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The following motion was passed with just one abstention:
Proposer: Councillor Jane March
Seconder: Councillor Luke Everitt
“Tunbridge Wells Borough Council recognises the overwhelming weight of scientific
evidence pointing to man-made climate change and the harmful impacts this is
having on natural habitats and ecosystems, biodiversity and our lives in general. It
notes the early work undertaken to date by the Council including efforts to promote
active travel, increase recycling and the reduction of plastic usage in the Town Hall
but understands it needs to do more. It recognises that it has a responsibility to take
a firm lead on reducing the council’s and the wider borough’s carbon emissions and
in furtherance of this responsibility agrees to:
Declare its recognition of global climate and biodiversity emergencies;
Set up a climate cross party task force to start a dedicated report within the
fiscal year with actions that it needs to take to address this emergency
including how the wider community including businesses, organisations and
individuals can be encouraged to make their own contributions to meeting a
goal to make the Borough carbon neutral by 2030. This report will include a
plan to conduct a green audit of all council services to ensure that weight is
given to the environmental and sustainability impact as well as cost and which
will inform the next iteration of the Council’s five year plan;
Ensure that forthcoming plans and strategies (including the Local Plan and the
next iteration of the Five-Year Plan) set out ways in which the Council can
make its contribution to reduce carbon emissions, the degradation of the
environment and combating climate change by agreeing an ambition to make
the Council’s operations carbon neutral by 2030;
Lobby central government to provide additional resources and to grant the
necessary freedoms to deliver the above.
Take steps with partners to proactively include young people in the process,
ensuring that they have a voice in shaping the future by setting up a Citizen’s
Assembly as a way of also involving residents and businesses in the process
as Climate change will have implications for generations to come.”
