Date set for Peterborough’s ‘climate action day’

What followed was quite unusual – every single member in the chamber, regardless of which colour rosette they wear, supported it.

If you watch our full council meetings live on Facebook, you will know this happens once in a blue moon.

As I said that night, we discuss many important items in the council chamber, but none of them matter if we have no planet to live on.

At a cabinet meeting on Monday members will consider a plan which sets out how the council will start to work towards becoming carbon neutral.

The Carbon Management Action Plan includes a top 20 pledges, which includes replacing the mayor’s car with an ultra-low emissions vehicle, considering leasing additional office space to reduce energy demands and investigating whether we could dim street lighting further.

It also commits to reviewing the council’s electricity and gas contracts and moving towards 100 per cent renewable energy tariffs and 100 per cent carbon off-set gas tariffs.

There are lots that we are doing already – many of our schools have solar panels and rain water harvesters, we’re dimming street lights to reduce energy use and building more homes in the city so that people are less reliant on cars and more likely to use public transport.

However, the action plan is our first major step in delivering our commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions.

Cabinet members will be asked to endorse the plan and it will then go before full council on March 4 for final sign off.

We are planning for this day to be designated ‘climate action day’ when we encourage staff and residents to do their ‘extra bit’ to reduce 
their carbon impact on that day.

It is hoped that if someone reduces their impact on one day, then they might be persuaded to do it more frequently.

I have solar panels on my roof to heat water which has reduced our energy use and bills.

I’ve got loft insulation and cavity wall insulation too, for the same reasons.

We recycle as much as we can and have reduced 
the amount of waste we produce.

In the words of a well-known supermarket chain, every little helps.

The action that we can take individually and as a city can make a difference and it also sends out a clear message
 that we must all change our ways.

We owe it to our children and grandchildren to do so.

Flytipping is a problem faced by every council in the country and it is certainly one that has blighted our landscape for some time.

But I am pleased to tell you that over the past year flytipping in Peterborough has reduced.

The number of incidents is down from 4,126 to 3,116 – a 
reduction of around 25 per cent.

There’s also been a reduction in the tonnes of waste collected which is down from 1,519 tonnes to 965.

We’ve been able to take control of flytipping since the launch of Aragon Direct Services, which is working hard to clear flytipping within 24 hours for hazardous and 48 hours for non-hazardous fly-tipping once this is reported to them.

It’s likely the opening of the new household recycling centre has also had an impact and we’ve got a really good cross-party group which is coming up with new and innovative ways of driving down flytipping in the city.

We’re determined to crack down on fly-tipping and littering and it will remain one of our priorities when our in-house team to tackle environmental issues and crimes takes over from Kingdom shortly.

This new team will tackle problems across the whole council area, as well as the city centre.

Finally, a reminder that you can view detailed proposals for a new University of Peterborough at Peterborough Cathedral next week.

This is a really exciting step forward in our plans to deliver a fully-fledged university and I encourage people to go along and view the designs and tell us what they think.

The event takes place on February 4, from 3pm to 7pm, and on February 5 and 6, between 2pm and 7pm. Look forward to seeing you there.