 Good afternoon. Members, officers, and any members of the public who are viewing this streaming of our meeting and welcome to the Climate Change and Environment Advisory Committee of South County District Council. My name's Councillor Pippa Haleyings and I'm the Chair of the Climate and Environment Committee. For the information of members of the public, our committee advises Cabinet on the actions required to achieve the council's ar y clywethaf, a'r ddwylliant ac mae'r ddwylliant ac mae'r ddwylliant yma'r ddwylliant. Mae'r ddwych yn y cwmbr, ac mae'n cael ei ddweud ar y cyfnod, ac mae'r ddwych yn y cwmbr yn y ddweud. Felly yn ddych chi, mae'n gweinio ar y ddech chi, ac mae'n ddweud i'r gweinio ar y gweinio, maen nhw'n cael ei bwysig yn fawr i bwyd. Yn amser, mae'n rhwng yn fawr i'r ddech chi, ac mae'r ddweud i'r ffynol Mae ydyn ni wedi cael fod yn iawn i dda i fel y cymryd yinen. Felly ydych chi'n bryd i gael i'n ddyn nhw'n ddim yn iechyd i ddu, ac ydw yma hyrch yn gael yn ddilyn i'r ffaunyddau i'r Fyllfaedd Llywodraeth. Felly gallwn i ni'n cymryd i gael y ffaith cymryd o'r f functioning chat ond yna. Cymru yn ffordd cymryd i'n ddiddordeb am fyddwyd, ond chi gael yn ddiddordeb am fyddwyd fel fianc phunctyn? Felly yna ydyn ni'n meddwl chi gael ar y function chat? maen nhw'n tyfnod i'r gweithio i ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ffynol? Yes, certainly, I'll do that. Thank you very much. Everyone making sure your device is fully charged and that you switch your microphone off unless you're invited to do so. Silence, any other devices please? Please use a headset if you can when speaking and hold the microphone close to your mouth and when you're invited to address the meeting, please make sure your microphone is switched on. You switch it off immediately when you've finished. ond PBEs speak slowly and clearly and don't talk over or interrupt anyone. If we do need to vote on any item we shall do so via these appliances, the microphones, but we won't have any of those voting options today I don't think. But only those who are present in the Chamber. So two of our members are participating. We can see you here lovely on the screen. Two members, hello! Two of you are participating. So of course you can debate with us, you can comment and anything, but if we do have to make any decisions you wouldn't be able to take part in that as only all decision makers need to be in the room. Thank you. So committee members, I'm going to now invite each of you to introduce yourselves. So my name's Councillor Pippa Halings and I'm Chair of the Climate Environment Advisory Committee and my Vice-Chair Councillor Martin Farn. Hello, I'm Vice-Chair and I'm a member for Hysnodren in Beenton. Thank you very much and Councillor Jeff Harvey, my other Vice-Chair. Yes, thank you, Chair. Yeah, Councillor Jeff Harvey, I'm a member for Borsham. Thank you very much and Councillor Paul Baer Park. Hello, I'm Councillor Paul Baer Park, a member for Milton and Borsh Beach. And standing in for Councillor Gremville Chamberlain we have... Councillor Sue Ellington. Lovely to have you with us. Thank you very much, Councillor Ellington. And standing in for Councillor Graham Cohen. Mark Howell. Thank you very much, lovely to have you here. And Councillor Peter Fane. Please introduce yourself. Yes, Peter Fane. Thank you very much. And I'm also delighted to have here our Lead Cabinet Member for Climate and Environment, Councillor Bridget Smith. Hello, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much. I'd like to note that we have with us as well Patrick, who is doing a fantastic job always with the minutes and keeping us all prepared for the meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you. And the officers will introduce themselves as they come to each of the different items that they'll help us with. And also we've got some other officers in the meeting. Are you already with us? We have Emma Davis, Principal Sustainability Consultant. Are you with us already Emma? Yes, I'm here, thank you. Lovely to... Hello, lovely to see you Emma. Nice to see everyone. Welcome. And Emma Dyer, our Project Officer in Climate and Environment. Yes, I'm here. Hello. Hello Emma. I've got your lovely Cindy Watt there, but we know. So the Anne Siobhan Mellon, of course, who is our Principal Development Officer for Climate and Environment. Thank you very much. Hi Siobhan. Hello everybody. Good. If anyone needs to leave the meeting at any time, would you please make that known to me so we can record in the minutes? And apologies please Patrick. Yes, Chair, we've had apologies from Councillor Graham Cohn and also from Grenfill Chamberlain. And Councillor Mark Howell is subbing for Councillor Graham Cohn. Councillor Sue Arrington is virtually subbing for Councillor Grenfill Chamberlain. Lovely. And they are very welcome. Do we have any declarations of interest for any of the items on the agenda? I take that as a no. Thank you. Agender item three, the minutes of the last meeting. Do you have any comments on the minutes of the last meeting? Monday 14th of June. Page one. Page two. Page three. Page four. Can I take it by affirmation that we have approved the minutes of the last meeting? The affirmation numbers. Yes. Good. Thank you very much. Okay. And just on that I want to once again say how fantastic it was to have a couple of those presentations at the last meeting and on the chalk streams one that we had from Guy Belcher that was absolutely fantastic. Even our IT team was saying they learned so much about that. So it was very, very good. And we will see in our action plan that we're following up on some of those actions that came up from last meeting. Good. And if we can go now to matters arising from the minutes. Are there any matters arising apart from the ones I've just mentioned? I can update that following the chalk streams report, we did meet. Sorry, I have an echo. I don't know if everybody else has. No, we can hear you perfectly, Siobhan. You gave me all right. But Lee Hillam, our watercourse and drainage manager met with Guy Belcher and Rob Mungovan with a very fruitful meeting to ensure that our watercourses are managed as well as they can be for biodiversity. So that work is set in train. Thank you very much, Siobhan. And we would love to have some kind of report back at some point just to see the kind of things that are happening with that. That's fantastic. Thank you very much. Any other matters arising from the minutes? No, thank you very much. And we'll go now to agenda item five. In your agenda policy, this is about the nature smart cities business model. Now, this is something members, which is very interesting. We talked about the importance of biodiversity, the ecological emergency, our doubling nature strategy, the sister document to our zero carbon strategy. And we've seen that mainly as nature enhancement, wildlife enhancement and carbon capture. Our doubling nature strategy, which has really been praised by many for its brilliant way of being able to communicate in document, easy for everybody to read, has a section on natural capital. And what does that mean? It means what are the services that nature brings us? What are they worth and how can we make sure we're using them properly? And that's around our water and the air, clean air, clean soils and things like that. So we haven't really looked yet, apart from in some of our planning policies, how we can embed natural capital into the design of the things we're doing as a council, as well as what's happening within our planning policy. And nature smart cities is a programme that Cambridge City is one of the partners for and is doing one of the pilot tests with this programme. And it's involving over 75 local authorities in four different countries across the two seas. And we're going to have a little bit of presentation to it now. But it would be very interesting seeing as Cambridge City is also involved. They're opening this up now to other local authorities to get involved. And that's why we've invited along now. I'm very happy to have Anna Oxenham and Phil Beck, who are with us. Hello, Anna. Hello, everybody. And thank you for the invite to this meeting. Thank you. Do you want me to just take it away with the presentation for myself and Phil? Yes, please. And if you want to introduce yourselves, that would be hello, Phil. Nice to have you with us. Great. Great. So I'm just going to share my presentation. So Anna has been working in the Cambridgeshire area for quite a long time. She's now in Southend on Sea as one of the council members leading on this programme. Yes. So thank you very much. I hope you can all see my screen. I thank you for the introduction, Pippa. Yes. I've been working at Southend on Sea by our council since August 2019. I work as part of the energy and sustainability team at Southend on Sea. My main role involves the management of the EU Interag Nature Smart Cities project for which Southend on Sea is the lead partner. So just to give you an introduction to the Nature Smart Cities project, it's a project up to the value of 6.38 million euros. The project includes 11 partners from across four countries. And as Pippa mentioned, Cambridge City Council is one of the partners who is involved in this project and implementing a green infrastructure pilot to help test the business model we are developing. So I'm hopefully now going to use that animated video to quickly introduce the project to you. So if you can't hear the sound, you should be able to hear it. But please just shout out and let me know. Three quarters of Europeans live in cities. Many of these cities are dealing with the effects of climate change such as heat stress, air pollution and flooding. The high density of paved surfaces, roads and buildings further increases these effects. We can do something about this. Trees, rainguards, green roofs and walls and other vegetation help to cool cities on hot summer days, capture heavy rainfall and improve air quality. Research shows that green infrastructure provides a range of other benefits such as increased biodiversity and improved human health. However, cities often find green infrastructure expensive or difficult to implement. The Nature Smart Cities project aims to support cities to address these challenges. Eight city partners and three academic partners in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and France have joined forces. Together we will develop a business model to promote green infrastructure solutions. Bridging the gap between research and practice. The model is based on evidence that we collect through interviews with local authorities and analysis of geographical, biophysical and economic data. We also review existing valuation tools and finance options. The model is tested, validated and refined through seven green infrastructure pilots, south end on scene, Cambridge, The Hague, Capella, Antwerp, Bruges and Leib. A step by step methodology will support cities to use this business model to implement green infrastructure and build climate resilience. For more information visit our website naturesmartcities.eu Sorry, so moving on. As the video described, the main output of the Nature Smart Cities project will be a new business model to support smaller local authorities that's low with populations less than 550,000 to make the business case for green infrastructure solutions over more traditional grey approaches. The scheme on the screen shows an overview of how the business model is going to be produced through various inputs and tested through the use of the seven green infrastructure pilots. I wanted to highlight some of the work undertaken firstly in the first stages of the project as inputs designed to support the development of the business model and ensure it meets intended needs of its users. Firstly I wanted to just briefly touch on a series of 53 semi-structured interviews that were undertaken. So we undertook a series of semi-structured interviews with 53 local authorities. This work was carried out by Imperial College London and in fact by Fillback who you'll hear from in a moment. So these interviews were undertaken with 53 practitioners, that's officers, senior officers, councillors and aldermen working on green infrastructure projects or strategies in smaller cities. The interviews covered a lot of material but mostly councillors, participants were asked about council's priorities, not their individual priorities. When implementing green infrastructure they were also asked about the obstacles that might hinder the progress of GI projects and ideas. We also, through the semi-structured interviews, sought some feedback about the tools available to help cities assess the value of green infrastructure projects. If you want to read more about those semi-structured interviews and the results, there are a couple of resources available. There's a report and a summary brochure that can be accessed online through the Nature Smart Cities Library. So those interviews really gave us a lot of useful feedback from local authorities to help us assess the barriers that they face and also identify their needs from a business model that can support them to make the evidence base for green infrastructure projects. We also, as one of our inputs to help us design the business model, undertook a review of finance options for green infrastructure projects. So in 2019, Imperial College London and Southinborough Council, we contracted ZN as a financial think tank to undertake a review of innovative green finance options that could be available to local authorities to fund urban greening projects. Through the work, a wide range of financing mechanisms were reviewed, including equity investment, debt funding such as green loans and bonds and policy performance bonds, philanthropy, crowdfunding, permit trading, and even more novel schemes such as crowdfunding and time banks. So these really are quite innovative approaches for local authorities to try to access funds. The full report is again available from the Nature Smart Cities website. But the main conclusion of this work is really quite well summarised by this diagram that I'm sharing now in that different green finance options can be suitable for different types of GI projects depending on the main benefits they deliver. So just looking at the screen, the internal bubbles are the different benefits you can derive from different green infrastructure projects, and then you have the larger bubbles in the corner, which are the different types of funding mechanism that a local authority can look over. However, the main conclusion of the report was that to date there has been limited use of these more innovative green financial mechanisms. There are currently a number of barriers to their use. One such barrier being that individual green infrastructure projects are normally relatively small scale and looking for quite minor funds in relation to these financial mechanisms and that it might be necessary to look at vehicles which can support the aggregation necessary to reach the green finance levels needed for these to make these financial mechanisms work. We also took the results of this review and the financial mechanisms that we reviewed into the semi-structured interviews with those 53 participants, and we asked them if they'd heard of or used these green financial mechanisms. It was found that the majority have not considered these different mechanisms and in some cases didn't know that they might be applicable. In fact, the interview showed that small authorities don't have the time to monitor new funding of those green financial mechanisms. Don't tend to look at what other municipalities are doing, and I'll slow to explore potential collaborations across municipal boundaries that might make accessing these financial mechanisms easier. Moving away from the inputs that help to shape and design the business model, I quickly wanted to just provide some insights into the business model and how it works. I'm going to be followed by Phil who's going to give us some more information on this. I just wanted to run through a summary of the features of the business model that's being developed under the Nature Smart Cities project. Importantly, the business model we are developing will support local authorities to make the arguments needed to justify investments in green infrastructure. It will do this by enabling users to compare a great and green scenarios. In fact, a large number of or multiple green scenarios can be compared when using the business model. The business model will provide an evidence base and through its output, which is business case fact sheets, it will provide a clear structure and visual representation of this information that can be used to help support decision making around green infrastructure projects. At the heart of the business model will be a multi criteria analysis that enables users to select the priority ecosystem services for their green infrastructure project. The business model can support the calculation of qualitative quantitative or even economic values for 15 ecosystem services. We're now going to hear a bit more about the business model from Phil shortly, but I just wanted to share the timeline for the production of our business model with you. At the moment we have a first draft version of our business model. That's an internal version for use by the project and we're about to embark on a series of demonstrated testings with four local authorities across four countries. That will help us to test our business model in real life and to see how it can be refined and tailored to make sure it really does meet the needs of our users. This will enable us at the end of the year to have a better beta version of our business model, which will be available externally from our website. Early next year we will hold a capacity building program and through this capacity building program will be designed to support local authorities to bridge the knowledge gap and build capacity to self finance GI projects. The capacity building program will be rolled out across the four project countries in the project and in the UK the program will consist of two workshops, the first in March 2022 and the second in June 2022. We will launch a registration system for this capacity building program in September and October this year. So if you are interested please sign up to the Nature Smart Cities newsletter and you will be alerted as to when our registration system is open for the capacity building program. Following the program we will have hopefully up to 75 or over 75 local authorities involved in the program from across the four project countries. This will enable us to further test and refine the business model to ensure that it meets the needs of our local authorities and we hope to use this to refine the business model and release a final version online in July next year. So I'm now going to hand over to Phil. It's going to talk about the demonstrator testing. We're going to shortly be undertaking and how that's going to support the business model. Councillor Hayling, can I just interrupt to say that Councillor Fane, Peter Fane has a question. Chair, I wonder whether it might be appropriate for my question to wait until the end of Phil Bax's presentation probably. Thank you, completely agree. Thank you Peter. Well isn't it Phil and then we can ask your question. Thanks. OK, well thank you Anna and it's a pleasure to be back in South Cambridge here. I was trying to work out the last time I was in your council chamber. I think it was 15 years ago but I have a long and strong connection, both business and personal with the Cambridge area and it's nice to be working with you. As Anna said the reasoning behind the business model is to enable authorities to make a stronger case for their green infrastructure projects and this business model is a new tool. It's been developed academically by some very powerful minds in the universities of Antwerp and Ghent but it's very different from the many many tools that have been developed by academics and which are largely unused by practitioners. It's a complex model but the complexity is concealed inside a spreadsheet which is much more accessible than it might otherwise be. It works by using publicly available peer reviewed data on those different ecosystem services that Anna mentioned linked to the characteristics of your specific green infrastructure project. It comes with guidance on a step by step approach which is also part of the project and our overall aim is to meet the key criteria that emerged in the interview program that we did which were that the tool should be usable by practitioners, comprehensive in covering all the possible ecosystem services that a project might generate and credible. It must produce output that you have confidence in. It's not simply an academic exercise. So we're now entering the test phase. We've done some initial testing using our own pilot projects in the seven cities that you saw on the map. But we're also required to test it independently and we're inviting local authorities now to consider whether they'd like to be a test authority for this phase. We're looking for at least one authority in each of our four nature smart cities countries and we're taking expressions of interest at the moment. So what might be involved in getting involved in demonstrated testing? Well, first of all, the authority would need to be willing to do some preparation, but it's reasonably straightforward and will guide you on it once we know what your project is. In fact, I've already done some guidance for a couple of projects that I'm looking at as a trial run and it didn't take me very long at all. You'll need to set aside the time to meet me. I'm going to do all the tests and to run the test project through the system. And as you do that, I want to watch your work, make notes as you make progress or perhaps get stuck and where necessary help you forward. I'll want to review the output with you and get your feedback on whether you think it is convincing and whether you think it's accurate. And I want your feedback more generally by asking you some questions about your experience. Essentially, it's a how was it for you kind of exercise. And what's very important about this is it's testing our model. It's not testing you. It's not testing your ability, your level of knowledge or your authority. This is a model that's supposed to be accessible to smaller cities with all the limitations that come with being part of a smaller city. What do you get out of it? Well, there'll be an output document at the end of the process. The fact sheet that I mentioned that might help you to make the case for your project with those who are going to make decisions about it. But you also get first hand experience of using a new tool that's actually been developed with municipalities like yours and projects like yours. A lot of the tools that are out there were developed for huge cities with very specialized staff. This one hasn't. This one's been tailored, we hope, to the needs of this particular marketplace. You also have a chance to contribute to the tools development and refinement and a chance to participate in the capacity building events that are coming up next year. Now that could either be in the form of a case study to show how the tool worked in practical application in your setting, or it could be in person if you fancy actually standing up and talking about your experience. Either way, there'd be positive international publicity for your municipality and for your green infrastructure work. So a chance to put South Cambridge here on a much wider map than it might be on at the moment. And of course there are benefits for us as well. We can become aware of challenges that we haven't yet addressed properly in the business model and we can adapt the business model to meet those challenges. We can develop case studies which we can anonymize if you prefer based on your project and your experience of using the model. Above all, we can prove the concept that our business model intended for smaller cities, the kind of project smaller cities get involved with, and by smaller cities I also include rural communities as well, that this model actually works and is useful in this different context. So you can stay updated on the progress of the demonstrated testing using the Nature Smart Cities website, naturesmartsities.eu. You can subscribe to our newsletter from the website and you can do that by using the green QR code on this slide either now or later when the slides are circulated, or you can follow our LinkedIn page using the LinkedIn QR code which is in the bottom right-hand corner of this slide. But I would say that finding out more about the demonstrated testing, finding out more about Nature Smart Cities doesn't commit you at all. So please investigate this opportunity and let's decide whether or not it's for you. Thank you. Thank you very much Bill, and before bringing in Councillor Fave in terms of his question and the other questions that you may have, one is a declaration of interest I should have made right at the very beginning, which I forgot, but in the capacity building element of this programme professionally I'll be involved in that which is after all of the demonstrated testing and things like that. So that's why I've come to know about this project and I thought South Cambridge could be very, very interesting. The second is that together with our green investment officer and our biodiversity officers, we were looking at South Cam's investment programme strategy and when we were looking at, when we invest for example in property and we looked at how can we make sure that that's hitting our caravan targets, that we've got green infrastructure, natural capital, it was, but this is an investment project and we've got to make sure it's got the proper returns. These are costly, how do we justify that? So we were looking at what does value mean and how do we quantify value apart from just monetised value? How do we quantify costs which often are not internalised like the cost of flooding in the buildings? That's not often quantified. The cost of air pollution isn't normally internalised when you're putting concrete down. So it's how do we look at the different costs and benefits in a comparable way that would enable us to make procurement and investment decisions as a council? And this business model is about that. How do you justify investment? How do you quantify this? All the things that we're speaking about. Thirdly, as Phil said, cities, this is about smaller authorities as well. So as long as you've got urban areas within smaller authorities, this can be for us. And just finally, it was two weeks ago that the UK climate risk assessment showed us just really that the risks that we are at in terms of flooding and urban heat stress in the UK now have just accelerated hugely. And so all of our building design needs to take into consideration at those aspects now. And so it's that design element. That's just what I want to say. Councillor Fane, you had a question. I would fully understand if you want to take questions from those in the room first. I just entered my question in the chat. Would you like me to carry on or wait my turn? Carry on. Right. Well, I'm very encouraged to hear of continuing cooperation within the North Sea region. But I suppose my question relates to the rhinoceros in the room. As I understand the withdrawal agreement, UK is opted out of European territorial cooperation. And that means we won't be in the next inter-egg programme, which is 2021 to 2027. Now, as I understand it, some projects will continue to June 2023. And Phil will correct me if I'm wrong on that. But it does seem to me this raises the importance of either finding new means of cooperation, which may be difficult outside the terms of the withdrawal agreement, or alternatively looking at transition, possibly a period of combination with UK programmes. Now, the only nature cities programme I'm familiar with in Cambridge University, Cambridge Canopy Project, which is intended to improve forest cover in certain parts of Cambridge City, where it's very low in some areas. And I just wonder what consideration could be given with programmes like that to moving towards or combining with UK schemes. We have in this committee in the past discussed the invitation from DEFRA to join the community forest schemes, applying to forests in and around cities. And it seems to me maybe there's some scope for combining that with the Canopy project being run in Cambridge City. But is there some way of making the transition within inter-egg? And what do we do to maintain progress on these schemes, bearing in mind, presumably they will end in June 2023 or thereabouts? Anna, would you like to answer that at all? It's a wider question than the one you brought here. Would you like to answer that one? Yeah, I will have a go. Thank you very much for the question. Well, firstly, the Cambridge Canopy project is actually the green infrastructure investment for Cambridge City Council under the Nature Smart Cities project. So it's been run under this project. So yes, you're absolutely right. After Nature Smart Cities and other inter-egg projects, which were started at the same time, they will run to completion. But then we are no longer able to participate in inter-egg programmes. I can't speak exactly or answer what programmes we can get involved in the future. I know that we are thinking about this itself in Borough Council. But I will say that I think this is one of the aims of the Nature Smart Cities business model. It's about making that business case understanding, as Pippa said, what is the value of investing in these green infrastructure projects. And that will hopefully help to identify alternative sources of funding for these green infrastructure projects. So we are not always reliant on the grants that we have been in the past to make these projects a reality. So I think that's very interesting. I think also I know that there's a number of investment projects looking at green infrastructure and how to make green infrastructure investment plans. We've been collaborating with one of those. One is called Ignition, and that's in Manchester, being undertaken by Manchester Greater Authority. So how do you develop a successful investment plan for a suite of green infrastructure projects? But in terms of where we go next to support this work financially, we do have to look elsewhere, but I can't completely answer that question. Thank you, Anna. Don't worry. I think we know it is a broader one. But I think your answer as well, beyond what Councillor Payne was obviously looking at, is the suite of potential financial instruments that we could be exploring for investment in some of these. Councillor Carn. Yes, I want to come back again to this future outlook. I think it's very interesting to have this approach to look at the way you justify investment through various means. It's very helpful. In practice, many nature-type projects in local authorities, municipalities, are linked to opportunities which arise. It's very much a sort of field in which opportunities... You take up an opportunity to arise or not to fall. That's rather unfortunate. I worked for 20 years in our local authority on nature projects. So it's my background. I also must declare an interest that I worked on an international network of local authorities on energy for 12 years. So I have a background of interest in the field. I feel there's a need... So you won't have to be able to know how you can justify opportunities that arise. A policy like this helps. But it's also a useful to exchange experience on projects that arise, a reason to see how they've been implemented and what factors that create success. That way you can find it easier to justify. I'm very much in favour of these exchange projects. I think it's a tragedy that will not continue to participate. I did a lot of interact projects myself, so I have some experience of it. One underestimates the value of going and seeing what other people are doing in other European countries where people start from a different basic concept, a way of looking at life because of the different cultures and different local authority structures. It works both ways. One, you can see what you're doing well. You didn't realise you were doing so well because you see that other people have problems in this field. And you also see what you could improve on because people have succeeded more. I worked for an organisation called Energy Cities, which was an international network on energy issues of local authorities, municipalities. They call themselves cities. The confusion of the word cities shows some of the problems we have between different cultures. In Britain a city means a city. In Europe it's of, or in America it means annual local authority. This network didn't just include people who were able to participate in European Union programmes. They had other members, so they continued to exchange information. Are you planning to continue nature's possibilities beyond the interact period as another organisation? Have you future plans to have a membership organisation to continue in the same way as Energy Cities works? Or, which would have to obviously participate in the organisation, would have to be funded at local level? Or, do you have any views in the future about how that might take place? Phil, did you want to go? I'd like to pick up a couple of points there actually. One was the issue you raised right at the beginning of your question about opportunism. We found that very strongly in the semi-structured interviews, that in many cases, in many projects, green was added as an afterthought, and green was marginalised to some extent by the big budget spending departments, which in the European context at least were mostly housing and highways. Green was added because we ought to have something green, or there's a little bit of space left over where we could plant a couple of trees. It's clear that green needs to assert itself more in those contexts and to find a place at the table where these projects are discussed so that the green components can be designed in rather than simply added later. One of the problems with that is that the big budget departments have their targets, and those targets are for a number of housing units, not for an amount of green space, and so it's difficult to find a place at that table. We hope that our business model will add credibility to the green arguments by demonstrating the investment case for green infrastructure and by making it clear that it's not just to make the place look nice, it's actually achieving much more besides that. Next to the future, part of the hoped-for legacy of this particular project is a network of cities that will exchange information about the business model, about their experience of using the business model, and I see no reason why that network shouldn't include other municipalities that are interested in using the business model and have some experience in working with it that they might also share. The question of how that's to be funded and sustained is one that we haven't addressed yet. Thank you very much, Phil. I'd like to bring us from that now to interest perhaps here in South Cams. I think you were a small semi-rural but growth with lots of new areas which are urban areas and urban areas that we're looking at how do we make them thriving urban areas as we're having problems with high streets and what's happening with those business centres. I think we've got quite a few areas where we could and should be looking at what role does green infrastructure play with that. We've also got the Oxcamark where we're saying we're applying green, but how do you design it in and how do you justify designing it in from the beginning. Now, one of the ways we could become involved in learning more about that and with our previous green energy investment officer, what he was finding very difficult even within South Cams was just getting to the table with procurement and investment officers to say we can design these things in but what's the value of them. Now, if we could take part in the demonstrator testing, which means we actually experiment with this methodology for the business case, that could be interesting for us. It would mean that we would have to be thinking of a project that we could apply it to. A couple of ideas come to my mind. One is the greening of South Cams Hall. We haven't really thought very much about what's already happening with water in the building, which it is already using partially rainwater and reusing of that rainwater and coming in. But could we do more about that? If we look at the whole of this area, we have got, in a way, some green infrastructure, but is it being used as we come here and you see the ponds that we have in the green areas, are the ways that we can include our building without too great a cost to make sure we're looking at issues around flooding, we're looking at issues around heat management in the car parts and in the outer areas, green walls. We've got huge walls here. What would it take to have green walls or green roofs? I don't know, but Greening South Cams Hall is one of them. We're also looking at this investment in the housing opposite where we are in the office area. What about looking at how we design in? Now, doing the demonstrator testing doesn't mean we have to actually do it. It means we find out what that would cost. What would it take to do something like that and we understand it and at the same time the project gets to understand how applicable this is to a kind of authority like ours? Again, it doesn't mean that we get selected, but are we interested in taking up this offer? I see Councillor Eileen Trinity here looking at how we manage land for flooding as well in any of the new types of development. That's why I'm really interested in. What's fascinating is those European countries are mainly looking at flooding issues, how they manage flooding in development. They've greened carpark areas and all sorts of things, so they manage those for what they're already experiencing, but we're probably going to experience if anybody saw the flash floods in London just yesterday. How we deal with some of these things. I would just like to know, are we interested in it? I know that Phil, when he did these interviews, found out that for the most local authorities they found this wasn't a priority. He just couldn't get it onto the agenda because they've got so much to do. Very confusing around green infrastructure terminology. Everyone thinks it's something different, but not even having the time to be able to look for funding to be able to have staff that can help you do this, just in that vicious cycle. Even if we did, we would know that we would have to have somebody ready to be actually working alongside this, perhaps the procurement team as they're looking at the greening cameras, what we're doing with that. But somebody's going to have to spend a bit of time and we don't take that lightly. So even though there would be no cost to us, real monetary costs for taking part in it, it would commit somebody's time just to think about applying for this and thinking about what we could apply for it with. So members, Councillor Ellington. Thank you. I just wanted to make a comment really. I'm very keen on what you're talking about and I think it would be excellent because I'm basically a rural person and I'm very happy to have rural going into cities. But I think there are issues which don't seem to be being addressed. When I look at the A14, the amount of greening that's been done there, there are thousands and thousands of trees being planted along the new A14. And there are thousands of them that are as dead as dodoes because nobody has been looking after them. And so it does take management to make these things happen and be effective. And then I look at the other bit in my life which is that I have a pest control company. You may or may not know. And with nature comes an awful lot of other nature that we might not be quite so happy to have. But it is important that we do have it. The vols, the moles, the rats and the rabbits, they're all part of making that rural area and that green work. Sara, shut up now. No, that's lovely. Thank you very much, Councillor Ellington. And I will take a couple of comments and questions when still. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Now, I just wanted to continue on your thought that we might apply some of this to South Camps Hall. And of course, I wonder if the model would actually count the sort of multiplication effect that we would then have providing an exemplar to other owners of similar sort of commercial property when we improve our game at South Camps Hall which is obviously part of what we're doing with the green programme. Councillor House. Thank you. I've got a couple of them points. First of all, with regards to us doing our different activities and we can be watched and look at how that... I hope we're also going to be advised at the same time. So if we are going to do something which is not going to work, we are told that doesn't actually work already. We know that. Otherwise, we're going to have to get somebody in to actually help us and advise us what to do. So that's the first thing. The other thing is that, in the future, we need to look at how we're going to do this. I've got a little issue at the moment with some trees in the sense we've had several thousand trees planted. And now, ten years down the line, I've got several thousand plastic covers to remove off those trees and I'm somehow going to have to dispose of them. So it's those type of things as well what's going to happen ten years down the line when we've got the plastic covering around the trees that we've got to look at. And because we're going to be left with the legacy of this, or not only us, but our children. And so, you know, it's where we go. We're going to have to have some sort of route map to go down the future, that when this grant funding comes to an end or the experts go, we're going to be left here with a legacy that we're going to have to manage. And if we've got the tree roots, for example, upsetting buildings or upsetting roads or pathways, those are types of things that in ten, twenty years' time when it was a good idea that we've got to look at now. And we can't be the example of it because it costs us a lot of money to put it right. We've got to know now. Thank you. Yep. Come back to South Cams again. South Cams has virtually no land. The only sort of rural land, the main rural land that it has, it has evolved management of, not in country park. We have not taken on the management of recreational land. We've got to obey... Our service is basically advisory rather than implementational. If we... This is an... We, in fact, turn out to be the only district in Cambridge which this is the case. We seem to have abandoned that role or that practical implementation role. It's one of my aims, one of my desires is that we should move back into that role, and since I've been elected, the main concentration has been on climate issues. But we do need to propose the question, and it's a matter of culture and priorities, whether we want to take in that role or not. When I was involved in management working on local authority on these topics, it was very clear that the different actions which were taken between local authorities depended upon the culture at the top, and the attitudes at the top that were implied, and the degree to which they felt it was a role. Sometimes rural authorities, because they were involved in green areas, took it very seriously or were much more reactive. Sometimes they weren't. It depends upon the priorities there. City authorities tended to have more priority because they were much more actively involved in management of park areas and green areas within the city. There is a language having much stronger service about a bigger role than South Canada came to. That is also a tradition. But we do need to think about this. Now one comment that was made by Mr Beck, which I think is relevant, is that it's very difficult when you're competing with higher funding departments, but you don't get respected at all unless you have a budget. That's the way local authorities work. Once you've got a budget, you have some say. It does help to be able to demonstrate practice and demonstrate the budget and demonstrate importance. That poses questions, obviously, in our local authority work resources are always restricted. There has been a change in public attitude from the 1980s when there was great concern about the effect of traffic, of public pressure on the countryside, and the whole countryside commission was in existence, managing landscapes and recreation in the countryside. Is that a question? It's a comment. I think it's useful in the context of this. That's been a change. I think we need, in terms of our responses, we do need to think about our role. I thought it would come back from Mr Beck's comment, which I thought was useful, on the local authority. The comment was, why don't we have bottom-draw schemes? Why don't we have projects that we wish to do? Which are worked up and developed, which means you need to have staff to do that. Even if everything is paid for, you need to have staff to manage this, otherwise nothing will happen. Why don't we have bottom-draw schemes? The Highways Authority always have a bundle of bottom-draw schemes which they can draw, pull out the draw, green people don't. It's not a tradition. That means a change of culture at the top and in that field. That's much more a matter of culture than anything else. These are my observations. I am very keen that we should continue to participate in this field. There is actually a project going on, looking at investment priorities on the way forward in the field, in the Fish Parks Accelerative Project, which we are participating in. I think that will be one of the most interesting outcomes of that project. That is something which I think may be useful for as a contact. It's still going on for another nine months. I'm very keen that we should. I'm very keen that we should build up an experience in others. I'm very keen that we should give more priority or higher priority to active action in this field rather than just simply being an advice for your role. Thank you. We have come to the end of the time for this item on our agenda. Did you want to come back on and then give those comments, either Anna or Phil? Well, if I can jump in. I actually did my doctorate on the role of the Countryside Commission in addressing traffic problems in the countryside. I'm interested in your comment, Councillor Cahn, as a matter of principle. I agree with you about bottom draw schemes. One of our authorities, one of the Belgian authorities, actually has bottom draw schemes that they can pull out when there's some leftover budget at the end of the financial year and action. At the very least that our business model would give you would be a bottom of the draw scheme. It would produce some hopefully credible and convincing costings and other output measurements that you could use to justify the project. Maybe not now, maybe not in the foreseeable future, but certainly at least as a bottom draw scheme for when the money is available. But I hope it would do much more than that. I hope it would actually allow you to look more critically at the kind of ideas that Councillor Halings was talking about as possibilities for South Cams, for the estate that you're on and for the housing that is potentially going to be opposite you. What I will say though is that none of this places you under any obligation other than perhaps the idea that this idea is worth pursuing. That would be entirely up to you whether you decided to move forward on part or all of any of the projects that you put through the business model, either now or in the future when you're using the finished product. Thank you, thank you very much Bill and thank you Anna too. Just to be clear, the pilot testing of which city is a part got funding. We wouldn't be getting any funding. This is just about do we want to see what it's like to develop a business model, an investment case, a business case for some of the ideas we might have. Do we want to know what it would cost to integrate Mark Khan, Councillor Khan, some green infrastructure into some of the new towns that's new land, however it's managed, so that green space in some of the areas that we're doing. What would it cost us to do something pretty smart with water and energy as well as the other things that we're doing here and for the development opposite. These are things that we, do we want to just, not just, but do we want to be part of this so we can actually just work it through? Because what we found with our offices is they found it very hard to work it through. They didn't have the ability or the data or the modelling to be able to say why this was worth it. So that's what all these other councils are doing. So just how interested are you for our officers to think about applying to be part of a demonstrated testing with all the caveats that you gave us? If that's the proposal I'll second it. Yeah, good. And I think what will be interesting, Councillor, how is we can find out from Cambridge as part of this exchange of experiences, what are they doing about roots in urban areas? Is there, with this project increasing by 2%, they cannot be covering urban areas and especially in the socially deprived areas, which have been proven to be the ones with least tree cover and the benefits from tree cover. But they're obviously in areas, just as you said, that will have issues around that. So perhaps one of our first questions we can just ask a partner is what are you learning from this project about that? And your plastics we can ask somebody else. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for your time, Anna and Phil. And we'll be picking that up with Siobhan to see how we can take that forward. Is that okay, Siobhan? Sure, yes. Lovely. Thank you very much. And we now move on to our progress report on our Zero Carbon Action Plan, which presents us with a progress review on how we're getting on with implementing our Zero Carbon Action Plan at the end of 2021. And also an updated version. Now that we've got our sister document, it's the Doubling Nature Strategy. How do we integrate actions because these are interlinked? So integrating both our Zero Carbon Action and our Doubling Nature Action into one action plan beneath the sister strategies. In your agenda pack, you'll find here the tag ratings on this. And I would like to invite Siobhan, I think, Siobhan Mellon to introduce this item. Thank you very much, Siobhan. Thank you, Councillor Hayling. So I hope everybody has got the report there. As Councillor Hayling says, it comes with two appendices. The first one is a review of progress on the action plan, which the committee saw in November, actually, along with a six-month update on progress. So this is the update at this point, which actually is a bit more than a year following that. And so you will see that the stress... So this is the actions aligned to the Zero Carbon Strategy, which was agreed by council last May. And the strategy, as you'll remember, covers the actions of the council, not only in reducing our own emissions, but also in using our powers and influence to help reduce carbon emissions across the district. So it's set out in two parts. Section one is eight actions to reduce emissions on our own estate and operations. And there is a target attached to these, which was agreed as part of the strategy, which is to achieve a 45% reduction on CO2 emissions relative to the 2018-19 baseline by 2025. And there's also a further target, which is 75% by 2030. And each action has a rag rating where green is on track to complete by the date originally intended. Amber is where progress is being made, but there is a delay to the original completion date. And red is where progress is stalled. And you'll see we have four actions where progress is behind schedule, not always by very much, but that is to South Cams Hall to our upgrading of footway lights programme to the development of a solar PV array to power our fleet and to the rollout of fully digital meetings for members. But otherwise, the actions are on track in terms of our own estate and operations. And then section two is 35 more actions grouped according to sector to support decarbonisation in the wider district. And given the limits of our influence, we don't have a target here, but we're aware that this needs to reduce by around 50% in the current decade. And of those 35 actions, 24 are on track and to schedule, seven are behind schedule, but progressing and two have stalled and are therefore red. The two that have stalled are the taxi EVC, taxi electric vehicle charging points where it wasn't possible to find suitable locations for those, and so those are being located where they will be useful for South Cambridgeshire taxis, but they're actually in the city geography. And also support for repair cafes as part of our recycling and waste program where COVID has just completely made that impossible. I've also marked two in grey as they turned out not to be feasible, and these two relate to our work, encouraging, supporting, and where necessary, forcing improvements to energy performance in private rented sector households. These are around 10% of the households in South Cambridgeshire, and we're looking for opportunities for funding for proactive work in this area, but without this, our approach has been reactive, and so those two are kind of, I saw those as not really so much red as a bit of a different category. And so that's appendix one, the review of the current plan. And turning to appendix two, this provides the 21-22 revision of the plan, and it incorporates 12 actions to deliver our doubling nature strategy, which was agreed by Cabinet in February. So this plan, I think it rather improved the layout of it. It's in three sections, our own estate, nine actions, the wider district, 21 actions, and the doubling nature 12 actions. And I've taken the opportunity to iron out some issues with the previous plan, for example removing some actions, because they were drawn from the zero carbon strustian from the layout of that, they were effectively duplicates. And if anyone is interested in the detail, then the final column in appendix one tells you what happens to that action in the revised plan. So you can be sure that nothing has been, nothing's just been dropped or lost. And I've also made it easier in section one, our own estate and operations, to see which are the parts of our own estate and operations which actually emit the most carbon. So I've just marked in there the proportion of carbon emissions in our baseline. And so you can see that the fleet at 67%, I think it is, comes out top there and you can see how our carbon emissions are made up. And as you'd expect, most of the actions here are also in the Council's business plan. So our zero carbon and doubling nature action plan is in large part a sort of subsection of the Council's business plan, but also with some additional actions which for various reasons don't need to be in the business plan. So I've made that a bit clearer using blue ink where an action is also in the business plan. So the new 21-22 plan I won't go through that in detail, but just to point out that the doubling nature actions, those 12 actions, they include actions through planning where we have our most significant influence through supporting community action, how we can help double nature supporting community action. On our own estate and through our operations and that is particularly what we are doing around our housing estate and finally by working with partners and there's an action there as how we're working with Highways England to encourage a positive environmental legacy from the A428 improvement works and that is later on in the agenda. So I will leave it there, but very happy to take any questions. Thank you very much for such a comprehensive report and in such an easy way for us to really understand all on one page what we're doing about it, what we said we would do and what's happening and the details in that final column of progress and explaining what's been happening is just fantastic Siobhan and so much is going on that I didn't even realise that you're doing so well done. Councillor Hull. Thank you Chairman. Yes, I too think it's an excellent report. Just a couple of little comments really. On T8 which is under the first section and it's the head in that says deliver tree plantation projects and our housing estate collaborations with our repairs contractor. That's the actual part. If you look into the fourth column in the first paragraph there it says halfway down at least one replacement tree will be planted but each tree removed. I had a look up at the statistics for how much of the rate to the tree survives and it changes massively on the type of tree and where you're actually going to plant it and the people here far better than I who can tell you more about that. I would like to see the word at least one replacement to put to at least two replacements because of the fact we are going to have as Councillor Ellington said earlier on many trees die. So I would like it doesn't necessarily have to be in the same place one tree there and one tree elsewhere. That's just a small thing I would like to see there because I do think otherwise we're going to lose the trees. Another small point Chairman is under waste and recycling and I'm going to put it under T23 to T, sorry, A23 to A25 you'll see there many community activities and different things with regards to recycling and all that. For putting it underneath that using that as a link. I think we should start at home. I think that we as South Cam should be saying how we can cut down on waste and therefore I would like to suggest Chairman even though it's a wonderful organisation is Radnor in Powys that maybe we shouldn't be having plastic bottles of water in South Cam's so that's a small point there Chairman but no I enjoyed reading it very very good Excellent Good Shall we take all of the comments and then go through what we can do about those? Is that okay, Siobhan? Yes and there is a comment from Councillor Ellington in the chat which I can read out if you like. Councillor Ellington, can you say? No, Councillor Ellington should read it out of course. Councillor Ellington Thank you. I just wanted reassuring that some of the reductions that we've seen here is not merely a transference of responsibility and costs to staff and councillors who are working from home and using their own electricity and heating and space and that we are taking that into account and I suppose the other thing that bothers me is always when we start talking about percentages 100% of nothing is nothing and I really feel that I want to see the amount and I want to see the amount reduced by not the percentage but that's just me I suspect. I'm done. Thank you very much. Councillor Harvey Thank you Chair. I apologise for the level of detail here but on one of the items, the taxi charging I note that the Cambridge ice rink has a large excess of electric power capacity for technical reasons and I wondered if that had been assessed as a site. Thank you. Any others? Councillor Cym? I wanted to draw attention to what I was saying on the last agenda item about the balance between climate topics and how much nature and how much smaller and how much lower in scale of the doubly nature project. If we are going to be serious about this I'm not trying to diminish the tall of the climate project because they are absolutely essential but if we are going to be serious about it that balance will have to change a bit and there's going to have to be more consideration of how we fund it and how we do something on that field we do need to think perhaps about the practical projects we might get involved in if we are going to be serious about this I'll tell you, as I said before, it's a matter of culture and priorities the office is doing very good with the framework that we provided but we do need to think about this in the longer term about how much directly involved we are going to be as I commented I was surprised as a participant in the future accelerated project to find out that we were the only authority in Cambridge which wasn't actually doing much work on the ground didn't have a section for doing work on the ground on being areas we just got we just advised but we don't have a practical role now that's these are decisions in the past but I think we do need to perhaps think about that again in our future that's my comment Yes, count about that One of the tricky things sometimes with carbon savings is it can result in financial savings as well and one of the tricky things is the rebound effect I was just wondering if that's been considered at all in terms of where carbon savings may be made such as LED lighting which results in electricity cost reductions are those savings effectively being reinvested? You could have to ask our parish councils but yes that's a good question Good and I Councillor Thane do you have anything? Are you okay? Yes if I may I find this extremely useful to see the the rag ratings of the various headings one of the things that perhaps worth bearing in mind however is enormous difference in the level of contribution which each of these items will or potentially deliver and the timing of that contribution and I think we need to be careful not to be too encouraged by ratings which are green if some of the ones which are red are actually rather more significant a particular area I would have is some of those which are not coloured reasons which I explained in the report I would mention in particular energy efficiency both in council housing but also in the private rented sector and the particular issue here is that we have responsibility legal responsibility for enforcing those new energy standards and so whilst I accept the difficulties I think we do have to look with some urgency at how we can at least assess which at this stage we have not been able to do the potential for a contribution particularly from the private rented sector obviously we will have to wait for certain government programmes to be replaced before we can necessarily make progress on them but we will make much faster progress if in the meanwhile we have at least been able to assess the impact and to consider what measures might be available to us Thank you very much Councillor Payne Good and I would just like to echo what is A6 and A7 which is about the private rental home and just to understand if you could explain to us Siobhan does this mean that we've applied for the enforcement and compliance funding and what I understand is that if we don't get it it's been taken out of our plan for the coming year in the new action plan which means that we wouldn't be doing anything around it if we didn't have any funding to do anything around it so there's a bit of an answer to what Councillor Payne is saying there and I would I share with what Councillor Card is saying when we look at what we're doing around doubling nature and the fact that it is minor in a greatly to do with the fact that we don't have the land and we don't manage the land that we do have which is very small and I would look forward to having some proposals Councillor Conn as to how we can do this as my vice-chair for biodiversity and nature so I do really encourage you to bring that forward especially from the accelerator project that you are there because that gives us opportunity to perhaps do something with it so I would like to see that coming forward further I do think I would like to understand a little bit more Siobhan on the electric vehicles because we have that in there as A20 which is through planning policy but given the detail in that A20 on this policy I would just like to pose the question whether again we go back to having the possibility of an EV strategy for the district because otherwise what it seems is it's coming through piecemeal through developments and then that leads to problems because we don't actually have a strategy for that overall so we can't have a sense of where it's going and I think somebody mentioned the figures, when we go into the green house strategy accounting in the next item on our agenda we can see in that report that despite COVID which has meant that in other places emissions have gone down ours haven't significantly and we're actually doing less better than the year before now there are lots of reasons for that and one of the reasons for that Councillor Ellington I think is also about your point about this decision is now about active travel for our stuff and I think we're going to hear about whether or not it's better for if you count it up overall is it better to have stuff here in all of those resources in their own homes and I understand that you can explain a bit Siobhan we're looking at that's being looked at isn't it and the fact that even though we weren't in here we were this building was being used so it was being used by the NHS 24 hour emergency care and others so you know the cost still the usages were there until we've got the complete green and clean energy those are still being used and that's good because they needed to use so that's good but what do we do with that thank you Siobhan you want to come back on so yes I'll do what I can to come back on those points it may be that Rebecca knows more about some of these things but in terms of the private rented sector I wonder whether it would be a good idea to have our environmental health officers who are involved in this area to come and talk to the committee about what the issues are here really and I know that as a rural area it is very difficult to do this kind of work in a cost effective way but I know as an expert on the exact details and so I know that our environmental health officers are applying this particular fund or trying to put together a bit for this particular fund as mentioned in the column there so perhaps they could come back and report on that so that's one thing I don't know if Rebecca's got anything you may know more about it than I do No I think that's quite a sensible suggestion actually Siobhan on that point and it might be something that needs to be thought about for the business plan it certainly is the kind of work that won't necessarily be able to be done within existing resource for sure so that was one point the electric vehicle strategy again I think we've we've struggled in that it's such a complicated picture in terms of the different responsibilities of other actors in this space and particularly the GCP and the combined authority and so which makes it quite difficult to see our particular particular role and those pieces are very much moving so but again I think perhaps we should come back to the committee with a closer update on what we can find out is happening at the other levels and what the options might be in terms of our role and what kind of resource that might need that's perhaps the information that you need to work out whether that's an area that needs a bit more that we want to look at more Thank you and on the at least two I wondered that as well of Councillor Howell which is about the least one tree and I thought ooh should it be at least one I agree with my first reaction and I don't know whether what we're talking about there are small areas like in our sheltered housing or whatever because it's about our council housing but is that something Councillor Howell was putting forward should we at least say at least two because of doubling nature trees should we be at least saying at least two for every one I feel like I've actually just worded this rather clumsily because what I do know very that the commitment is absolutely there from housing to put in more trees and so they're absolutely looking at two or more sometimes there simply isn't the space and so that's the issue it's not to do with any they want to put in more I think that could be slightly better worded but I suppose what is being brought here is if we do would we then commit to finding it where there is space that's the thing if one's going that we do we have the process in place through housing to identify all the hopefully eventually all of the potential opportunities where more trees and also more wildflowers can be planted so that process has been set up and is in operation so I don't think it would add anything to put anything else in here because I think the process is already there but could we change the wording on this one so it actually just shows our commitment we're not doing one for one we are looking at increasing thank you very much that was an important point I particularly take the point about the problems with supporting landlords private sector I should say that I'm a landlord for some houses but not in this area and it's one of the things that has posed a question to me is how I can fund how I can justify funding improvements to energy efficiency for houses that I own I've done some small things the minimum standard required at present is really quite a poor standard I think it's level E which is really pretty poor you had a really bad house building to get to that standard and we should be obviously looking hoping for a higher target but I think it is something we do need to look at in the future is how you might do it the public schemes that were put forward were not sufficiently attractive for landlords to do it it was sometimes done for instance it was sensible if you were having an area or in your scheme in an urban area but that's not really the sort of thing that applies in our district so you really do need to think of ways that provide them incentive because the problem of course is that the landlord invests in the improvements and it's the tenant that gets the benefits and so there's not really a financial benefit for the landlord and so on so unless there is a larger scale of public support it's going to be difficult for those people to do it so I look forward to ideas really and how that might improve I've been a bit challenged myself coming forward with them good thank you and I know it's caused yes even let's make sure that we have a session on that thank you chair addressing council cast point I wonder if within our wide portfolio either it's indirectly by urban street with our direct housing stock and there's room to at least pilot heat as a service because if we could convince private landlords that that was a viable thing to do then of course the benefits of extra insulation will come back to the landlord and that would be a way forward so note that down for our little if we have a session on that thank you very much can I also just a couple of recommendations that we may then need to take forward to our next business plan but in terms of our new action plan that we have here for us to think about and one is skills in sort of green skills so we talk about education we talk about helping business but we are also sort of looking at how we can be involved with green skills promotion and to reflect that we are already starting to have conversations with our business development officers and with the regional colleges and universities and great to Cambridge partnership so I think if we can reflect that here if indeed we do take that forward in some ways and then also I would like to see how we reflect the work on the Oxcamarch that's happening and I don't know if that's through planning or what it's through in terms of the sections we have here but somehow we're also showing that we are not only pushing it through our local plan but we're pushing it through the environmental principles and seeing how that's implemented and then thirdly on 3.8 in terms of the action, it was about the climate and environment fortnight and that was very very successful and a lot of hard work that you put into that it's just to let everyone know that I was recently elected to be the local government association deputy chair of the policy board nationally on environment, economy housing and transport for the Liberal Democrats these are cross party boards so they've got conservative, Labour and independent so I'm part of the climate change task force which has the leaders of the conservatives and Labour independent and Liberal Democrats which is looking at the build up to COP26 and meeting with the ministers who are champions for COP26 for each of their sexual departments and one of the things being discussed is whether we do local COP26s in our area in a way to bring in businesses and communities to showcase what we're doing at local level as well and I was just wondering if the timing is not exactly there Siobhan but it doesn't matter in times exactly the timing around November it could still be early next year and it could be our COP26 so Warwickshire and Coventry one, that's Conservative-led Warwickshire and Coventry they're going to do a joint double authority COP26 locally and so it's a way of bringing in businesses again to say what can we all be doing together to get to net zero so that's an idea maybe of a way that we could theme that yes Councillor so I wonder whether there's an opportunity now to be doing something jointly with the combined authority the combined authority is giving every indication of moving into the climate and environment space far more than it has done in the past so I think we need to just not necessarily be going it alone here because they do have money for a start and of course the whole climate issue doesn't stop at our boundaries does it so I think there are opportunities for us to be working collaboratively there I don't know if you heard today's local news that the Fendland Peak project just received £7m from the lottery today as well which is quite exciting wow that's huge yes and so an ending on that point which is going to be my last one which is and having Councillor Smith with us so the combined authority just adopted the recommendations from the independent climate commission for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and among those were a 2030 target for the combined authority itself and among there were also commitment for local councils to have aspiring targets that also equal 2030 and start to consider what are the pathways to a more ambitious target so I would like us to start considering how we locally now look at those considering and this was interesting I was in a call with all of the other councils constituents and even the more rural councils all of us the greatest majority of our emissions are from our waste fleet so how do we get that 2030 so these are really important interesting questions that are real so it's some things you can do some things you can push as fast as you can others can't maybe working together with economies of scale are ways that we do this so I would like to invite us to now look at how we as a council consider what that would mean for us if we were to go for a 2030 target and what we have done we've been very very serious about our target we haven't done any sort of gesture politics I would say offices have been very serious if we take on a binding target that we can do it and we can see it in this report as well and in the next agenda item where we're reporting on and seeing how we're doing it so I think it's going to be a challenging but important piece of work to look at that so I would like to make that proposal to the members in the room that that is a piece of work we would need to take on by affirmation thank you very much where it's inextricable evenings with the natural the nature side of that thank you very much Siobhan for that excellent report and we do like your action plan the new one and can we go to agenda item 7 now which is the green house ah I did have one thing sorry when we looked at the progress with the paperless and move to digital so I saw that cabinet now has moved to digital apart from one member who is new it said I don't know if Councillor Smith can help us with that how do we see this as our committee can we go digital can we go digital on our committee do we need papers published papers and I know there's an access and if Councillor Ellington is saying yes when you're standing in so maybe an opt in rather than an opt out option Chairman the council have gone digital quite a while ago it's a bit of a pain to get used to but you get used to it Councillor Smith so cabinet's been doing a pilot being paperless and we can't think we've got there now not easy but we have just about got there 95% Let's follow on from Councillor Smith's comments regarding cabinets going paperless certainly the aspiration would be for other groups from within the council and other committees and other members across all of the members to go paperless I'm sure ultimately it may require that members can you speak can you hear me better now thank you it may require some further work behind the scenes regarding the support that would be required in terms of researching hardware for instance but certainly work has taken place behind the scenes using the modgov app that all of us are familiar with so that soft approach is certainly happening at the moment I'm very happy to speak with you further regarding the practicalities chair so from everyone in the room is we're happy to take it to that next stage to discuss the practicalities of it and we are listening to you Councillor Ellington to make sure that whoever just need access could have access but otherwise we'll put that next step I just want to make a little hesitant comment that I look forward to reading my paper documents it's about the only thing I read in paper of my new council documents I find it much easier to read in paper but I also see the handicaps I find it affects my eyesight a bit always looking at the screen and I may well end up if we go paperless printing out a lot of the documents at home so it's just a little hesitation about that thank you I'd just like to take us on to the first page of the action plan use of paper in our processes has plummeted from 420 boxes of A4 and 36 boxes of A3 in the first two quarters of 2019 to 80 boxes of A4 and 0 boxes of A3 in the first two quarters of 2020 and again largely because of home working and again it says maybe one or two printing at home is fine and that's a cost so it could be an opt-in so it could be as an access issue in terms of equality but an equity that people who do need it can have it but it doesn't mean everybody has it because some need it so if we could take that to the next stage thank you very much good, thank you very much if we go to agenda item 7 which are our greenhouse gas emissions accounts but Emma you're hello Emma Dyer, thank you very much hi, I'm just going to share my screen first of all so hopefully you should be able to see that graph is that correct? yes so this is what we're saying we're going to do and then this is what's really happening okay so this is an overview of the greenhouse gas emissions accounts for the council's estate and operations for 2020-21 it is provided to show our current status and where we are in relation to delivering a reduction in our carbon footprints of at least 45% by 2025 and at least 75% by 2030 so before I start I just want to let you know that all figures quoted in the report and the formulas used to calculate the figures have been checked through by our internal auditors and an external assurance statement has been now completed so that's all great so yeah, I'm pleased to report that there's been an overall 8.8% decrease in emissions when compared to our baseline year and the baseline year being the 1st of April 2018 to the 31st of March 2019 this is a 10.7% decrease in emissions on last year which is great news however to be on track to reach our targets 6.25% reduction in emissions every year until 2030 so we are very slightly behind with our greening of south camps for work which we've mentioned I'm confident we'll reach our targets so just to clarify for those who don't know the greenhouse gas data that we compile every year is separated out into scopes so we have our scope 1 emissions which are our direct emissions such as emissions from gas and fleet diesel we have our scope 2 emissions which are our indirect energy emissions so basically all our electricity usage including street lamp consumption figures we have our scope 3 emissions which are other indirect emissions and these are the result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the council that have an impact on its value chain so our current approach is to include data which is readily available to us in which case we include the emissions associated with business travel and as you can see from the graph I have combined scopes 1 and 2 in blue and scope 3 in orange to see the difference in our emissions since 2018 and 19 so if I just go through the scopes one by one scope 1 emissions are pretty similar to our baseline year the percentage decrease in combustion for gas, space and water heating at south camps hall and our small sites was calculated as 10.5% which is fantastic it is most likely attributed to an overall reduction in heating to reflect the shorter working days of staff working in the office since the Covid-19 pandemic the decrease in diesel fuel consumption is minus 1.33% on the previous year this is despite an increase in diesel consumption by fleet vehicles due to the increased number of new housing developments so without the introduction of an extra electric bin lorry in November 2020 this number would have increased so that's good news obviously scope 2 emission decreases could be due to several factors so given that the council's scope 2 emissions are related to electricity usage a likely explanation is firstly the roll out of the LED footway light upgrade which is almost complete and secondly an overall reduction in electricity usage again most likely due to the shorter working days of staff working from south camps hall since the Covid-19 pandemic scope 3 emission decreases as you would expect are due to a significant decrease in staff mileage down 55.3% on the previous year due to an increase again in home working due to Covid-19 our avoided electricity figures have also increased since the 2019-20 baseline which shows a positive impact on the council's total net carbon emissions included this year are avoided figures from a green tariff introduced in all of the small sites owned by the council plus a full year of data from south camps hall just to note that last year we only included 6 months of data from the green tariff at south camps hall and currently the council along with Cambridgeshire City council are investigating the possibility of including a share of the carbon emissions produced by the 3CICT servers located in both Pathfinder House in Huntingdon and Sand Martin House in Peterborough and if agreed this figure will be included as an additional scope 3 category in next year's report along with a baseline recalculation and finally a new risk which is called failure to meet carbon emission reduction targets was added by internal audit in November 2020 following the actions highlighted from the internal audit carbon management reports thank you for listening any questions and share my screen oh has that been done thank you councillor Beir councillor thank you very much Emma councillor Beir Parf chair I have a comment and a question so a comment just in terms of the targets south camps obviously as a fast growing region this is going to be more challenging for us than other districts and I suppose Emma one of the points you made was about waste and waste collection and that's one of the biggest aspects and that waste collection is going to go up in proportion with the amount of housing we have so I suppose one of the things is what can we do to minimise the waste collection needs within the district the other one was about a question about the methodology really of the calculations because I came across something from local partnerships which was a greenhouse gas accounting tool only last week actually and they've been working with the LGA and I just wondered if you're if the if you've come across that tool before and whether that's something you've seen or used because apparently it allows you to benchmark against other other councils to see how you're doing versus other councils yes I mean I am aware of that actually it was actually partly through me writing my report that I was made aware of it so what I wanted to do was obviously completed what I did and then investigate that to further date I do know that the senior auditor that was looking at the report was aware of it as well and I think she said there were a few limitations but obviously I can't comment because I've not seen it myself so it's something that we will perhaps we will look into for next year but obviously because the report was half way through we didn't want to sort of change what we were doing half way through so it is something we're aware of and your comments on waste obviously one of our plans is to continue the sort of introduction of more electric bin lorries I think Rebecca can tell me a bit more about the plans I think is it five per year or five in total in the next five years maybe I think yeah so yeah I mean I was just going to check clarification on the question really so yeah Emma's right in that obviously we have now got a set plan for the purchasing of more electric vehicles into the fleets and you know we'll have another by this time next year we'll have another two so that kind of plan is in place and that does take account of you know the growth of the additional vehicles that will be needed because of that growth but I think the question might have been about general amount of waste that we're also collecting and how we're dealing with that and to my mind in terms of all the waste that we collect it has it directly linked to carbon there is a particular attention that needs to be paid to food waste and it's probably was picked up at the last year actually when a partnership manager came to present about the national waste strategy consultations and one of the things that obviously that is coming up as part of that national waste strategy approach is the push to increase our food waste collections and the reason that the food waste collections are so important is because that's what generates a lot of emissions when that by the gradeable material it gets into waste disposal so the more that we can capture food waste as part of our recycling collections the better and the more that you can recycle it and not dispose of it it will help with those emissions so that's what we've already kind of had a start on and we're doing the trial and the national waste strategy will indeed be encouraging not just us but all councils to go down that route so and that in turn will obviously minimise the amount of general rubbish that we collect and one of the beautiful things about collecting food waste for recycling is that it has this additional innate sort of inbuilt educational effect on residents because suddenly they can see how much food waste they're generating and waste waste reduction, food waste reduction goes hand in hand with the recycling collection so conversely but it does so not only are we confident that we'll be able to sort of capture all food waste for recycling but we probably will be able to reduce how much people throw away which is ultimately where you want to be in the waste hierarchy so you want to be reducing the amount we collect but how? Yeah thank you Rebecca those are exactly the lines I was thinking along really is things where we can we might do which might make people more aware for instance of the food waste that they're wasting and therefore gradually reduce waste less and similarly with other things such as plastics I'm always shocked how much goes into my, how full my blue bin is every week and just kind of maybe educational things about how to reduce the amount of waste will be helpful as well Thank you gentlemen just want to ask a question age 23 paragraph 17 a decrease in staff mileage of 55.3% in the previous year due to an increase of homework in due to the COVID-19 pandemic I just ask please with regards to that figure is there any sort of breakdown that we have on that I'm assuming most of it is done through housing officers and planning officers going out to look at different things around the districts but also with regards to the travel to work plan what is it that people coming into work as well and coming in a fair distance some people do and is there any way that we can reconfigure or do things that would help them so for example if we have somebody who lives to the south of the county would it be something we could look at maybe putting the planning area that they work in in the south so that they can come in to work and not live to the south of the district and then have to have their patch into the north I mean I don't know these are long terms and managerial issues but just things such as that I'm thinking of thank you chairman can I just respond so with regards to the mileage so we have it broken down into obviously the business mileage from the staff themselves going out to meetings going to work everything like well sorry then the mileage they claim when they go to a meeting say also the zip car mileage which I think was pretty much zero this year because nobody's been using the zip car and also the councillors the mileage that the councillors when you go to your meetings as well you claim back so it's three components basically and I know that there is a travel to work policy I believe that one of our officers is working on at the moment I think it's been delayed due to Covid so I think it's obviously all this active travel and everything is actually it is something that's been worked on at the moment she might know a little bit more about what's going on. Just really to add that we are very aware that things are different following the pandemic and it just has kind of made so many things different in the way that people think about things and so this is very much being thought about in a much more all-encompassing way than had previously been envisaged so Susan Garnercrate, head of HR is leading on that. Thank you Chairman. Just a small thing and can I ask then that Siobhan and everyone here has sight of the travel to work plan or at least as the opportunity to comment upon it before it is then put forward towards the appropriate portfolio order. Thank you. That's a proposal which I would support which is we do get a sighting and an ability to feed into the travel to work plan that's being looked at and I think that's in the round it's mentioned here it's in the round in terms of looking at all of the emissions within the building if you're coming into work or you're working at home and the travel to as well I think that sort of combined isn't it but yes it would be lovely if we could have a sight of that. Thank you. I'll take that up with the people involved here. Thank you. Good. I would like to note and I think Councillor Harvey would be very interested in this. I see that on page 23 at number 19 as I understand what we're being told is that streaming and internet use within 10 years will be greater than aviation emissions and so what we have looked at is in a way we've sort of because we've got this shared data centre and it's outside our area you know the question I think you post was Councillor Harvey is are we accounting for it and as I understand this is going to be included you know as a shared accounting distributed proportionally amongst the different council this is going to be a new addition and therefore a recalculation in here is that right? That's what we're yeah hopefully we need to get the data together but yes that's the plan. Good because I think that's I mean that's also going to perhaps you know within terms of the digital working that's going to be something we need to look at as well but that's good. Thank you very much for that and I think what it shows is again is the pace at which we're doing this we're not at 6% a year but we never thought it was going to be a linear thing we thought some things were going to accelerate us towards our 2025 target anyway such as the greening of south cams but we do need to do more and especially if we're going to think about a more ambitious target we've got to look at that very seriously and just see you know what's possible but thank you very much for that again an excellent report. We go on to gender item 8 and this is another critical infrastructure issue which is about the grid capacity issues facing Cambridge which are also they are critical in terms of the development that's happening and how it's happening but also they unlock the possibilities for renewable energy and Emma Davies report you've got here thank you for staying with us and waiting for this time to come through Emma our sustainability expert if you'd like to present this before Thank you chair. So I thought I'd just very quickly take you through what's in the report before moving on to any questions that you have so basically the paper is to provide you with an update on progress with work to address grid infrastructure capacity issues across south Cambridge and Cambridge as well so some previous work that was carried out a few years ago by the Greater Cambridge partnership indicated that we needed to treble capacity on the grid in order to support the current growth agenda so the level of growth allocated in our 2018 local plans for both south Cambridge and Cambridge and also the electrification of transport so as part of this work it did identify that in particular development to the west and south of Cambridge it limited partly because of a kind of lack of infrastructure in that area so Greater Cambridge partnerships are currently progressing some work to extend this infrastructure in that part of south Cambridge so there's going to be an eastern extension which will allow further growth to the east and south of Cambridge and then there's also going to be a western extension which will provide additional capacity to the west of Cambridge including development at Born Airfield and Campbell so that's some work that's been progressing by the Greater Cambridge partnership I am involved in the project board for that work along with some other colleagues from Cambridge City in addition to that work as well we've been thinking about what further work we're also going to need to support the development of the new local plan the Greater Cambridge local plan because obviously that plan has got some quite strong ambitions around things like net zero carbon that will all be coming through committee in due course so you'll learn a little bit more about that then but what we've done so far as part of our infrastructure delivery plan for that local plan there's been some very high level work on grid capacity which has identified that there will need to be further reinforcement to help support additional growth in the area and some of the ambitions that we have around the transition to net zero carbon what we now need to look at once we've got a clear understanding of where we're going in terms of our preferred options for the amount of growth and our kind of spatial strategies so where we're going to be looking at that growth going is that we need to carry out a little bit more detailed work to look at what grid capacity is to support that preferred option that can identify a very high level what additional capacity might be required and as part of that work as well I have also tried to sneak in a little bit of wording around supporting the wider transition to net zero carbon so that we're focused on new development but obviously there is going to be wider decarbonisation as well of our existing settlements and existing transport so it's just a very brief overview of what's in the report that you've had in your agenda packs and I'm very happy to take any questions that you might have Councillor Harbour Inability of Sorry in respect of the inability of UK power networks to build ahead of need I notice that particular point is addressed in Rio ED2 which I think is coming to force in 2023 so I'm hoping that we're going to sort of progress quickly enough with this plan that it doesn't become obsolete by that I also wondered is there any danger that we could be in a sort of invidious position where lack of grid capacity causes a block on it and it's a major housing development which is critical to our 5 year land supply and that could be quite an awkward situation to be in So that's part of the reason why the GCP project is currently under way it is to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where a housing development can't come forward now what UK power networks will always tell you is that they can always provide that additional capacity but it is just a question of having to pay for that and then how long it takes to bring those projects forward so I think that has partly influenced why the GCP are actually now looking to invest ahead of need they have now made an application to UK power networks to get more detailed costings on the first phases of this project so we are specifically looking to avoid any issues where you know because of the amount of time it can sometimes take to deliver these projects so we are talking about delivery of new substations and they can take three years or so to plan and deliver so that's specifically what this project is looking to overcome it's also not duplicating anything that's in the new business plan that UK power networks have just produced and colleagues at Great Cambridge partnership have got a very close working relationship with the UK power networks on this project so you know it's being delivered kind of in addition to some of those works Any other? I have a question about new infrastructure and sulphahexofluoride in use in some of the installations because it's the strongest greenhouse gas like hundreds of times stronger than cum darkside and I was wondering if we can ensure through the GCP that we're not building in infrastructure with that particular chemical in it whether that's possible or not I don't know but I wonder for the uninitiated which bit of it is that of the building? That's in a substation and transformers primarily where it's used as part of the unitiating material but it's a big issue because it's such a strong greenhouse gas I have learnt something new I was not aware of that issue I think that's certainly something if you could provide a little bit more information I could possibly take through to colleagues in GCP just to highlight it as a problem and to see if there's anything that can be done with current technologies to I suppose design that chemical out of the process it's a new area for me I have to say so I'm not sure if there is an alternative available but we could certainly ask the question I'll certainly send you some information on that Thank you Good and this is so critical so for the first time ever for our new local plan as you know the evidence base that's coming up is looking at kind of a carbon costing in a way so what are the carbon emissions implications of all of the different spatial strategy options that we're looking at but as you say on top of that if we do decide on something which then needs all of the renewable energy options which can't then be connected into the grid or turn out to be too expensive to connect it in the grid then we're building white elephants and we're just increasing our emissions and I think it's fantastic that you've included as you were saying what's going to happen in terms of the retrofitting so what burden will what we hope will be a huge retrofitting programme if the government support that across the country what extra burden would that then bring on to our grid capacity as well that would be key so thank you very much for keeping us updated on this and we're very happy to hear what's happened and that we're looking forward as well welcome and we go on to item number nine which is the A428 environmental legacy update Siobhan you're here with us this sort of the history on this as well is kind of on the A14 there was quite a lot to be desired in the way that that was both designed and executed and what its environmental legacy has been and we've heard today as well about the plastics and also about the dead trees and so we had hoped that lots of the lessons learned could be applied to what's happening now for the A428 and I know the office is spending a lot of time the other reason I asked this agenda to come is even though there is the work with the legacy committee I understand that we are quite concerned that there's very low ambition by Highways England in general for the A428 in terms of environmental standards and so that's why we wanted it to come here just to really understand the situation thank you Siobhan so thank you chair so I'll just go through what is in the report quite briefly and then if you'd like to ask any questions but yes so this as you all know the A428 black cats cats and gibbet works gibbet works are a nationally significant infrastructure project of NSIP and as such they require a development consent order following an examination process conducted by the planning inspectorate so there's two aspects to the environmental legacy work one is the aspect which is being co-ordinated by our planning officer Chengid Tarvinga and involves our representations which are co-ordinated together with representations from all the chemical local authorities and go via the county council on the Highways England's application and council officers are from many different services are involved in this and have indicated many areas of concern in the proposed areas around biodiversity, landscape, air quality cultural heritage, flooding drainage and climate change have all brought forward comments and then there is an initial meeting with the planning inspectorate in well in late July I think it's probably going to be in August now so that process is taking place the actual comments are online and I should perhaps have provided the link I can do that if people would be interested to read those comments the other thing to say is that Emma, if she's still with us Emma Davies may be able to help in answering further questions on that she's been more involved in that so as well as that we have been working with Highways England legacy benefits officer to help to try and make the most of the Highways England's legacy funding and so the legacy funding is a large national fund 936 million on a country-wide basis for five years and so the process for this is that you put in bids where bids are from more than one organisation working together that always helps so we're working with Highways England on a bid to the environment and well-being part of this fund and then within that environment and well-being stream it's a further kind of subdivision which is around carbon and a proposal is being developed for feasibility funding that's the state we'd be at first under the carbon theme to work with a specialist such as the environment bank who worked with us on Northstone to identify potential land owners and stewards in the proximity of the A428 project who would then manage land to maximise carbon sequestration probably mainly tree planting but not necessarily limited to tree planting and so we are working that that bid should go in fairly shortly we are also contributing to a process which is being coordinated by consultants working on behalf of Highways England to get funding for biodiversity options so that part of the legacy funding is being coordinated on a a temperature-wide process and our ecologist in the planning department is part of that process to see what we can get for southcams in that also so a number of areas of work that are happening good thank you very much Siobhan it's good to see that Emma could answer questions I mean we do need the link because I would be very good for us to see the comments that have been done but one thing are the legacy funds but the legacy funds are additional complementary and if the actual standards for this road after everything that's happened with the A14 and we do not have good enough standards for what's going to happen with the A428 that is just terrible and I think we need to take this further beyond what a technical officer comments we have to actually take this you know strongly to Iowa's England you know and to the public because if nothing has been learned and what I was in one of those conversations and then I saw that in the planning reforms it had taken out the national infrastructure projects from any of the biodiversity net gain obligations I understand that's now being put back in again because of a result of everybody sort of saying that shouldn't happen they should follow all of the standards that are national standards we still have to see what comes out in the final version but here locally we have to insist that this infrastructure project is of the high quality standard we expect and I thought Councillor Smith and Councillor Humm thank you so I can give you an update Cabinet had a really excellent presentation from Cenggir yesterday so very very unusually the inspector who's dealing with the DCO application has gone back to Highways England to ask the answers to the points that we have, we and other councils have raised so there have been grave concerns from this council Huntingtonshire and the county council particularly on biodiversity and also on the negative impact on sustainable transport routes such as footpaths, bridleways and cycleways so that is almost unheard of for the inspector to go back on the biodiversity where they were claiming 20.5% net gain but it now transpires that they are not using the latest up to date death for a methodology and actually if we use the current methodology it's difficult to prove that there isn't a net loss so this is really really serious and the information that Cenggir gave us yesterday is that Highways England are being very slow to come back to the inspector to actually to pick this up and to start addressing these issues so we're fairly out of love with Highways England quite honestly at the moment but there are three councils equally concerned and we decided in cabinet yesterday and it's currently with our chief executive we will be escalating this and I raised it with the MP for South Cambridgeshire yesterday as well so it's just about as bad as it bad as it could be quite honestly and those of us who've sapped through death by PowerPoint from Highways England will know that it's a very much a one way flow of information and I can see Emma laughing they are incredibly reluctant to address queries and issues from us they're really not listening basically so we are escalating this matter Thank you Chairman I am really pleased to hear about as much as the 428 upgrade is vitally needed between Caxton and also the Black Cat at the same time it shouldn't be at all costs it's got to be have a good effect for this particular area so that's a very very good update, I'm really pleased to hear that there were many questions asked about that but they're just a small one for example there's a small little stream susybdory called Hen Brook and there were questions asked about that for example quite some time ago and Highways England couldn't come back and we just thought well come on this is going to have an impact on a village and several other villages down the line so that's very good I don't want to keep on banging on about this but we always keep on using the term lessons learnt, lessons learnt where lessons learnt of the path with bypass is that 10-15 years later you've got plastic cover still around the trees so my question would be when we go forward with this and we do that the lesson that we've learnt is who's going to remove them do they need to be removed can they be biodegradable in the future which would be much better because then we don't need to remove them and they can just go into the ground and hopefully feed the trees that they are protecting so that would be a big thing that I would be looking for for the future small point but something I think for having implication when the workmen and women have gone from the site thank you Sharon thank you a big question of Councillor Smith you said about Huntington, Cambridger and ourselves objecting the route goes on into Bedfordshire I was just wondering what the response was in Bedfordshire so I think Bedfordshire have concerns but I don't think they're quite as coterminous without our concerns in Bedfordshire so I think we stick with our kind of ganger 3 here to put a very strong strong voice good do you want to add anything there Emma? I think the anything I would say I've shared a link in the chat to the relevant representations on the planning inspectorate website and you can actually search by local authority I think from what I've seen in terms of issues such as climate and ecology we're probably the ones putting the most resource into representations related to those areas so Dan on the kind of biodiversity front is putting in a huge amount of work alongside colleagues in landscape architecture as well so I think we're probably the ones making the most representations I think Natural England have also got various representations in relation to some of those issues as well but it has been a interesting process and I would concur with the death by power point although we did have a slightly more constructive meeting with Highways England last week on climate change so we're making some small progress and we've just finished a summary of what again our lessons a bit like Pupworth but the ones on the A14 junctions near to my awards as well and found that actual implementation of what had been promised has been far from what was expected as well so it's this longer term side of this in terms of legacy so the legacy is great and we do need to go for that because those funds are important and the very air quality and the carbon ones really really important because those are good funds but we've got to make sure the basics are right and so it's very very good to update cancer Smith and and I think several of our communities will be very happy to hear that as well this has taken up seriously thank you very much for that and if Siobhan could share the link we don't have teams at the moment here with us but if you could share that link with us the members who are in the room you just share that to members of the committee Siobhan by email that would be great and agenda item number 10 six feet instead of three trees six three trees which I find even harder to say the six three trees scheme Emmerdhire please yep so as you say this is a quick update on the six three trees scheme which will be offered to all parish councils in the next couple of months to support community action on climate change so just as background information I'll provide a brief run-through of the three free trees scheme which was launched by the council at the end of 2019 so this scheme was sufficient for three bare root trees but parishes could also opt for a larger single tree to suit their needs if this was preferred parishes could apply to us for a voucher which could be exchanged for trees at a selection of garden centres in South Cambridgeshire and we also gave an option for an online based supplier in Norfolk trees needed to be planted on parish council land or if agreed land owned by South Cambridgeshire District Council Cambridgeshire County Council or a local charity and where no suitable land was available parishes could donate their voucher to a neighbouring parish in total 54 parishes to the copy offer and this equated to a total cost of £3,360 including sundries so this year in line with the council's aspiration to double nature the council will be offering every parish in the district six free trees to continue this work to increase the tree canopy cover in South Cambridgeshire this time parish councils will be offering six free trees and this is likely to result in higher quality trees and better value for money as it will be a bulk order and will also make the scheme easier to administer and the supplier will also offer an after sale service if any issues arise so a choice of native trees will be offered which can either be pot grown or bare rooted to order directly through our chosen supplier and since I wrote the report please note that this may end up being two suppliers as some suppliers only offer some pot grown trees we want to obviously broaden that scope as to what we can offer but obviously this is dependent on the quotes that we are going to receive this has gone out to our ITQ quotes tender portal and the deadline for quotes will be the middle of August and as with last year parishes will be given the option to choose one larger tree to the same value to smaller trees where this suits their needs and this time the chosen supplier will deliver the trees directly to those parishes we should take up the offer and delivery arrangements will be arranged by both the parish councils and the supplier at the time of ordering and this will be hopefully during national tree week which is the 27th of November to the 5th of December 2021 and this is where possible otherwise before the end of December 2021 and lastly it is expected that parishes will be able to apply for their free trees from September to allow suppliers enough time to source the chosen trees so that's hopefully the plan at the moment so yeah, any questions on that one? Cazesmy thank you this is kind of my pet project here the next time it will not be a tongue twister it always seems to be a tongue twister so I dread having to talk on the radio about it so what really pleases me firstly it cost hardly any money we literally went down the back of the council's sofa to find the money to run this I'm extremely pleased with the way that Emma and her colleagues have kind of developed this to be a more efficient scheme which will hopefully deliver better outcomes so I'm delighted with the way that this has been further developed but it's not just about planting a few trees in each parish I know the effect this has had on quite a lot of parishes that it's raised awareness of the fact that we have fewer trees in South Cambridge other than anywhere else in the country about the importance of planting trees and I know a lot of parishes such as my own have taken their three free trees from last time and then decided to plant a whole load more of their own volition so this was about awareness raising so I'm sure that when the publicity stuff goes out we'll be making a big song and dance about the porcity of tree cover here and the importance of planting trees but also pointing out that six isn't enough start encouraging your landowners, your farmers and so on to be doing a whole load more and picking up on councillor howl's concerns can we please stipulate that these trees will be provided with biodegradable protective collars rather than more plastic and I have seen biodegradable ones around so it's not impossible good and could we also are we and I know we're doing this in a very efficient way and it's not costing much money but are we monitoring in any way the survival of the trees not yet so it's something that I could go back to the parishes that have already received trees we could actually sort of ask that question it's depending on the outcomes obviously 54 parishes we might not get responses from all 54 but I can by all means contact them again to find out how they're doing I tend to, I think last year in the tree week we did a sort of publicity promotion then of all the people and I don't know if you remember it's on social media a lot of people sharing the trees that they had planted so I'm happy to say that a few did not know they were doing okay then but obviously we'd like to see how they're doing now as well so yes I can go back to them great good thank you very much because Wellington it's much easier to put my hand up could we say that if they their tree has died from last year we don't give them another one we're going out for punishment I think what is interesting as well on this is just in my village a bit like Councillor Smith is what's happening now is they've done this lovely thing where they've gone out and said where would you like to see trees so the first action was around okay where does the parish council I know that a lot of parish council said where can we put it you know what do we do and there's a lot of opportunism I think was the word that Councillor Cahn used but what's interesting as Councillor Smith is saying it sort of started this discussion now where would you like to see trees where should we have trees and that links then to I think Councillor Ellington's point about and so therefore how we're making sure that these would be managed and maintained on on land and so I think those processes the ones that are being kick started now which are really important thank you very much I wouldn't vote for the punishment just yet Councillor Ellington seeing as we're trying for behaviour but I think if we can have some kind of monitoring and understand what's happening that would be good even if it's light touch thank you I think they will be getting they will be getting support from the suppliers you know and after sort of care sort of service as well so if they do have any issues they can actually sort of speak to them so hopefully that will help a comment on the replacement of trees I think it is a bit careful you have to be a bit careful I know that studies have been in various places where they've supplied past trees and this applies to council how as well and it was eventually found that the problem was not so much on the planting but the fact that the trees by the time were already dead by the time they arrived this particular problem there were trees if they're not properly managed and not properly cared for they can end up being dead and not for all the work it doesn't matter so I'd be very hesitant about blaming the parishes but make sure that we make sure that we properly give them information so that they can handle them properly and take care of them when they arrive thank you and we move to agenda item 11 which is very very important and links back to the two items which we had on our zero carbon action plant and on the greenhouse gas emissions and this is the Cambridge and Peter independent climate commission recommendations to the combined authority decisions that have been taken recently by the combined authority board and their implications for southcams and I think we have a leader Catherine Smith who is going to talk to us about that there's not really very much to say as things stand at the moment so the combined authority voted not unanimously which was a shame to adopt the climate commission's recommendations the mayor has suggested that I take the lead role for the environment there that hasn't been ratified by the board yet we've just been trying to agree what the sort of job description is but what I amended it to make sure that the combined authority sees itself as a role to play with the Oxford Cambridge arc as well because obviously we've got some very very ambitious principles coming through that but also we've got a spatial framework which is going to the consultation is going to start I think in the next two weeks and so it's really important that everybody involved in the arc and of course the combined authority player pushes through spatial planning of green spaces in order to deliver on doubling nature and the arc environment group which I lead and which Liz Watts chairs is meeting this week and has had a nice very nice simple paper about what's actually meant by doubling nature and it's about taking all the natural assets as one and doubling them in totals and not just doubling the amount of blue space and doubling the amount of woodland space it's about the actual acreage and doing that so there's no point in us acting in isolation the combined authority acting in isolation we're part of a much bigger entity which has serious potential for significant investment into the environment into doubling nature in particular and what I will be talking to the mayor about when I have the opportunity is about establishing some fund that people can bid into for these significantly sized significantly sized projects that can really make an impact on the environment so we've seen some fabulous work which the RSPB is leading on and which anyone can go up to Oose Fenn and see where they are doing restoration well it's creation actually creation of wetland focused on particular species so at Oose Fenn they were targeting bitons, marsh harriers and I think reed warblers well there's 11 bitons there and there was a marsh harriers swooping around when I was there so it's been incredibly successful in that very targeted creating the environment for specific species that are in danger and that was taking gravel pits and the exciting thing there is that the extraction is going on as the restoration work is going on because it's a massive massive area now that's a model that can be rolled out across the whole of the arc because there's going to be massive extraction done there so we can be creating more and more natural wetlands there so I'm hoping to engage the combined authority very much in that because I think there's every indication that most of the members of the board take this every bit as seriously as this council does that's very encouraging so we are in the very very early stages of what the combined authority's role is and what their actions are going to be but they are the people who have the potential to get money and get serious amounts of money when we can then be players in that to make sure that as part of the whole local nature partnership work that actually South Cambridgeshire sees the benefit of that as well Excellent and on the climate recommendations that were adopted and as you said not unanimously but in effect were adopted so one was that the climate cabinet would be created so I think that's now going to be called I think there was an issue people didn't want it to be called a cabinet so I think it's going to be called a working group so that was approved no idea what the membership of that is going to be the mayor is going to be on it I'm not aware that any other elected members are going to be on it as yet it was approved of the last board meeting I think that one of the points was the independent climate commission had a whole host of experts on it and local experts and the farmers for example and they did the farmers and the whole farm committee looking at aspects including people we don't know yet if that's sort of whole so this climate working group has been approved by the board that it will exist there is absolutely no detail as yet about what the membership of that will be and there was also the proposal about a peat group to work with peat there was considerable pushback from the east of Cambridge I won't talk about the council but there was concern from two councils that any work on preserving peat would negatively impact their local economy now I don't believe that's the case and I know you don't believe that's the case there is much work that can be done and I believe the £7 million that's been awarded by the lottery to our area for peat restitution is also talking about methods of farming that can be beneficial to the peat rather than destructive to the peat and I think the problem is that the methods of farming we currently have actually damaged the peat but actually it's perfectly possible for it to do everything to work well together and I gather there's a great willingness on the part of much of the farming community to do this I think there's political nervousness in some quarters about is that actually going to be taking farmland out of farming will that impact on people's jobs will it impact on the economy will it impact on the growing of food now I don't believe that's the case but this has to be properly evidenced so I hope the National Lottery Award today will provide that evidence base that gives the politicians confidence that this is the right thing to do my argument at the last board meeting was that we can't dilly dally around anymore the clue is in the fact that this is a climate emergency and if it's an emergency we have to act now this minute we can't wait and so there was a call for some of these decisions to be the decisions to adopt recommendations of the independent climate commissions were delayed until some more work was done fortunately the majority of the people on the board didn't agree with that but we have to take everybody with us so there's a big challenge there we can't have division within the combined authority on these really really critical issues we have to do some work to get everybody into the same positive place it's not a good thing to play it's called baton ball games good and I think in being in one of those meetings what we did see and it's a bit like linking back to one of the earlier gender items as if we share learning between councils so for example Fennlund and East Cams were very interested as was Hunts in the costings that we did about the decarbonisation of the waste fleet and so why does everyone have to do that again let's look at it share it and have a session which is looking at those different elements of what decarbonisation means to each of the councils the other thing was this idea about carbon costing that I think county is going to do and the combined authority committed to doing was there anything more on that? No that wasn't discussed any further but as I say this was a meeting just to kind of kick things off and you know I've got concerns that the combined authority will need to resource up as far as officer supports concern because I don't think they've got that in house at the moment we've got officers who are generalists but we know from our own council here that actually we need specialists in the field because this is difficult complex specialist stuff that we're dealing with so I'm hoping to have conversations from there very soon about making sure that there are the in house resources to make sure that there are the financial resources and to be very nice if between the councils and the combined authority we could set up our own sort of climate summit particularly focused on COP26 as well to start pulling everybody together to start working together I think it would and I'd appreciate any advice that this committee could give on that any comments or questions on that one no, good and as we've said in an earlier item so what we do know is that in a way without adoption we've sort of signed up to seeing how we meet our own aspiration then to increase our ambitions thank you very much and finally Siobhan in terms of the final agenda item forward plan and date of the next meeting so I have four items one is a presentation from Hannah Phillips who is the RSVB area manager around that piece of land that was being discussed earlier around USFEN the second one is an air quality update from our air quality officer the third one is the delayed it was going to be at this meeting but a report on the local energy advice partnership work that is being done in the district which is about advice and referrals for low income households and the fourth one is an update on the net zero housing project that our housing team is very much involved in good thank you and we've just added the one about the private rental yes I'll see whether that's possible for that date we're just in forward on the forward agenda and those four specifically for September and for the next day we have Monday 13th of September at 2pm okay perfectly good, lovely well in terms of the further agenda also I have noted something on our option so far as electric vehicle charging charging points okay thank you very much excellent thanks very much Yvonne for that excellent agenda and all the work in putting that together thank you everybody we went a bit further than half an hour than the four o'clock but lovely to have you all here thank you