Climate change action fund to be launched for community groups in Staffordshire

The Community Climate Action Fund is part of a climate change action plan approved by the authority in October.

The plan sets out the authority’s first actions to tackle its carbon emissions and support sustainability after it declared a climate emergency in July 2019.

Five main areas are covered in the plan; organisation carbon reduction, air quality, natural environment, waste and behaviour change. In total there are 22 actions, with one of the priorities being the development of a longer-term climate strategy to cover the next 10 years.

Council leader Alan White announced the action plan at the latest cabinet meeting. He said: “Tackling climate change is one of the principles that cuts through everything we do as a county council and we’re doing our bit as an organisation to reach carbon net zero by 2050.

“This week cabinet member Julia Jessel approved a six-month action plan – this includes changes that make climate change central in our day to day thinking, in our contracts and decision making, plus practical projects to reduce our carbon impact. A longer term climate change strategy will also be developed with input from colleagues and communities.

“To support our communities to do their bit too, we are launching a new community climate action fund for people to apply for grant funding of up to £1,000 to support projects in their community. I look to our communities to bid in as quickly as possible.”

Ideas

Projects that cover one of the five areas of the climate change action plan will be eligible for financial support. Community groups seeking funding will be able to submit their application to the county councillor representing their area, in a similar way to the Covid-19 support scheme that has been running in recent months.

All county councillors were invited to put forward ideas for the initial action plan at a climate change workshop in October 2019. More than 230 suggestions were put forward on areas where the council needed to take action to reduce its environmental impact, which were used by a cross-party Climate Change Working Group to develop the latest action plan.

A £690,000 budget for climate change work was agreed in February as part of the council’s budget for 2020/21. The authority has also taken actions to reduce its carbon footprint including investing in LED lighting and a new green energy contract.

Councillor Julia Jessel, cabinet member for environment, infrastructure and climate change, said: “Climate change is a huge and complex issue which impacts our lives now and for generations to come, but we can all do our bit to make a difference. We have to put climate change at the centre of our day-to-day thinking, so it permeates everything we do as a county council.

“We have made some excellent progress so far; reducing our carbon footprint by half, and putting in measures and pledging £1.2 million earlier in the year to tackling climate change, but we need to do more. We are all in this together: organisations, businesses, communities and individuals. Together we will make a difference.”