if you produce something um packaging wise a lot of the um effort and energy goes into uh the concept to consumer purchasing of packaging um they don't give much or any thought to um the disposal and what happens once it gets into the household and obviously historically what's happened is the waste collection authorities um have had and waste disposal authorities have had to take that material regardless of what it is and find end markets for it try and recycle it and if they can't recycle it dispose of it um so the uh resources and waste strategy is saying that the producers of this material should um look at a whole life cycle of that product and they should actually produce something that can be recycled in a local authority recycling um treatment uh process um and and it's not good enough just to say it's recyclable it actually has to demonstrate that it can be recycled when it's collected from the household um and what will happen is there will be a body set up or bodies we're still in the consultation period so we don't know which route they're going to go down that will be responsible for um levying a tax on producers of materials that actually don't end up in the recycling and aren't able to be recycled um so what it's driving is a greater market for packaging producers to produce packaging that can be recycled in local authority processes um and that they are minimising the amount of packaging or the amount of package materials that they use so that they are more streamlined and easier to recycle um they're also looking at um trying to discourage the use of virgin materials and one of the things that obviously most people are greatly concerned about is the amount of plastics that we use and what ends up happening to those plastics and uh so they are or have proposed and have introduced a 30% uh tax on virgin plastics to encourage those that use plastics um for packaging minimise the amount that is actually used in as virgin packaging so um these changes have been um talked about and coming for a while and many of you may notice that some of the big producers of um consumer products are already embracing these changes and making um changes to their packaging in the light of this um so we're starting to see greater amounts of recycled plastics in things like bottles of fizzy drinks and um reduction of plastic in things like Easter eggs and and those kind of common products um and the overall you know requirement for the polluter pays principle is that the producers of this material will actually cut down on the amount of material they're producing and what they do produce will be recyclable rather than just going straight into landfill and if it isn't they will pay a levy on that material so that they can pay for the cost of disposal and treatment of that material or disposal um the next element is um looking at how um we as as consumers of these products um the the amount of material that we bring into our home many of you have been shopping and emptied your shopping bags and put things away and found that they've been left with lots of empty boxes and plastic packaging and film and those kind of materials so one of the things that they're also doing with this strategy is trying to move towards um incentivising consumers to reduce the amount of what they purchase that has you know packaging that can't be recycled thinking about what they are consuming um and whether it's really necessary because um consumers have over the years been known to to consume more than they actually need um and are throwing a lot of materials away that um you know they shouldn't have purchased in the first place they're looking at the barriers that have been caused uh to prevent people from reducing the amount of waste that they have so looking at um uh you know making people aware of what what what is good packaging and bad packaging making people aware of what is actually recyclable and what isn't recyclable um so that consumers can make really good choices about what they're actually purchasing at the supermarkets when they're they're making their um weekly shop or whatever it might be so they're looking at empowering people to understand and purchase wisely um and to think about whether they can reuse materials and limit the amount of plastics they're bringing into the home and then they're looking at recovery of more of the materials once it actually has been put into the waste stream so um looking at increasing our recycling rates across the country because although we do very well in Cambridge here um we have very well engaged residents who um do support the services that the district councils um have at the curbside it's not the same picture across the country and some local authorities do actually have um fairly low recycling rates even though um we've been collecting recycled material at curbsides for a long time um so they're looking at how um educating the public about the impacts of the um waste that goes into landfill has and looking at obviously the materials that are in that waste that goes to landfill and the hazard that that can create in terms of the environmental impact of greenhouse gases and and carbon emissions and so um there's there's uh an onus on um us to look at the types of services that we roll out and understand the environmental impacts of those more so than we have in the past um in the past a lot of waste management has been driven by cost um and has been driven by a necessity to dispose of that material in the quickest efficient most efficient way um with less regard to um the carbon impact and the environmental damage that that disposal option may have um over the years we have had levees put on um waste disposal authorities for um disposal into landfill we've got better at capturing the emissions off of landfill and using less of it and having alternative disposal routes such as the MBT that we have in Cambridge here and also energy from waste that they're using Peterborough um so they're looking at how we dispose of these materials and providing a driver to enable us to make choices that aren't just based on cost for local authorities but also being aware that actually we could take the the less waste that we are hopefully going to have after the implications of of extended producer responsibility and making wise choices about um the technologies that we use to dispose of those materials and getting as much energy from those materials if we do choose to burn them rather than um putting them in the ground and them just sitting there and and um being uh put into landfill um there's a big element in the resources and waste strategy that also looks at waste crime um and hopefully empowering local authorities more to look at um how we can capture um those that are committing waste crime and also looking at the data and making sure that we're actually capturing the information about what is happening um out there is it's not always easy to understand what materials are being flytipped um because different authorities capture data in different ways different people determine what is flytipping in different ways um as recap partnership we have been trying to tackle this over the last few years with the scrap campaign um working together with the environment agency the national farmers union and the the countryside landowners association as well as trying to engage with the police and all the enforcement teams within waste um collection authorities to look at how they capture data on what actually counts as as um flytipping um and there's there's greater penalties coming for those that actually commit waste crime um and looking at the the fines that magistrate courts put out um and the um the powers that people have for tackling um these issues because they're ongoing within Cambridgeshire and Peterborough we spend about half a million pounds a year picking up flytipping that's been illegally dumped by either organised flytippers or by um members of the public who should know better um and don't take it to the correct places so this this is something in the strategy that's also being tackled um and then one of the big changes that's coming which in South Cambridgeshire and Cambridgeshire City you're already um sort of further down the path than most of of trying to address which is collecting food waste from the residential properties um that produce it um and this is something that needs to be done on a weekly basis because obviously the vermin issues and um concerns about flies and um other pest issues that come from having uh food waste sat around at home um so the uh proposals is that um local authorities introduce or is mandated to introduce a weekly food collection at the curbside um and what this would do um in Cambridgeshire is take out about 30% of the residual waste that is in the black bag at the moment um we have got some authorities that currently capture food waste at the curbside and as I say you're rolling out some um trial um a trial project um in in South Cam, South Cambridgeshire and City to see how the residents take to the the service um and there's a lot of sort of behavioural change issues around rolling out these kinds of service but the strategy recognises the savings that can be made um by actually engaging the resident in seeing how much food waste they are producing in the home and understanding where that food waste is coming from um and hopefully by by them separate separating it from their residual waste and seeing it as a whole they'll recognise what what food they're wasting and make them think wisely about the sort of shopping they're doing um in future um and then there's some other elements which these are sort of less relevant to to yourselves but just so that you're aware these are part of the strategy that we're included about us being global leaders is a country and it um you know is pushing the messaging about all of us needing to tackle this problem because obviously waste that is collected in this country has turned up in other parts of the world having gone through a very long logistical chain of um brokers and reprocessors and organisations that deal with waste without much um traceability of that waste and one of the things that the strategy is aiming to do is to find uh technological solutions to tracing waste so that we can actually be clearer about where it's been collected and where it's been disposed of and preventing the leakage from um waste management logistics so that it doesn't end up in the sea or in the environment in the wrong place and causing the environmental damage that we're aware it can it can cause um and they're also proposing to do a lot more research into um innovative solutions so one of the things that we're looking at is um for understanding what's in the the waste stream um and understanding if some of these greener packaging materials are actually better um so things like biodegradable plastics does that get rid of the problem of plastics or does it just create a new problem um does it you know can we can we use digital technology to trace our waste that comes into the home and understand what that waste is produced from and how much we're actually capturing of that and recycling it um so there's there's a lot of emphasis in the new strategy about um the research and innovation that we could um been adopting for waste management um and then the last point was looking at measuring and monitoring and evaluating that data um and finding some clever solutions to some of the challenges um so I'll stop sharing my screen um just to come back to you for a moment um so the um yeah the extended producer responsibility deposit return scheme and and consistency element of the resource and waste strategy we're right in the thick of understanding the direction that the industry and um various lobbying groups are taking us in we have responded as a partnership on deposit return scheme and extended producer responsibility by the 4th of June those two consultations were very geared towards the conglomerates that produced the packaging um so the big unilevers and um proctor and gambles of this world that have lobbied very hard for um watering down some of these changes to to um minimise the impact that they have on their business um we as local authorities are obviously very keen on them making sure that the costs are passed through to the relevant bodies that producers packaging have gone back and said we're very supportive of these changes we are aware that it's quite tight in terms of the time scales that they're proposing and what they are trying to do is make lots of changes all at once and we as as um local authorities think that maybe they should make the change to extend a producer responsibility find out what the impact is understand how that cost flows down through into paying for the disposal of this packaging before they then introduce the deposit return scheme which is very much um being pushed by some of the um lobbying groups that are keen to see less litter in the sea so city to sea surface against sewage those um those lobbying groups have been very very influential in um impacting on deffrous consultation on deposit return scheme they are keen to see an improvement in litter in local authority in uh local environments and obviously some of the materials that they're proposing a deposit return scheme on will be things like cans and bottles that we often see um you know dropped in the litter that could be recycled quite easily so by putting a deposit on them they're hoping it would incentivise behavioural change to prevent that um we as a partnership and each local authority waste managers are not against the principle but it appears to be a very expensive solution for that problem when actually you could recycle those materials in your home with your curbside collection or have better on-street collection and better business collection of those materials so you wouldn't necessarily need to have um uh those materials collected in that way so so um I think the uh the the new one the consistency consultation is um going to be responded to soon and that's obviously looking at um partnership working of making sure that we have policy alignment on our on our collections and that we are collecting the same materials in the same way and that the contract's aligned and so that's a sort of overview um and I'm happy to answer questions along with Trevor I suspect because he's got as much experience if not more of this than myself that was fantastic very very thorough thank you brandy that was good um yes do you have any questions I I do have one which is so I think this has been the year of consultations over two years of consultations and it's a bit hard to know when actually something is finally adopted or not and do you think that you know which of these bits will they all come in one strategy or do you think some of these will happen and then the second part of that question is and how much in the you know the shared waste partnership are we looking at being early adopters you know you made some mention there of some of them so just which ones of those would we be looking at I'll answer your first question and I'll pass over to Trevor for the second because obviously as manager of the service he's got a better idea about the aspirational side but um in terms of um how much we've seen watering down from the original strategy to the consultation so from the first consultation to the second there was a great um desire to mandate consistency and that was interpreted by the industry as same colour bins same kind of materials same you know a service at the curbside for everybody but there's obviously been some um awareness that that would cost and that there will actually be environmental damage done by replacing bins to make them all the same colours so the the the change and the the lobbying that's happened through those consultations has unfortunately tempered some of those great aspirations about getting clarity for the public and clarity on the materials because we're all being to places where one side of the street you can do one thing and another side of the street you can't um so I would say that um we are seeing a and even in the most recent consultations I would say there's been a a drop off of aspiration unfortunately possibly because of the implications of the costs so we thought they were going to mandate um free garden and we would be flexible enough to be able to have three weekly collections it doesn't look like we're going to be able to do that there isn't a mandating of curbside sort so we are able to do some mingling of some materials to get um the quality improvements but without the the sort of numerous boxes that you may get with the curbside sort solution um so how much I think we definitely will get food waste so I think everybody will be seeing a food waste collection coming very soon I think we will see some money in local authorities from extended producer responsibility but how much and how clever the big companies are about avoiding that levy is it the only time will tell I don't know what they're going to do about the deposit return scheme because that is something that has been legislated for in Scotland and obviously with the border issues of having something in one part of the UK and not in another you've got potential fraud and cost implications on bordering locations so I really don't know what they're going to do about that so that will be a wait and see but we as an industry weren't very much pushing that let's wait and see what extended producer responsibility does and so in terms of aspiration for the partnership we aspire to do things in the same way but the timings may be slightly different I don't know Trevor if you want to touch on your aspirations locally and what you've done in response to the consultations yeah so as we saw weekly food waste collections was in the primary legislation rather than secondary we've already started a trial and we're looking to expand that out so adding at least another um three or four thousand properties to the trial later this year to um just to test see how food waste um how how much food waste there is out there and whether it's success or failure it's very hard to measure the trial we've already been running the amount of food waste we're getting is extremely high so in one way that's quite a failure because it means our residents are wasting food but at least now we can identify that food and hopefully we can work with them to reduce it at source so we will be looking to expand that that trial out so I think the shared service will be looking and hoping to be early adopters so we are looking and we've done quite a lot modeling both as a service as well as a partnership about the different potential options um and I think it is still quite early day the difference is we've lost the year from consultation through to implementation so the implementation date hasn't changed um it's just shortened the the sort of the the date um that we'll have time to change services so I I believe that consultation once the consultation's in it after the end of um or beginning of July the whole process will move quite quickly and we will after then look at what service we provide um whilst and I suppose I might have my slightly more rose tinted glasses on whilst some elements I think they um move back on I still think the main objective is about high quality recycling high quality um high amount of recycling um and I think that will come through so whether we go to a curts I saw or a um a reduced um number of materials coming but I think that is the route that's that's coming um to ensure that we get quality material that can be then sold and actually reprocess in the UK so we are very much trying to lead the forefront of that process so as us as a council we will be responding to the um to the consultation both within the waste partnership but also within the shut service partnership to put in sort of what we expect and using experience we've already got so that will come in and that will be submitted um to sign off as from the head of service and as well as the lead member so we can actually get that submission in the problem is due to the tight timelines and again they've reduced the amount of time of consultation it doesn't allow time to bring that back through a committee process however most of the questions are quite um a lot of the questions are quite straightforward about the right way following as a as a council we have clear policy about what we're looking to do for the environment um and our waste strategy so we can actually use those to answer the questions and can I ask it just a follow-up question on that one in terms of the the food waste and it's talking about 30 percent residual waste is the food waste you're saying it's going to landfill but you're saying through that the black bin isn't it sort of is it a mixture of black bin and green bin and I understood the thing about separating out the garden waste from the food waste so that the garden waste could be composted or something so at the moment we've done or last year the year before last we did uh waste composition analysis so we basically took our all our bins and um people went through those in huge amounts of detail separate into multiple different types of material and in our black bin our residual bin about 30 percent of that bin was food waste that's just in the back bin so um and the target is trying to reduce that as much possible hard for that amount um is avoidable food waste so it is items that may have been bought but never even unpackaged so um vegetables salads that haven't actually been prepared for use they have just been bought um put in the fridge not used but in the bin so that's pure waste um both waste of resources but actually waste of money so that's half our food waste is um that so that's about education trying to get people to see it the other half will come from carcasses and preparation so you will always have some food waste um in there because actually moving on to pedings etc unless you move that into home composting but we know that's not an option for everybody and even people who are very good at it sometimes struggle but by having separate food waste collections people will then um you normally ask people do they waste food the response is normally no we don't waste anything when you can see it in a separate food waste collection you will really quickly see that um how much you are wasting whether that's those you bought six carrots and you needed four all of those kind of things really highlight about what we can do so that's what's really important as a as a minimisation tool to do separate food waste collections good and my my other question is in terms of what we're looking at in the our sort of climate environment action plan or even in the business plan are we do we have some metrics around that now that you've got that waste composition you've done that analysis in terms of what we're looking at as an overshared waste so the waste composition analysis well we haven't we have put some measures in about trying to reduce food waste um we are repeating the waste composition analysis again um later this year um because it's seeing a trend what has um caused issues is actually the world's changed since um 2019 um so actually more people are working from home more people are eating at home and where beforehand most people would eat out once or twice a week um or even more when you talked about lunches um and that's really changed so what we're looking to see is how that will affect so we have seen our recycling go up and we've also seen our um we've seen our waste go up and we just need to see how that normalizes over the next um sort of a few months and hopefully by the time we do the waste composition analysis in in the autumn we'll be have a clear idea about what normal is again um and we're also doing waste composition analysis in the locations both where we've got the food waste trial on and we where we haven't got the food waste trial to see really to see how much food waste we have pulled out the bin what we hope is that some of that food waste or would have gone into the in our food waste scheme but actually what we hope is people are thinking about what they're buying and what they're producing and they actually reduce and minimize their food waste in in its totality so that that is success high tonnage of separate food waste is in reality um long term failure um because what we want is that material not to be there at all very very interesting thank you so much um for that and we do hope that those um that they finally do implement some of these measures and that they are as well the first strategy was fantastic really wasn't it so i mean i do hope that we can but they do get around to implementing those but it's very good to know that we're being early adopters and I can understand the complexity and that analysis given the change in in context as well Trevor but it would be good to to sort of perhaps from the next year onwards understand what those targets are you know as as people in the council as well i think there are no more questions on that thank you so much it's really really enlightening and um thank you for the consultation response as well Trevor there that's good it's four o'clock members we've got the um item on the chalk streams to come back are we okay to continue yeah thank you that right mark has a calm hello i use this one thanks martin thank you so we have um go back to item number nine is that all right shavon yes can i just check with guy i think you may be able to share your screen after all but i'm happy to share mine in if that's preferred so just let me know hi shavon sorry sorry everyone for that um i've got no icon coming up but i can share i'm afraid i'll keep my number off just in case it for problems again i think you should be able to see that now is that correct i can thank you uh yes sorry again um so we're just going through through the reports um and say each particular chalk stream of the 17 chalk streams has been uh had a baseline assessment so that involved walk over surveys uh the the knowledge of robin roof of working on those water courses and also the the landowners and communities that they they already work with uh next slide please and this is just a sort of um breakdown of each water course and its key sort of issues and a price tag alongside and um i don't know when i was cut off before but i was making the point that a lot of the the interventions that we'll go on to talk about are a relatively low cost um and could often be done with volunteers and it's good fun to do so um some of the uh more expensive things that have been identified are actually sort of feasibility studies and things that such as removal of weirs and dams that we might require something like a flood audit things like that and they're the things that we found historically and and have also been reported back by groups through the consultation are the harder things to actually get funding for so i don't know if that's something to you might want to sort of uh trigger conversations and discussions but uh yeah the sort of community groups in the river putting gravel in the river relatively easy to fund some of the sort of preliminary work to do that a little bit harder next slide please um i say what we actually do to water courses um i say notwithstanding the lack of water what the things that we can do to actually make them far more resilient to low flows uh and improve the habitat for the biodiversity which often is clinging on and and say with the um the range we've had over the current winter walking on many of our water courses they have an absolute joy and things have really bounced back and i'm as an ecologist on the main is that how quickly things bounce back how things are still still there uh to come back so these are the four key things we're looking to do so there's tree hinging and creation of brass ledges this recognises that the majority of water courses have been uh if you like over managed and um through uh flood control um management we have looked to to strip out anything that falls into the water course now whenever a tree falls over leads into a water course that's actually triggering erosions of one bank release of gravels back into the channel which is a great for fish to to spawn in uh it's trapping areas of silt which marginal vegetation can come into and that's what the water bowls like to eat so by keep on removing everything from our water courses are actually removing those natural processes so these are very simple things we can literally clear a bank of some of the um overgrown overshading trees shrubs and things and put them in the water course state them down and it's amazing how that keeps keeps up processes um gravel placement this is actually import importation of gravels so not something that we do lightly because it's obviously got a serious implication of moving the stone around but again over management in the past has often over deepened and over widened our chalk streams so the flows again particularly in times of no flow er is not sufficient to to clear the bed of gravels of the silt if the gravels are still there but often they've been dug out and are now dumped on the bank and overgrown vegetation so by putting the gravels back these become well oxygenated um flowing gravels for fish to spawn and all the all the inverts where it's at the fish eater in in there and that's the baseline of our ecosystem so gravel placement is is fantastic thing and it also is great to do with communities got some photos on that in a minute um bank reprofiling um so again this is that sort of over engineering a lot of our watercours have been straightened um uh over deepened so just by grading back the bank we can get more marginal vegetation allowing times of higher flows for it to spill out into their tiny little chalk stream flood plains and just create a far more diverse um watercourse and riparian habitats and a ferwysig named dig and dump that's literally um taking so where you might have watercourse which has got a very sort of even bed perhaps not much in the way of gradient using the small plant you can actually start or sometimes by hand you can dig areas out find gravels deeper down and pile them up to make a riffle so where the water flows over quite a shallow area of gravels to oxygenate them and then forms a pool and that pool is becomes where you've dug material out from that becomes a refuge for fish particularly larger fish when it when it gets to low flow so again it's quite simple stuff to do on site which has really dramatic effects next slide please um so on the on the back of what was identified these are currently the the projects that have been worked on in 2021 so cherry into brook where we've done um some clearance that has become very overgrown very shaded to the sex into cherry into brook and that means there's nothing in the way of marginal vegetation so it becomes quite a wide channel fairly devoid of um biodiversity so just literally just by letting in a little bit of light uh which we did in March for all the bird nesting season um uh we actually have got an awful lot of silt there so our using our revenue drainage resource we were able to do some desilting work and that allowed us to get a firm bed to introduce gravels with our volunteers so that's been really great and we actually did invert surveys before um to get a baseline to see what's how inverts are going to change and how quickly uh because this section had inverts which were very much based on on the silt bed see how quickly those sort of scarcer inverts that need the uh that the oxygenated gravels can move upstream um vickers brook um that's work that's just been undertaken um by robin his team and my colleague Victoria Smith our local nature reserve office service flows through sheep's green in the city um rises at nine wells as i mentioned earlier fed from hopsons conduit um fantastic little um stripper award course of path alongside it um we did um fish surveys here again baseline to to see where make sure that what we're doing is making a difference and we were amazed to find this is a lecture fishing survey so we put a small charge of current in the water um the fish of all sizes get affected by that they sort of float up we can net them uh measure them identify them do various um surveys on them and uh to to work out what's there and what's particularly important is the sort of age glasses to see a fish of breeding and here we had 10 species of fish it was our apart from a stickleback i don't think i'd ever seen a fish in there so this is pre serve pre pre works that species are hanging on in these water courses fairly no numbers but quite diverse and the real win was um we still had brown brown trout even breeding brown trout and that's exactly what this uh the work we were focusing on was going to do which introduced more gravel with the dig and dump as i meant the woody day breed um i've got some images to come um colders brook um a very simple one um again this was in our one of our adoptive water courses we had a huge concrete pad um which everyone's really scratched their heads about but we think it was redundant um castle drinking platform um but yeah just smack back in the middle of the water course and until we sort of walk them and really get a feel for every part of it you don't know about these things so the city council could very quickly remove that which we have and we've actually then put in a bid to create a wetland feature here in partnership with the wildlife trust and came into pass present in the future through a um a green recovery fund bid which we'll hopefully find out about this month um Rob's been working in South Cairns, Rob's been working as ever with the male brook and the group there and uh they have actually refound a last section of this brook i think it's something like 40 meters have become quickly completely entrenched in in Bramble and the landowners barely knew it was there and they've uncovered that and again we've volunteers been able to put in um hazel faggots narrower of a channel speed up the flow and then introduce gravels uh next slide please everyone so here's some shots just to sort of demonstrate that this is at Checherry Hinton brook um you see where the chaplain is on the bank there tipping in gravels all great fun um and you sort of see there's a lot of sky there previously this was all very very overgrown so we did have to do quite a lot of works and we explained that to the community um that yeah sometimes we do need to clear scrub and brush to actually get light to these water courses to make them thrive next shot please uh here's some of the gravel arriving this is quite a careful blend of gravels devised by Rob McGovern and so it's got it's not too sort of orange in colour it's got the sort of more natural sort of chalky material in there as well and a really good mix of sizes so it really locks together and performs quite a natural um hardware in bed next shot please and here we are at Vickers um I haven't put the shot in of Rob that's his hand holding that small brown trout and he was very very pleased about that I can tell you and it is amazing to see these fish breeding right in the heart of the city we've also got them in the rush one of the our bypass channels located on sheep's green so it just goes to show that things are there and if we can improve them as these shots are sort of showing here um volunteers putting in the the hazel faggots there what they're essentially doing is narrowing that channel it's been over widened by drainage operations but also by stock cattle coming in and sort of poaching the edges so by pulling those banks in you'll see we start to speed up that flow and hopefully then it becomes self cleansing those gravels next shot please uh similar sort of story there you can see where we're on the right where the um almost half the width of the channel there um and created a hazel faggot bank and then sort of an area which will become mud is mud at the moment that will become my perium vegetation so re rush that kind of stuff which will be great for water bottles whereas the water course itself is now much shallower and flowing um over gravels oxygenating those gravels for fish next slide please uh and here here we are in the mail and I say this I've not visited myself but this section um on the right here you can now see the volunteers in there this was completely lost um so people barely knew it was there it was obviously still flowing under there but now we've got the lighting and we've got a brushwood shelf there that will vegetate up now we're speaking up water course so it'll be interesting to see how that recovers next shot please so it's a bit of a whistle top tour through that but uh I know times pressing and uh yeah happy to answer any questions thank you thank you well that was just like a nature program so thank you very much I was absolutely enthralled with that and what a wonderful presentation you have there um guy that was really really lovely thank you so much and very informative as well I didn't know quite a bit about um what you were just explaining there any any questions from anybody just a little while you may not be able to answer this um because it's it's actually in the South Cambridge area the there's a great concern obviously about the supply and the the effect of pumping on the water and the water resource supplying the water um you you commented about the stream coming from the north over the clay which uh saying but even though it's a chalk stream there is actually quite a large outlier of chalk over Bassingbourne and the Barrington sorry and the area north of there for all well are there any chalk streams arising of that because that isn't pumped it's probably it would have a more reliable um what is it what's the table because of that and might be quite a useful resource I don't I don't know the area well enough but I just wondered whether there were chalk streams arising from that area north of the the valley uh the river rather than south I think that they may well be kept carl and say it's I did bow to to Robert and Ruth sort of knowledge of your area um on this and they're very aware and they say to themselves this is no this is a start and there are lots of other water courses um which we could look to but um in order to sort of focus our minds and the tension that these are the ones we we have gone for but I'm sure there are and let's say through consultation we have got a list of of other similar water courses for consideration so um and it it's by no means that setting stone is based on report we want to add to it we know it's the questions we're asking of the communities this is what we know now but you'll know much more please keep feeding in and let's grow the project good and in terms of the ones that are specifically that within these first 17 that you've got and it would be good that as you say other communities could start to say these are other ones that we go on to in the next stage within those you were saying about mainly the two um that were in south camps and the project list that you had there so you've shown the actions in those but are any of those that have got these sort of barriers in terms of feasibility studies that need funding there are yes there are in the city and they say and there's an awful lot of interest and so and and organisations involved in the environment agency can vary forum so there's a lot going on in this area so some of these projects are being looked at right now um this was trying to this project very much trying to get a bit of clarity and focus on what's going on and be a bit more coordinated but um I think for for south camps and speaking to Rob you know Andrew it's very much about um freeing up the experts time to be able to get in the watercourse with doing the work and not sort of so much chasing chasing the funding so um I'm I'm sort of from my part in the city I'm very much trying to be the person who can bring a project to to fruition and then and you know source that funding for it and say here you are I go so all of their time is spent delivering rather than that sort of chasing the money and reporting back so if there's any sort of help south camps can give food community grants and there's then then I think so so much better um Rob also asked me to sort of part out about um that south camps do manage an awful lot of water courses um and some of which are extreme and he talks about the sort of methods he discharges into the read and um he's he's identified within the the base on order but some of the management that's undertook there is probably over the above what is required in sort of historic practice and could be reviewed and in doing so would probably have a really big impact um for uh for that particular watercourse so how are you there Trevor you just can't because which part of our of the council manages those those areas then I think you are mute sorry sorry struggling to be off mute um so yeah so that will be um that's managed by my team so it's managed by Lee Hillam who's just taken that team over so what I would suggest is um the the officers just meet and discuss that so Guy it might be worth catching up with Lee just to talk about that he's only recently taken that that team over but we have strengthened that team and we are looking about the 275 kilometers of um waterways awarded waterways that we will actually manage but it may be that some of this work could be um works that we could do with you as well so even if it's not on awarded watercourse work um so I think there is options there so I would just suggest that you have a have a chat with Lee Hillam and see what could be done um even if that's about bringing in either light or heavy machinery into getting materials in the right place at the right time but actually we have a team of four staff as well working on that now so that it may be manpower or it may be resources um and it may be budget all we can do within our sort of day to day stuff rather than necessarily that we have to put in for grants um or even requests that we put in a budget bid for next year to actually put that through so if you have that conversation with um Lee or um my Parsons who's the sort of the manager there I'm sure there's things we could do and that might be that we just do things differently um either less of more of or just differently so that that should be something we can definitely out with that sounds very encouraging thank you chairman great I don't know if there's anything else but I think that's absolutely fantastic so we would say that you know have that conversation with with Lee and Mike so one as you say from now and potentially do things differently that could be a budget and from out of that um you know maybe a budget bid for next year if we look at sort of through our doubling nature strategy is this one of the areas that we want to look at and part of that could be about doing things differently and it may be that there's another little bit of money that we're looking at as well in that could be needed for for some of this um and the the the zero carbon grants for this time which end in July the end of July for this year do have wild habitat enhancement as one of the um categories and as long as there's community engagement but also it's looking at where there would be obviously carbon capture as well so we need to look at that in terms of the riparian habitat what that does for carbon you know have to link it somehow into that but it would seem to fit in with the community engagement the the wildlife habitat enhancement and then we'd look at you know where you'd get the um carbon capture in that but that's open until 31st of July so maybe Rob um could talk to that to some of the small you know the groups that are in south cams if they're interested in looking at it can I suggest that Emma Diob speaks with Rob and then we speak to the group so I think it's about making sure that we take it who say well we don't want to spend this huge amount of time on applications when we can make those as straightforward as possible and the theme is to make them straightforward but I think Emma's on the call so she'll take that if Emma and Rob speak I think that will um we can look at options how we make that easier for those groups to um to claim some of that money thank you and it may not be that it's in this one but we are looking at how we do the sort of doubling natures in terms of grants as well so we're looking at that as we go forward so I don't know if anybody else but guy thank you that was fascinating and it's great to know that we can actually yet do something in the 275 waterways that we manage potentially so that's great thank you very much thank you thank you and um we've got the green investments update item number 11 with the water beach micro grid scheme is that you Trevor it is yes and this will be a very very brief update so all it's to say is them whilst we've made the commitment that we're moving to an electric um fleet over the next few years as we need to replace we also now looking at how we actually charge those vehicles so we are now looking about um that can we use PV facilities to actually set up um a micro grid to actually produce power on site and charge our vehicles with that so we're looking at a couple of schemes um one scheme that produces just enough energy for our use on on on site and another scheme that will maybe actually about producing surplus energy to be able to put back into the grid so I think it's very early um days at the moment but I think this is the whole idea rather than just looking at um electric vehicles as a solution what we are trying to do is take that one stage further to actually produce or to move to electric vehicles but knowing that they're being powered by um green power and sustainable power so the the micro grid will look at what we need when we need it in the daytime and what storage we need to put on on board so I think it's early early process but hopefully later in this year we're about to um bring you a sort of a bit more detail of the scheme at a large scale about how that might work yep thank you very much and that's a sort of part of the zero targets as well zero carbon targets is wanting to electrify the fleet then make sure it's green energy within that isn't that that was within the the whole reductions that you were looking at in terms of the targets yeah green on green really yeah fantastic any questions on that one no we're looking forward to hearing about that that Trevor definitely thank you very much and Siobhan um in terms of the forward plan agenda item number 12 yes I can just um put this up on the screen so we have see can you see that now um a bit bigger would be great is it a bit a bit bigger right okay not a bit too big yes that's right so there are quite a few items um have been put forward for the 13th of July principally the greenhouse gas emissions accounts and the progress report on the zero carbon action plan um over the the last year and the the new action plan or the revised action plan which will also include the doubling nature actions um an upgrade on grid capacity issues um facing greater Cambridge which Emma Davies has um agreed to do uh a speaker on valuing social and environment and environmental benefits and investments um who that will be is is is yet to be decided Hatten Road attenuation pons which is an item from Lee Hillam I'm not sure quite well that is Trevor might be able to say um A428 environmental legacy just a quick update on that report on the local energy advice project which has been um postponed from this session as it um as Chris wasnt available and then the usual green investments update thanks very much and I think on the A428 environmental legacy update that was really for us to to know that um whether whether we're really are seeing the you know highest standards coming through from highways England with all the lessons learned from A14 as well that that's happening within that environmental legacy um program and and to exert any pressure and influence that we can so that it's improved yep okay any other things that you'd like to see on the agenda coming forward not necessarily the next one but things that we can sort of build up for a future meeting you can always feed those in anywhere anytime okay thanks so much Yvonne for that and for all your work in helping prepare the meeting um and it's full 30 everybody so sorry just just uh can we get the committee possibly to agree an extra meeting for Wednesday the 22nd of September to discuss the local plan just have to put it on the uh on the protocol meeting yes so if we can agree everybody that we do want to be able to know what's happening with the local plan that's huge for us in terms of really um achieving a lot of the aspirations that we have and making sure that they're embedded within the local plan so as is a committee having an early site on that um that will be about the spatial framework I think we'll do the strategy that's coming forward so Wednesday 22 of September 2 p.m okay thank you very much Patrick thank you very much and thank you everybody for joining us