Subscribe to updates
You'll receive weekly summaries about Islington Council every week.
If you have any requests or comments please let us know at community@opencouncil.network. We can also provide custom updates on particular topics across councils.
Environment, Climate and Transport Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday, 14th January, 2025 7.30 pm
January 21, 2025 View on council website Watch video of meetingTranscript
Thank you for sharing tonight's meeting. Please note that we are not expecting a fire alarm test this evening, so if the alarm is sounded, please follow my instructions and evacuate the building. Please remember that this meeting is being broadcast live on the council's website, and please turn your microphone on when speaking, and remember to turn it off when you're finished, to make sure that you can be heard on the broadcast and in the chamber. Please speak clearly and directly into your microphone. I will now ask my fellow members and the officers to introduce themselves, starting on my right. Councillor Ruth Hayes from Clerkenwell, Vice-Chair of the Committee. Claire Jeans, Cangry, Councillor. Councillor Gary Heller, Fingery Park Ward, and I'm also the council's recycling champion, and I'm here to substitute him for Councillor Nanda. Councillor James Potts, Councillor for Junction Ward. Councillor Caroline Russell, Highbury Ward. Councillor John Ryan, Head of Natural Environment. Andrew Bedford, I'm the Assistant Director for Green and More Active. And Matt Bonamy, Head of Transport Projects. Sorry. Rooney Champion, Executive Member for Environment, Air Quality, and Transport. Sorry. Hi, I'm Sakeba Gerda, Head of Planning Policy and Development of Viability Service. Hello, Flora Walker, Sustainable Design Officer and the Planning Policy Team. Welcome to Councilor Zahmett at the back there. Thank you. And so, um, we have got apologies tonight. Councillor Phil, councillors Phil Graham and Trey Ananda. And we've had a declaration of substitute member from Councillor Gary Heller. Thank you very much. Are there any declarations of interest to declare? No? Thank you. So, now we've got the minutes of previous two meetings, actually. We've got November and December. So, can we agree with the minutes of November, please? Thank you. And December? Thank you so much. And my report is very brief. It's just a reminder that on the 23rd of January, at 7.30, there's a joint meeting with Thames Water, the Environment, Climate Change, and Transport, and the Corporate Resources and Economic Scrutiny Committees. Everyone's encouraged to come. It will be Thames Water's third visit to the Scrutiny Committee, and we will again hold them to account. And I just wanted to say that, you know, the government has introduced new stricter standards for private incinerators, and I've written to Ed Milliband, MP, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Mary Cray, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Environment and Food and Rural Affairs, and also Steve Reid, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, urging them to also introduce emergency legislation to make supermarkets and food manufacturers stop using plastic packaging and single-use plastics. So, that is the end of my report. So, we'll move on to, oh, just to say that public questions will be held after each agenda item. And moving on to the order of business. So, first of all, we're going to take the, the order of business will be as on the, on the, on the agenda, yeah. So, the scrutiny report, the scrutiny review on cleaner, greener, more inclusive streets, greening in Islington, and we have a presentation from Andrew Bedford, John Ryan and Matt Bonamy. Thank you. If you, you've got about half an hour for your, if you give us about 10, 15 minutes for your presentation, then we can take questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chair. So, yeah, so, yeah. So, yeah, so we're looking at green streets in the borough. This works. Oh, no. Oh, failed straight away. You've just turned it off. I've just turned it off of the line. There we go. So, why green streets? Obviously, the council has a mission around a greener, healthier Islington. So, we're aiming to ensure that Islington's neighbourhoods will look and feel greener, more attractive and cleaner. A number of benefits and reasons why we're looking to do that. Climate adaptation mitigation is a key one. We've done a lot of work around net zero, but obviously, the impacts of climate change are going to be with us. They're baked in. We've hit our 1.5 degrees for the first time. So, we know climate change is here. It's real. So, we need to mitigate and adapt. So, the greening is a key way of doing that, protecting us from extreme heat and trying to mitigate the impacts of surface water flooding. We want to support biodiversity and access to nature. Particularly nature on people's doorsteps. Octopus came and talked about their Nature Neighbourhoods project. Talked about nature as, not as a destination, but as something that's, you know, on our doorstep. And, of course, improving people's health and well-being. Access to green space and nature. Access to green space, really good for people's mental health and well-being. And we want that to be equitably experienced across the borough. Because access to green space is not equitable across the borough. We've got a number of key programmes that we're looking to deliver our greener streets through. The Liveable Neighbourhoods programme. Our street tree planting programme. And the Islington greener together. So, we have some key targets. So, delivering more liveable neighbourhoods. We aim to cover the borough by 50% by 2026. We aim to plant 600 more trees a year than we lose annually. We're looking to increase the borough tree canopy cover from the current level of 25%. Which actually is quite high for an inner London borough. The average London tree canopy cover is 21%. But we're aiming to increase that to 30% by 2050. And to achieve a 1.5 hectare increase in public green space by 2030. So, how are we performing around that? At the moment, liveable neighbourhoods. 24% of the borough has been covered by a liveable neighbourhood. And we've got another 37% that is planned and in programme. Around tree planting, we are forecast to plant. We did about just short of about 981 trees. I think it was last year. And we're on track to plant 1,000 trees this year. So, we lose about 300 trees a year on average. That's why we sort of need to plant around 900 to 1,000 in order to achieve that target. The increased green space target is quite a challenging one. We've increased it by 12%. We've got 22% planned and committed. So, we've got on target to achieve 34% by 2026. And we've got new, I think, isn't green together projects that have been approved. So, still quite a way to go on that. Liveable neighbourhoods are sort of the next phase of the low traffic neighbourhood programme. So, to think about schemes not just as a traffic filtering scheme, but actually placemaking. We want our streets to not just be where we reduce cars, but to bring other benefits. So, greening is going to be a significant part of that, but also walking, cycling and building sort of local sense of community and neighbourhood hubs. But greening, obviously, is going to be a key component and probably where the majority of our greening, green infrastructure and interventions will be delivered through. We've got some just examples of some schemes that are planned as part of the Cali Liveable Neighbourhood project. There's a number of pocket parks. That one on the left there is Randalls Road, which is on the approach to Bingfield Park, currently very urban, brought quite concrete space that we will create new planting in. And on the right there, an example in the Mildmay Liveable Neighbourhood scheme. So, there's lots of pocket park proposals as part of that Liveable Neighbourhood programme. We've also got our school streets. This is an example of Robert Blair Primary School, where major planting has taken place along there. Again, a very urban road, which has now been enhanced significantly through planting and tree planting. We've been doing other things in the background as well to support the delivery of greening. We've got our Islington Greening Together programme, which is really focused on supporting communities to enable community ideas to green the neighbourhood and enable them to support the management and maintenance. We've had funding for a Highways Greening Accelerator programme. We've got our Greening Together champions. And we've also had funding around a green finance for Islington Pocket Park, which I'll talk a little bit more about. So, the Greening Together programme, we've had a £1.5 million investment into community-led street greening initiatives, also supported by additional funding through SIL. We've had two rounds now. The first round has been delivered, 26 projects, with one Hydrofields Crescent about to be delivered this year, and another nine projects that have been agreed for round two. And there's been a mix of things, say, from small planters and pocket parks, parklets like the one there on Mayton Street, to pocket parks and more significant greening. So, ranged in scale. But the key difference with these ones, they're all community-managed and community-maintained. And there's some examples of some of the schemes that have been delivered, some of some before and after photographs of the types of schemes that have been delivered. The Highways Greening Accelerator programme was a project that was joint with Camden, where we looked at what were the skills, what was the capacity that we needed to develop. Because this is very much a collaborative effort between my service and highways and transport to deliver this. So, we needed to build the skills up and look at what are the systems and processes and barriers to putting green infrastructure on the highway. So, we had funding from the Future Parks Accelerator programme, and we developed a number of resources. A practical guide, which has come out of a bespoke training course that we did for engineers and for highways staff, as well as green space staff, around skilling them up to be able to include green infrastructure into the designs that we're doing, not just ones that we are commissioning to get landscape architects to do. A street planting guide and a sort of best practice guide, looking not just at what we're doing in Eastlington, Camden, but in London and nationally and even internationally. So, those are really great resources and some links on there to the website where they are hosted. We also got funding from the Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund, which is a bit of a mouthful, which is DEFRA funding, to really look at how do we streamline the process and how do we look to lever in additional finance. Because if we want to deliver significant change at scale, because we don't want to just do piecemeal small interventions, really we've got bigger ambitions, we want to deliver a programme at scale, because that's what's needed if we're going to mitigate for the climate. So, how do we lever in additional resources to do that? So, this project looked at how do we do that, and it took the sort of concept and idea of some of the stub roads. A previous officer was doing a site visit, I think it was with Council of Clute, actually, on New North Road, to look at the problem with mopeds that were coming through this location. They thought, well, actually, this is a lot of dead space. It's not necessarily doing a great deal. So, could we be more ambitious and create this idea of stub road conversions into pocket parks? And as we start to look at how many of those we've got across the borough, we realised, actually, it's quite significant. And we identified about 1,000 locations where this was the case, where it's already filtered, it's not already through traffic. And we've identified about 250 sort of stub roads that we think are potentially convertible. So, you know, it creates a sort of potential pipeline of projects that we can deliver at scale. And if you scale that up across other boroughs, you can see the sort of scale of impact that that could potentially have. So, the project looked at, and you can read some of the detail, just what are the benefits of how do we collate those benefits? Because lots of the green financing mechanisms, like carbon credits, don't work for urban green infrastructure. If you plant eight trees on a stub road, you're going to get about £150 a year in carbon credits. It just doesn't stack up because of the costs of urban green infrastructure against the benefits. So, it really starts to look at how do we layer up the health, the social benefits, as well as the environmental benefits. And then start to explore what alternative private green finance options there might be out there. So, we've got a report on that, which we can share as well. So, it produced some documents we've tried to streamline. We've done a design guide for Pocket Park Framework and an analysis tool to help us prioritise sites. We are in the process of trying to deliver some demonstrator projects and then look at environmental social governance funding and philanthropic funding for the private green sector to see if we can lever in additional resources. I'll just ask what WSP is at the bottom of that. So, WSP is a consultancy, sort of an engineering firm. And so, they worked with us. We commissioned them to help us on that piece of work. So, that's why it's got to WSP on that. And those documents are hosted on their website. Okay. John. Chair. Just an update on the trees and tree service. We've now got a new natural environment team, which combines the tree service, nature conservation team, and the easing to green together team. And we're hoping that collaboration will enable a better design, but also the feeding of information between those team members. For example, we do observations to planners. So, the planning department is advised by the nature conservation manager on biodiversity and the tree officer and planning advisors on trees. We'll try and combine that team and make that more and more. With tree planting, we've been very successful this year and in previous years with securing funding. So, we've managed to get £300,000 this year alone for tree planting through different grants and also secured a post to deliver, which is very important through the Woodland Creation Accelerator Fund. James Robinson Tillett is now the tree planting and engagement officer. So, we're on track to plant the council's commitment for the 600 more trees than we lose every year. And we're looking good going into the next few years to deliver today. And in 2019, we had a canopy cover survey done on the whole borough. We established that we had the 25% canopy cover. We worked out all sorts of facts and figures from our database to get a better understanding of the publicly owned trees. This is a new survey which will review that data, but also give it on the new wards. So, we'll have accurate data to present to the new wards, because that was in the old ward data or ward boundaries. But also, it will feed into a lot more of the environmental values of the trees. So, we'll be able to look at individual trees and area-based trees for their value in pollution interception, stormwater interception, and the other town helpers guide equity and where we're going to be planting in the future. It will also form the baseline data for an urban forest management plan, where we'll be reviewing the... Next slide, please, Andrew. We've had a tree sponsorship scheme, which has been quite successful the last couple of years. This was one of the council's climate action pledges, was to set up a tree donation scheme. We're working with Trees for Streets, who are a charity, a branch of, no pun intended, but Trees for Cities, which is a successful charity. It's been quite successful. As you can see, we've had over 100 trees or donations towards 100 trees, but we think we can do it better in-house. We're quite fortunate, their model seems to work best, where you've got local authorities, where they've got lots of space, no funding for trees, and no resource. We're quite fortunate, where we have got some funding for trees, we've got a resource, and we think we can manage the... We have started to promote tree-pit planting. So the tree-pit garden, so we've got a lot of tree-pits in the borough, and most of them are empty, or they've got bitmap, tarmac, all sorts of stuff in there. So promoting residents to take ownership of those, and it's a relatively simple thing to do, but we're getting a lot of positive interest from residents. They can take ownership of the sites, they register them online with the council, and we make sure that we don't go in and put any weed killer, which we don't use weed killer any money, but SES don't come in and strip it, and the tree officers are aware, so that if anything happens to the tree, there's warning put up there as well. And it's now a category in bloom, so it's getting more promoted. And we've got over 100 sites now, and we've given some good advice on what you can plant, what you can't plant, to maintain these sites. We have our Greener Together Champions programme. This we've done... Sorry, I forgot to switch my head back on. Our Greener Together Champions programme, which is linked with Greener Together. So I've been working with Groundwork, who provide training and support to those volunteers. It's based around the Greener Together schemes, but actually we've broadened it out, and actually the majority of our 100, over 100 Greener Together Champions, actually aren't connected with the scheme at the moment. So they provide sort of training, guides and tools to support the groups in doing that management and maintenance. Because we know volunteering, you can't just expect people to just take stuff on without support. I think that's really key. So we want to support those volunteers that are getting involved in that. And that's been proving very popular. It's a bit of a case study in here as well, which you can sort of read more on one of the particular champions, Talia, for one of the schemes and her experience and involvement in it and the benefits that she's got from it. But I won't go through that all in detail. Last question, Jack. Andrew, on this Greener Together Champions, I notice that it says the funding programme ends in February. I've come on to challenges. I mean, obviously that's last year. Yes. OK, I was going to ask you about that. Yeah, I've come on to that. Well, but this is one, yeah, I'm going to talk about communication. So we are looking to develop some plans for how we sort of package sort of green streets. So one of the proposals that the climate panel came up with was around sort of greener streets programme. So we've got a tree pit gardens, want to combine that with the community weeding scheme that's promoting reduction in glyphosate use opportunities for pocket parks and other greening. So we're looking at trying to develop that into a scheme. We're working with Octopus, who came and talked to you about the Nature Neighbourhoods Project and how we support that next phase from turning that from a plan into something tangible and deliverable at a neighbourhood scale. So, and we're looking and we're working with the climate action teams, as you quite rightly pointed out, Councillor Heather, the funding for the Greener Together Champions programme does come to an end. So we're looking about how we sustain that going forward. Part of the funding was to try and create a network of self-sustaining, which we will then try and support internally. But we want to, we think there's an opportunity to coordinate environmental volunteering and engagement across the piece. And how do we coordinate that? Because some people want to get involved in greening, other people want to be recycling champions, other people want to be energy champions. Actually, how do we look to coordinate that? So working with Sarah's team around coordinating volunteering engagement around an environmental theme rather than just individual schemes. But, you know, that's, so that's one of our challenges is how do we make sure we can sustain that? So, yeah, in terms of, in terms of next challenges, we, you know, it's a huge challenge to try and scale up to deliver that, those, those schemes, those schemes are expensive to really deliver a good quality pocket park. You're looking at a sort of £250,000 minimum probably, Matt would probably want a bit more than that. So, so they are expensive if we're going to do them as we would like to do them. You know, our funding sources for that are limited. So how do we, how do we lever in new funding? We've got a very challenging target. So 1.5 hectares, how do we seek to, seek to achieve that as much as possible? And it's not just, it's not just the financial resources, it's also the sort of capacity within, say, Matt's team to actually design up, engage with the communities and deliver the schemes. We also have a challenge around how we maintain. The Greener Together is great. It's fantastic getting communities involved in managing and maintaining spaces. But that's actually a minority of the greening schemes that we deliver. A lot of the schemes delivered through the Liverpool neighbourhoods and the cycleways don't have communities at the moment attached to them, maintaining them. So how do we find the resources to maintain those on an ongoing basis? So, you know, that's very much a challenge that we face. We are in the process of developing a green infrastructure strategy for the borough because we've been busy doing lots of stuff, but actually we don't have a policy framework around that. And there's a huge amount of things we're trying to do in the public realm. A lot of competition for space, cycleways, bicycle hangers, electric charging points, pocket parks, greening. So actually where does that fit within that framework? So we're going through a process at the moment to develop that. We're working with some of the individuals from the climate panel on the next phase of engagement to sort of make sure their ideas are embedded. And we're aiming to have a draft sort of ready by March and April to then take through a governance process. So that will provide a sort of strategic policy framework around our greening. There we go. Thank you very much. Really, very good presentation. So I'll put it out to the committee for questions. Any questions or comments that the committee would like to make? OK, Councillor Hayes, I saw first. I looked. Yeah, Councillor Russell. And did you have your hand up? Yeah, thanks, Councillor Potts. OK, so Councillor Hayes. Thank you very much. It was a very interesting presentation. I've just got a couple of questions. So on the, I think you said it was about 300 trees a year are lost. Do we think there is anything that could be done to reduce that? Or is that just with the number of trees we've got, that is pretty much optimal? Because, you know, there'll be accidents, there'll be natural causes, et cetera. Shall I ask all my questions? Thank you. And I'm conscious the tree survey, the maintenance of trees is something that residents often raise. And I appreciate all the constraints of resources. But will the tree survey also look at the scheduling of pruning of trees that might need pruning? Or, you know, the kind of, the challenges that that faces? And, you know, I'm conscious that lots of trees are very close to people's living space. And that's great in some ways because it brings nature to the doorstep. But it can also mean that pollen or that falling leaves or that branches falling off are hazardous to people. And my final question was about the green finance for Islington Pocket Park framework and just really what the, where those sources of investment might. And I know there was some suggestion that we're philanthropic sources. Are we, and there's been quite a lot of reference to working with Octopus, which is great to see that that kind of combining with our local Vontroceptor partners. Is the aim to look at joint partnership bids or could we just have a bit more about where that is going? Thank you. Okay, I think you could take those three questions and then we'll move on to Councilor Russell. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor. Yeah, with regards to the 300 trees we're losing annually, we've got a public tree stock of nearly 40,000 trees. So it's a very small percentage of our tree stock and trees having finite lifespans and living in a very harsh urban environment. It's how I would expect it to be. This also includes the trees lost to storms, vandalism, vehicle strikes as well. So trees get old, get diseases and die. So we're actively removing probably about 250 of these and 50 of losses. This also includes the losses for some of the young trees as well. And when you transplant and move young trees, they don't like it. So we get about a 5% loss of all the trees, less than that now, but we were getting about a 5% mortality rate. So I think we're managing that and it's about right. Yeah, and the numbers look good. With the iTree and the inspection surveys, they're separate. So we inspect every single public tree at least once every three years. So we've got a three-yearly cycle of inspection and that fulfills our duty of care and it means we're data rich. We spend a lot of time inspecting trees every year, recording it on our database and that's how we manage public trees. The iTree survey is looking at 200 random plots across the whole of Islington. So that will capture the private tree stock as well. So the data on the public trees, this means we'll have the full picture of the borough. So they're two separate surveys so they won't impact on the other. And then regarding with planting consideration and planting, we're much more aware now of the impacts of trees that trees can have. We find we're planting a lot more smaller trees than large canopy trees. And you're right, trees can cause damage to property and there are seasonal issues and seasonal problems. And we're much more cognizant of trying to be aware of that. So we're not planting heavily fruiting trees on footpaths anymore. We're not planting large trees in small places. So we're trying to future-proof our stock by reducing the maintenance costs in the future, but planting the right tree for the right place. But also very aware we've can't stop now because I could talk about trees for the next half an hour. Thank you. Yeah, it's always difficult with trees. I love trees, but it's a common, you know, and obviously with climate change, people say trees blocking out light, but actually that tree is also providing shade. So in intense heat, actually that's providing an important cooling function. And obviously those trees have a great system of dropping their leaves in the winter when you need more light. So I think it's a lot about trying to educate people around the benefits of trees as well. So actually, yes, you might be experiencing some problems, but, you know, pruning a tree or clearing a tree because it's dropping leaves in the gutter is not one that we're going to, you know, do. On the green finance pocket parks, it's very, very sort of early days with the green finance market. There's, and what we explored was there's a lot of, there is a lot of private green funding out there, but the markets need to mature a bit. There's something called the UK Green Taxonomy Guide that we're waiting to see, to arrive, that will provide greater tax incentives for companies to invest in nature-based solutions. Nature-based solutions don't have a return on investment, so you're looking at social value impact. We are working with partners across the country and including National Trust around a woodland, an urban greening code. So similar like you have a woodland peat code, the woodland code, can we create something similar that creates, makes, monetizes the value. So there's a lot of exploring. There's something called environmental social governance, which is a sort of, there's big funds that invest in environmental and social-based projects. So there's lots of pots out there. Our tactic at the moment is to deliver some demonstrator projects. We're working with UCL to try and measure and value the benefits, and then trying to go back out to developers and funders to see if they would invest in the product. And try and create a pipeline of projects, and so at scale, actually, because it's not about investing in one pocket part. They want to invest in 10, 20, and create in a pipeline of projects that are investable. So it's something that's developing, and we want to be ready when the market matures. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I've got a question about the difference between low-traffic neighbourhoods and liveable neighbourhoods, because we've got, in Arsenal and Highbury Wards, there's a very large, low-traffic neighbourhood that was put in during the pandemic, and then everyone moved on and started putting in liveable neighbourhoods elsewhere. And I just wonder if there is a planned programme to do a bit of retrofit in the low-traffic neighbourhood zone to deliver some of those liveable neighbourhood benefits, because I think it might actually be quite helpful. So, yeah, that's one question. The pocket park piece and the stub roads, absolutely beautiful piece of work. And just wondering if you've got the stub roads kind of mapped for the whole of the borough, and in which case, how are you going to be working with ward councillors, or what's the kind of roll-out process for that? And then my third question is just being slightly opportunistic in that we've got Andrew here, and we're going through the budget process, and I've just got a query about locking park gates at night, which is in the budget papers. And I just wondered if there were, if you would be able to say anything about how you see that working, because I've certainly encountered quite a few people who are a bit concerned about it, from a safety point of view, in particular, particularly in terms of women and girls, but also... Councillor Russell, I think we've got that question, so I'll hand it over to Councillor... I was going to call you Councillor Bedford then, but Andrew, yeah. Cool, yeah, I'll grab those first, too. So, yeah, low-traffic neighbourhoods to liveable neighbourhoods. As we all know, it's the low-traffic neighbourhoods were put in during COVID in response to health emergency, and were solely focused on traffic reduction and creating space for people to walk and cycle. Obviously, the evolution of that is now what we call liveable neighbourhoods, which is essentially the same thing, but with a lot more carrots. It's building in all of the public-grown benefits, specifically greening benefits, opportunities for cycling, opportunities for placemaking, but also doing it with the community. So we have multiple phases of community engagement before we take any decision to implement a single project. And to come back to the real point of the question is, are we coming back? I hope so. It's a longer-term plan. We know we've got an ambition to cover the whole of the borough with liveable neighbourhoods by approximately 2030, which was the manifesto commitment, and the most recent Islington Together commitment for 50% by 2026. We are working away at areas of most need at the moment, kind of moving ourselves towards the north of the borough. You know, we're working on Barnsbury at the moment. We've worked on Mildmay, the Cali, Tufnel Park, et cetera, and starting to kind of consider how we retrofit that program back into the historic LTNs. So it is definitely on the agenda. I don't have a doubt for you when I'm coming to Highbury, but it is something we definitely want to do. And Arsenal. And Arsenal, and St Peter's, and Canterbury, and all of them. Yeah, absolutely. Pocket parks and stub roads, I hope it's not really quickly as well, but yes, they are mapped. Andrew showed the screenshot before. There's approximately 300-odd stub roads identified as possible pocket parks of varying scales. Our approach to delivering on that at the moment is essentially embedded into the Liveable Neighbourhood Program. So it's without Andrew delivering on this hopefully glorious funding package that's coming down the line, we are building it into our current program. We're using it as evidence. We're using it as insight to help develop our liveable neighbourhoods in the best way. So the Cali, which you would have seen a picture from today, you know, there was a number of stub roads identified just off Cali Road. And through that package, we're delivering a number of pocket parks through that program as well. And we'll continue to do that as we move to the next neighbourhood, to the next neighbourhood. But again, if a golden handshake of money comes our way, we'll definitely love to create a stub road program. Just following up on that, could councillors with SIL work with you to deliver some of this more liveable neighbourhood element to existing LTNs? Absolutely. I mean, there is always an opportunity with funding to look at resource, to look at where the areas of most need. I will say caution, though, we have a fairly stacked program, and we are kind of having to go through a process of, how would I put this, identifying the areas of most need. You know, using our evidence that's disposable to us, using our flood risk strategies, our heat island impact studies, our deprivation maps. You know, where is the best place to use our time and our resource? Because it's not just financial money, it's actually officer time, that's really important here as well, to deliver, obviously, on our larger goals of a fairer together, and a fairer islington. So an area might have some money, but might not be the area of most need for me today. But always open to have that conversation, to see where we can use our work. Thank you very much for that, Councillor. So if you could turn your mics off, and I'll bring Councillor Champion in. Thanks. No, it's absolutely, it's absolutely the case that we want to do liveable neighbourhoods right across the borough. I think one of the things we're looking at at the moment, though, is we know that, if we are trying to get people to move around differently, actually, you need to create large areas, and connected areas, for them to do that. So, you know, we did discuss this, should we have gone back to the LTNs and to upgrade them, you know, and that would have been really attractive. But actually, what we're trying to do is really connect more and more safer areas, not actually just even with liveable neighbourhoods now, but also we're looking at doing sort of the connections between the liveable neighbourhoods. So we've done Southgate Road, we're now looking to do a few others as well. So it's absolutely the case that we don't want some areas to be prioritised over the others, but actually from a resource point of view, if you go into a new area and you start looking, for example, the Cali, you start looking at both cycle connections and mild may, you look at cycle connections, you look at liveable neighbourhoods, and change place at the same time. That's quite a resource-intensive piece of work, but actually it delivers an awful lot. So, you know, absolutely, we are coming back, but it's, you know, how do you most effectively use your resources? And at the moment, I think the feeling is that if we can change the space across a wide area of Islington, then you start changing people's ability to move around differently, as well as their experience of their own homes. Thank you, Councillor Chapman. Could you also answer the locking the gate, park gates as well? Yeah, so, I mean, I think we have, we only lock half the gates anyway, and that decision was taken some time ago. We're working carefully through on how we do that to make sure that, you know, we do do it in a way that's systematic. We, you know, there are some real benefits to having parks open. If you lock them, if you lock them, you obviously, you are reducing immunity for a number of people. And part of the other problem is that sort of in summer, for example, we get the most, we get most issues. Actually, if you start locking them quite late, actually, lots of those issues would have already happened. So, what we're doing is looking at how you use resources more effectively. So, there are a couple of different things that are happening. I don't know if Andrew wanted, Andrew, do you want to pick this up before I, you know, come insane? So, some part of the saving that we would deliver from not, because obviously it's a lot of resource to just arbitrarily lock a lot of sites. So, actually, a portion of that saving is actually getting reinvested back in the service to, for more sort of targeted taskings and patrols. So, actually, using our park guard, park patrol service to deal with the issues where they arise. We will retain the ability to do temporary locks on sites if we need to disrupt behaviour. But it will be on a sort of, yeah, evidence base and tasking base. Obviously, lots of our parks already you can't lock or we don't lock. So, actually, at the moment, you know, if we're going to lock another site, we have to unlock another one. So, it's actually quite difficult to manage, whereas this one will be able to, I mean, we can be much more flexible in targeting our resources where the ASB starts to arise and actually deal with the problem. Thank you very much. Good answer. So, Councilor Champion. I'm also coordinating an awful lot more with Dan Lawson's team, who will also, they're having some mobile officers as well. So, there's a bit more of an understanding of the area. So, hopefully, this will be an improvement and a benefit, because it also means that we can tackle some of those areas, which, as Andrew said, those parks aren't being locked. Sometimes we do get antisocial behaviour in them, and this way we can look at resources more effectively. Thanks a lot. Okay, Councilor Potts, your turn. Yeah, thank you, Chair. Just a couple of quick questions for me in terms of, obviously, the greening, the 34% that's sort of accounted for until 2026. Obviously, we're such a dense borough. I think it's really a challenge to sort of make sure we get to that 100% target. What does the roadmap to that look like? Is that 1.5 hectares? I mean, obviously, the 250 to 300 stub roads, how much of that would, for example, target? Has the Council done any sort of analysis or data to sort of say, actually, that could be the roadmap to doing so just on that? And then the second point, particularly around the tree pit planting, that's a really great thing. You walk down the street and you see that residents have sort of taken it upon themselves to sort of plant a few flowers at the bottom of a tree, for example. So, I'm really encouraged to hear that that's something that the Council are also going to be pushing for and getting residents to do themselves. But how is the Council going about that? So, what does the promotional campaign look like? Okay, so, yeah, we need to map out a bit more carefully how do we get there to the – we know roughly the size of Pocket Park, so, therefore, how many we need to now deliver for the – and put a price to that. Matt's Liveable Neighbourhood programme will be delivering out, so it's now trying to estimate, okay, for every Liveable Neighbourhood we roll out roughly what do we think is the amount of green infrastructure that we'll deliver through that programme. It's going to vary from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, but we can get a rough idea. So, we can start now to put that road plan in place and know what level of resource we need, because we've now delivered some schemes, we know the costs, so it becomes easy. So, right, we need to deliver 25 Pocket Parks to hit that target for – I'm just off to me, you know. So, we will now start to map that out now where we know we are. We have a tracker, so we track every project in terms of what scale. We don't just count the greening as well, because it's like transforming the sort of space around that, so it becomes sort of usable green space. And, you know, so it can vary from a little pocket park, you know, from a parklet to some of the biggest schemes, like St. James's, Clark, and, well, a great crop of green. You know, what do you count in that? So, because obviously some of the – if you just take the greening, but actually we've transformed quite a large area. So, sometimes it's about trying to – we don't want to sort of count stuff that's not really sort of – but, you know, we're transforming, you know, new spaces. But Space on Estate, the Livable Neighbourhood Programme, will also start to deliver and open up spaces that are currently closed off. Centurion Close has done that. It's a scheme that's delivered recently, and there's some more planned over the next – so, you know, we will get a lot further. But, yeah, we don't actually have a – what that would be, that's another action to do. Thank you, sir. And the tree-pit planting, that is being promoted via the website, so we've up revamped the website. We're working with Islington Gardeners in partnership with them, and we promote it via our In Bloom campaign. But we do want to go a bit further, say this Green Streets campaign, and package up a little bit about what can you do as a neighbourhood, as a group of residents, to green the streets and take local action. So, that's a next step. I'm going to take Councillor Heather and Councillor Jeeps, and then if you could answer as briefly as possible, because you've covered a lot of ground tonight. And so, Councillor Heather. Yeah, just going back to what we were talking about earlier about greening the borough and your hope to get sort of that funding to continue, like, resident engagement, getting people to contribute to what's going on. As a sort of – I just wondered. So, last year in the summer, they were looking at doing – it was pre-consultation about the Liverpool neighbourhood in Nanette Road, and those workshops were really good. I mean, they were really good. I went to two of them, I think. There was a lot of people there. Some people were there because they were worried if they were going to use their car, wherever they like. But there was also a lot of people that were interested in greening. I just wondered, have we got access to any of those – are we approaching any of those people? Have any of those people shown an interest in being an isn't greening champion? And the other bit of that question is, is that in terms of that, would there be any scope in the future if, you know, if we didn't get any funding? Would there be any scope for training those isn't greening champions to maybe coordinate people, or is that too much of an ask for them? Would those things be possible? But it struck me that there were a lot of people that went to that Liverpool neighbourhood consultation, and obviously you've done a lot more, and I just wondered, like, are we actually sort of able to, you know, get those people involved in the future? Because, you know, we're working in this climate of lack of resources, and then leveraging in people volunteers is really important. But you sort of have to have someone to do that. So, for example, on the Andover – just quickly on this – on the Andover, when we got the community gardener, the Council's in Finjury Park funded a community gardener for two years under Mark Rowe. She's doing fantastic work, like getting people around that estate, like, to do gardening. So, but of course, without her, it wouldn't happen. Thank you, Councillor Hill. I'm just going to take Councillor Jeeps and then… Yeah, I want to raise two matters here. One is about Highbury Fields and the unofficial path that goes through the middle of the fields, which I think you need to deal with as a matter of urgency and stop people walking through it, especially if they're walking from the Arsenal. It's gradually deteriorating and you need to do something. Other boroughs have managed to stop people cutting through parts and making the right mess of it. But I'd like you to look at that as soon as you can. The other issue is around trees. There's two matters here. One is I think that some, a lot of residents don't understand and they, especially if they see the butchery that's gone in Hackney, Haringey and Camden, what they've done to their trees, they cut them to being ridiculous pom-poms. And they think, well, why can't we do that in Islington? Well, I want to turn that round. I think those three boroughs and other boroughs should be charged with murdering trees. And I think we should get better communication with our residents who don't seem to understand that, no, we won't do that. I spoke to some residents at the weekend on the estates and really they want the tree removed and I'm fed up with it really. And the other issue is around, I think, which was mentioned to me some while back about compaction of the ground. And is that something that is still causing a problem? Have you done anything about ground compaction, which is, well, you know, compacting the roots base, which causes a real problem to the trees? And is there any plan to, am I right or are you going to do something about that? Thanks. Yeah, if I could answer the, you're right. We have tried to have a soft touch on our trees as much as possible, but fulfilling our duty of care to maintain them. So we don't over prune trees. We try not to. You're very right about education. We've started, we're doing a lot more engagement with schools. We're giving them a need for large trees in urban environments for resilience. The compaction is a problem. And this can be helped by urban greening because introducing plants and bedding and increasing the greening and planting around trees reduces the footfall. So that can help. And we're also trying to, in coming years where we have got tree planting and greening to reduce that compaction and to increase aeration and vegetation into the soil. We have, in previous years, pressure injected into hybrid fields to try and decompact, but it's obviously expensive and not something we can always do, but we have done that in the past. The desire line across hybrid fields, we did, we did restore that many years ago and within a matter of months, it was back as if we'd never done anything. We've consulted in the past around putting an actual path and residents have always rejected that option. So it's a very difficult one to solve is, is the, is the upshot of that. If we, if we grass it, it will, and we put barriers and they still just go around. So it's a very, very difficult one to solve that one. We don't have an answer to that. Um, so you can say that your question engagement, I think, I think we want to take a more coordinated approach as we want to sort of, uh, work with Sarah's team around. How do we look at volunteering and engagement around environmental issues as a, as a whole? Cause I think you're right. There's opportunities to promote the Greek together champions of the programs at, at, at, at the mass, um, engagement events in the liveable neighborhood. But as we're working together, let's say rolling out the pocket parts, we want to do more of that as we go forward so that we can talk to residents. So greener together was a borough wide sort of idea, but trying to take some of those principles and apply them into the liveable neighborhood program. So actually there are opportunities for residents to get involved in, in the planting engagement. And we continue to try and support them to do that. Um, and there's lots of opportunities of what they could do, not just within those green together schemes, but, but, you know, adopting a tree pit or, or acting as sort of, uh, uh, uh, pioneers and support for, for their neighborhood and getting green and going. So we want to continue to try and do that. We're working with the engagement team around, uh, a climate action fund bid, uh, around, uh, uh, uh, resilience, uh, network and adaptation climate change, uh, champions. So, um, so not just in terms of dealing with extreme heat waves, but then also around the greening and adaptation stuff. So we're putting that together, but that will be a longer term plan. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to give the final word to council champion. Well, I think, I think that's, I think I'm right in saying in, in respect of net road. I think the, um, the organization that runs Maiton street and the stress garden have expressed, um, interest in, in helping with that as well, as well as individual residents. Okay. I really, I just want to raise the issue about rain gardens. The rain gardens. I think they're a brilliant idea, especially because around where I live in, around the next head, people are concreting over their front guards and their back gardens and their private properties. So you can't really do anything about it. So rain gardens need to be promoted as a really beneficial thing. I think so. Yeah. And discourage the concreting over. I know you're doing that, but just to make that point. Thank you very much. You came as quite short notice and really brilliant presentation and great work. Thank you very much. Thank you. Before you go, I've just got to ask the member of the public, do you have a question? No, I just think it's interesting to hear about your microphone. Put your mic on. Put your mic on. Oh, no, I just wanted to say thank you very much. I am actually a greener, a greener East LinkedIn champion as well. So it's been really good to hear that you are actually moving ahead and try to encourage more people to join. One of the things that we are facing is finding space, for example, to store the mulch that has been offered just now. I just got a message. So I think it's really important, the practical implementation of the ideas that they actually get seen through, because a lot of things can just stop by not offering support. As you said, so with the tree pits and, you know, making sure that the people feel supported, I think just giving you some feedback is really important. But thank you. What's your name? I'm Jana Rock. I'm coming from Earlstock Estate. So I'm actually, I'm actually got the funding for the estate to improve, to, you know, to green the estate. So it's, yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Earlstock Estate, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, welcome. So we're going to move on to the next item now. That was a long item, but it was absolutely worth it. And, and it's part of our scrutiny. So it's so important. So the next one we're moving on to is the update on the climate action supplementary planning document. And we've got Fiona Walker and Sakiba Gerda to present. Thank you. Thank you. And you, you know, we can't spend an hour on this, please. So if you could. Sure. Um, 15 minutes. Sure. Yes. We'll do our part in, in 15 minutes. So I'll just give a very quick overview of where we are at now. Uh, and then Flora will give the, the full presentation on the climate action SPD and the retrofit handbook. Uh, I'm Sakiba Gerda. I'm head of planning policy and development viability service. So we prepare all of these, uh, plans and strategies. So the SPD, uh, it's a piece of work that we've been working on for a long time. As some of you will know, and you have been involved in the early stages. We did, we have done over the last couple of years, a lot of engagement with various groups, all sorts of stakeholders, particularly residents and local activist groups, as well as businesses and housing associations and developers and agents and architects and everybody. And as part of that process, what emerged is that effectively people want everything to be addressed. And it's, it's a very complex matter if you want to try and address all of these issues. So we've ended up, and this is a, in a good way, we've ended up producing two documents, uh, which are slightly, targeted to slightly different audiences, although, you know, all of them deal with, uh, issues around climate action in different ways. So we've produced a retrofit handbook, which is a, a document which sets out, sets out a bit of background, and Flora will go into that, but also lots of measures, measure by measure. And it's particularly aimed at, uh, existing residential properties as well as business properties and people who want to be able to do certain measures themselves. We've had a lot of discussion over the, you know, in various workshops with, with local residents about this. And then we've also prepared a supplementary planning document itself, which is where we started from. Initially, we called it net, uh, net zero carbon SPD, but then it, it's, it's broadened. It's, it's titled climate action and it deals with not just retrofit and energy use and things like that, but also other things like biodiversity and dealing with flooding and harvesting rainwater and lots of other things. So everywhere where additional guidance was needed, all of those topics are covered in the SPD. And the SPD is a bit more technical and more aimed at, uh, not, not entirely, but some of the kind of more planning stakeholders, if you like. So, uh, both are out of consultation now. We started in, uh, on 7th of January, the consultation closes on the 18th. One of the other reasons why we wanted to do this is that a lot of changes happen very quickly, particularly around technologies with retrofitting. So with, uh, with retrofit handbook, we'll be able to update it quickly without having to go through this very lengthy statutory process, which the SPD itself has to go through. So for instance, things, legislation changes, things that previously needed planning permission now don't, as those changes occur, you know, through, through government action, as well as simply technologies evolving. So retrofit handbook can be updated very quickly. And that's quite an important point, otherwise it falls, uh, kind of comes out of date quite quickly. So we're out of consultation as of the 7th. We are holding two residents, well, stakeholder events, but mainly aimed at residents and local groups, but businesses will have also been invited and, you know, at anybody, it's open to anybody really. Uh, 28th of January and one on 6th of February. We also have, we have a session with the Eastern Society on the 29th of January, and there'll be other events that we might get, uh, invited to. So that's where we are now. I'll hand over to Flora, who is the lead officer, who actually worked on producing the SPD in collaboration with everybody in the, in planning as well as across the Council, particularly climate action colleagues. Sorry, thank you Sakiba. My name is Flora Walker. Yeah. Um, I will be quick today because I know we've got lots to cover. Um, just to briefly go over the relationship between the various documents that we have dealing with climate action in planning. So, uh, the sort of key statutory document that we're consulting on is the supplementary planning document. If you hear us saying SPD, it's because, uh, it has to be short and it doesn't roll off the tongue. And then as Sakiba mentioned, we've got, uh, the retrofit handbook that's also being consulted upon. Um, and then in tandem, uh, we have two other supporting documents. One of them is, uh, the, um, permitted development guide to net zero works. And that just details the government's statutory, um, sort of, uh, when, when it details when planning permission is required and when it isn't for net zero works. And the latter one is, uh, guide to repairing and upgrading windows in conservation areas and listed buildings. Um, and then in addition to this, there is a lot of sort of supporting activity, um, but particularly within planning. There's a free application planning advice service that's being introduced, um, where businesses and residents, uh, can, uh, qualify for free pre-application, um, advice on their planning applications. Or potentially it might be the advice saying they don't require planning permission, um, what they're proposing is permitted development. Um, that's because we understand that sometimes planning rules can be complex and, uh, we just want to support people to bring free the measures when they, when they want to. Okay. Um, so I'm going to start with the retrofit handbook now, um, and, um, just a brief sort of outline of what, what it's for. So the key aim is to provide accessible guidance, uh, to enable everyone to understand retrofit considerations, um, from the very small DIY steps that, um, to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. Um, to, like, more complex, um, more, um, more detailed, um, more detailed, um, sorry, yeah, um, more detailed, uh, retrofit measures. Um, and, uh, also, yeah, as we said, to understand when planning permission or listed building consent is required. Uh, and when planning permission is required, we state the information that is required, uh, to help people to make their applications. Um, and, uh, and then also to give worked examples of retrofit in a variety of contexts, um, so that includes, uh, some flats, uh, and it includes, sort of, buildings across, sort of, various eras in Islington. So I think Sakiba, we're going to just do a demonstration of how the handbook works. We've made some efforts to try and make it as accessible and interactive as possible, um, so it should be accessible on an interactive PDF. Um, as you can see, we've split the document into four key, um, sections. The first detail is about the retrofit journey, and it's framed to support people to understand, um, the key concepts and the key steps around what is required. And that's accessible to people even doing very minor retrofit measures, like draft proofing, which don't require planning permission or anything like that, um, which most people can do regardless of tenure or whether they're living in flats. Um, and then the second, um, part is key considerations. Um, so in, in, in that section, we deal with, oh, sorry, bear with me. I'm just not following. Um, yes, so we deal with the whole building approach. Um, so that understands a building as a, a combination of systems that all need to work together in unison, um, to ensure that the building's more energy efficient. Um, we deal with the electrification, um, electrification of heat, so the move away from gas, uh, ventilation to add moisture damage, to avoid moisture damage. Uh, we do consider embodied carbon impacts for each measure and, uh, the disruption to the living environment, uh, and how older buildings and listed buildings can sort of, uh, approach retrofit. Uh, and then here's our sort of page of retrofit measures, uh, and we deal with quite a lot. Uh, as Sakiba said, there was a real demand from our stakeholder engagement that people wanted some advice on actually what the different measures involve. Um, so if we can click, for example, to one of the measures, if we go to timber. So this shows the solid and timber floor insulation, um, and we've got an easy-to-digest information box on what's required, how much it's likely to cost, whether it needs planning permission, how disruptive it is, whether it's accessible to DIY, and including some other sort of technical considerations and diagrams. Um, thanks, Sakiba. And now, if we can change back, thank you very much. Thank you. We just wanted to show you what the document looks and feels like. Um, and then finally, the section number four is the Islington housing types. Uh, so we include, uh, we've modelled Georgian, Victorian, an early 20th century flat, and mid-20th century house-at-home types. Uh, and we provide three journeys, uh, which relate to three different extents of retrofit from DIY to more comprehensive, and these relate to sort of three different budgets. Um, for example, you can see here, uh, we've got a heat loss diagram for your early 20th century flat, um, and these are some of the typologies that were measured. Um, and for each typology, we have, uh, the summary of measures and journeys. Um, so you can see here, we've got the early 20th century flat typology, and you can see the DIY, medium, and comprehensive journeys. Uh, and we've packaged them, uh, just, just to show what can be, um, achieved if all of these measures are sort of delivered, um, together. And you can see some of them, the DIY, um, measures, they're, they're quite doable without extensive, um, extensive works, such as LED lighting and heating controls and things like that. Um, so that, that's the retrofit handbook. I also have some words to say about the Climate Action SPD, but I don't know, do you want to take questions now? Yes, okay, fantastic. Thank you. Um, so, um, the SPD, sort of, we're going back to that statutory document, um, that, um, basically it's a document that, that's for when you're finding out when your development, needs planning permission, uh, when you need advice on what planning policies apply, and when you need to find out what information is needed to show you comply with the policies. Um, the Climate Action SPD provides additional guidance on implementation of our local plan policies, and within the SPD, we also include a chapter on retrofit, just to make sure that the two documents are interlinked and joined up. Um, and, yeah, that deals with specifics on air source heat pumps, solar panels, windows, external wall insulation, and cycle storage. Um, it's important to mention that, um, as, as with the retrofit handbook, um, we want to, uh, focus on clarity and providing the required detail and accessibility. Um, so, um, so, we're not introducing new policy requirements within this document, it's about detailing how we can deliver our existing policy. Um, and a key difference to the last local plan is that we introduced many more requirements for minor developments. Um, so, um, so, therefore, the SPD needs extra guidance on supporting people, um, for these smaller applications, especially because those kind of applications, you're not likely to, um, appoint an energy consultant, for example. So, um, so, we needed to provide tools to enable anyone, uh, from householders to, um, very large developers to put their applications in. Um, so, yes, um, and then just a detail on the contents page here. Um, so, we've got, um, key, key chapters. We have a sustainable design and construction statement that really, um, is, it's a requirement for all planning applications now, um, and within it, every application needs to, um, say how they're addressing our sustainable design policies. Um, and we've introduced some templates to support different types of planning applicants to sort of follow what is needed. Because we do appreciate, it's quite a long document, and we don't expect everyone to read it all. Um, but in the same way, it needs to, it needs to have that detail to ensure that the development that we're bringing forward is to the standard that we need. Um, we, as I said before, we had the retrofit and planning for mission chapter. We have a chapter on biodiversity and green infrastructure. Um, a chapter on mitigating flood risk, uh, sustainable drainage. Protecting air quality, heating, energy, heating, and cooling, the circular economy, the whole life cycle carbon, um, sort of process and accounting, and then, finally, sustainable design standards. And I did just want to mention, uh, following our previous scrutiny committee, um, Councillor Clark, you raised an issue on greywater reuse and recycling. Um, so we've provided clarification that the following types of, um, um, development are required to incorporate both rainwater and greywater recycling systems. Um, so that means greywater reuse and recycling as well. Um, so that's developments with the high or intense water usage and the SBD kind of gives you some examples, things like hostels or hotels, um, make all major developments. And then for my, minor non-residential developments between 100 and 999 square meters, uh, they're also required to, um, incorporate rainwater and greywater recycling. Um, and, in addition, uh, where, where these systems, where developers say that they're not feasible, we specified what detail we need to see so that they can demonstrate it's not feasible, just so that we know they've really addressed it and explored it. So, um, so I think, oh yeah, and here's a short example of how we've tried to, within our sort of tools, the, this is an extract from our sustainable design and construction statement, um, how we've sought to sort of hold people's hands a bit for smaller applications on, for example, one of our policies is how to apply the energy hierarchy. So we give people examples of how to reduce, um, energy at each stage of the energy hierarchy. I don't, and I'll, I'll just add one point, just one final, we, obviously this is all very, very complex and it's very complex and it's for lots of different audiences depending on what they want to do and who they are, et cetera, et cetera. But we see this eventually once it's finalized, following consultation, we'll have lots of engagement, as a resource. Once it's there, we see it as a resource from which we can then build more. So we could extract things and turn them into leaflets, say, on specific topic, whether it's solar panels or whatever, and then do various things, various initiatives as a council, together with colleagues in Climate Action, to promote things, to use them for campaigns. So there'll be a lot in there, which can then be useful sorts of things to, to help people, whether they're doing small measures, which don't need planning permission, whether they're leaseholders, tenants, et cetera. So, you know, we have different, different groups in the borough, of course. Some can do more, might have more money to spend, others might be able to do less, but there will be things that most people can do within, you know, within their homes. And we'll try and later on jointly with, with colleagues elsewhere, this goes beyond planning, try and promote some of these measures and encourage take-up. Excellent. Thank you very much for putting in the grey water. This is going to make a big difference. You know, developers really, really have not taken that on at all. As someone who's on the planning committee, the last planning committee, the developer did actually reroute the rainwater through to the toilets. So I was hoping that that wording would be in the SPD. I don't know if you can have a look at that, because the consultation's happening now anyway, so we can, you know, everyone can add to this document. So I'm just going to put out to the committee now, Councillor Heather, Councillor Hayes. Okay, Councillor Heather. Yeah, I mean, it is quite a complex subject, and obviously that's why you've done what you've done. I appreciate the SPDs about the, you know, the sort of formal side of it and the handbook, and I think that's really good that, you know, the handbook can be adjusted. But the question I've got is that you talked about holding people's hands and whatever, but how will the council field the inquiries? I mean, I suppose it depends on how successful it is, but how will the council actually field and resource the inquiries it's likely to get, especially if we're going to make it a success? I'm just wondering, like, what sort of resources are going to be required there? Thank you. So, specifically, we have the duty planner advice that's been funded and an officer is in place now to sort of field exactly the type of application that I think we're looking at. So, yes, there is some resource to tackle that. Yes, a specialised officer who will be dealing with these measures in planning to advise. So, that's one officer, is it? Just one officer? But that would be their full-time job. Yeah, no, no, I'm not, it's not, I'm not trying to, I'm just trying to explore, like, so what, have you sort of gotten any idea of the likely sort of amount of, like, inquiries you'll get? We've, the free planning application on retrofit measures, the free advice has been in place for some time now, and I think we'll be recruiting another one. But there's been quite a good take-up, people phoning, because previously they would have had to pay, whereas now it's free for local businesses and residents. So, yeah, there's been quite a good take-up, and we expect, with the promotion of the SPD, that will grow, the take-up will grow, and, you know. I appreciate what we're doing here. Thank you. Councillor Hayes. Thank you. Yes, it was really interesting, and great to be taken through how you might access different bits of the handbook. I had a few questions, so I kind of understand that during the consultation process, there's formal routes the Council uses to consult. It is likely that a particular subset of residents might have strong views and want to feed into that. But I'm quite interested in how we think that idea of turning some of this into leaflets for people who might be interested in one bit, and how that might be publicised, whether any thought's gone into that, or whether that's more a comms thing. And I just wondered whether it might be possible, and, again, it might be better as a leaflet, giving people advice on sources of funding, particularly for community organisations, but where people who want to do this and may be linked to the Shine service for individual residents on low incomes. And you mentioned about tenure. And, of course, there's the, does it need planning permission, yes or no, but there's also, do you need to ask your landlord, yes or no, and how would you do that? And, again, I think some of these would improve properties, and we would want to encourage landlords to give consent because it benefits everybody. And it just struck me, and it just struck me that with the consultation at the moment around licensing of landlords, is there any crossover so that we are putting pressure on landlords as part of the licensing process to actively engage and support measures being taken? Thank you. Right, I'll have a go. There's five things in there. So, yes, we're doing the current statutory consultation and engagement, and we're doing the events, so we expect quite a few people to turn up to the events. Last time round, it was sold out. There was a lot of people in the room, and hopefully we have two events now. There'll be quite a few there, and then through all of our normal measures. But just afterwards, I think, or as we approach the adoption, we are having discussions at the moment with colleagues in climate action to then go beyond planning and look at some of these. We'll use all the vehicles that we have, and, you know, things are happening all the time, and we'll develop a comm strategy around this. And it could be sometimes we do things opportunistically, like linking to something else, which is a good vehicle to promote things. So, we can do that and continue to do that once the resource is there and, you know, once it's finalised. And I think it's, you know, this is, a lot of this is about planning and do you need planning permission? If you do, this is what you do, and then we'll give you planning permission. But that thing, that more practical stuff beyond planning, like the contracts, like the lease holds, what they allow tenants to do and not to do. I think we'll, the idea is we sit down with our own colleagues and, you know, in legal and us as a landlord, the council as a landlord, talk about our own leases and hopefully arrive at a position where we can say, for certain things, tenants will not need, and lease holders, council lease holders and council tenants or housing association tenants, etc., will not need an approval from their landlord. But for those things that they might do, and that's in the lease, which already exists, hopefully we can agree with various landlords, housing associations whom we talked to previously, and ourselves, that if they want to do X, Y, Z, yes, they can get that approval. So I think that's the next step, it's beyond planning, but we will certainly engage with all of our colleagues elsewhere, including legal, including us as a landlord, and including other big landlords. And I think that's a really good suggestion at the end around working with licensing and trying to encourage, nudge, persuade private renters, because that's probably, those people are probably struggling most in some cases where they're private rented, the rents are high, the energy costs are high, sometimes the landlord doesn't have much of an incentive to do. So I think that's a lot of measures, particularly if they're expensive, whereas public sector tech, they're slightly better on that, or a lot better in some cases. So I think that's an important one, so that could be an opportunity to try and encourage private landlords to do as much as possible. And then, so it's better for them and for the tenant. And then on the funding things, different funding sources appear all the time, and I think, again, I think it's good that we've done all of this work up until now, and we'll have the resource. So when a funding pot comes up, I know there's been some from the mayor on solar panels or from various schools, we can then develop another leaflet to say, okay, this is what you need to do in this link, and this is how we, this is allowed or not allowed under planning, sorry, it might be allowed without planning permission, or if it isn't, this is what you do. And then we hold their hand on accessing funding, because that's a, that's a really big barrier for, I mean, some of our residents, as you know, are willing and able to pay for, for measures, others are not. So we need to also spend time and effort on trying to hold their hand to access money when money becomes available. Thank you. And Councillor Jeeps? Yeah, just want to ask you, as the chair, you may know more, that, I mean, this is great, but if you're a council tenant, I used to live in a partner street property, where the windows didn't open, and they were bloody terrible. So the poorest people are going to have to pay still high bills for heating their homes and that, and yet no real opportunities to get windows which are not going to, I wouldn't say double-clays, because this is, you know, a Victorian street property in a conservation area, where you've got, it's, we're stuck with them, aren't we? So what, what, do you know what's being done? I mean, right now I'm in a, I'm in a flat, which has got, you know, windows which are better, but it's fair, it's drafty. I see something up there about draft proofing. Oh, that's interesting. Maybe, what are we doing and how are we, can we say something as a committee to, I don't know whether it's been said before, and you've been on planning longer than I, can we say something more, saying, look, it's our, our people who are in our, our own social housing, which can't afford to do things. We may have advice going, but who's going to actually do the work, so that, I don't, there isn't a lot of money about, but we need to say, if we don't do this, we can't have heat pumps in council houses, because you've got to insulate the place before the heat pump would work, et cetera. So there's so many problems, so is, anything that we might say from here? I mean, I've got a, I've got a situation in my own ward where an estate needs the windows replacing, and there's a, it's actually the estate that you live on, and there's that. financial sicker for maintenance, or capital works program, that, that will take, will replace those windows over 25, 26. So that, that, that you need to contact, if it's a particular estate, you need to contact the housing property manager for that, for your estate, and see where you are on the, on the capital works program. So, that's one answer, that, and, Renting from the council, yeah, I, I know that's the main, the main thing is to get all the, the whole estate done, yeah. So, um, did you want to come in on that point? Or, no? No, can I, do you have an answer to, how do you? There's quite a few things in there, but one of them is we are, the, the, the SPD and the handbook set out cases where people will be able to have their windows replaced. So, previously, there's been, perhaps, more rigorous approach nationally, et cetera, about keeping on historic buildings, whether it's listed buildings or conservation areas, there was more resistance for the replacement we are now looking at, and technologies are changing. To be able to replace windows, and, in some cases, introduce double glazing instead of single glazing, so, but, obviously, that requires money, and with, with local, with, with the social housing, whether it's council housing or housing associations, those initiatives come from the landlord, and, I mean, some of our, uh, housing associations that have big stock are also looking at various measures on their own estate and trying to secure funding, and, of course, the council is trying to do as much as we can. And, it is costly. So, over time, there will be, there will be measures introduced once, once funding is available, but, until that happens, then, some smaller measures, perhaps, might be an interim measure. Flora? And, just to add, um, thank you very much for raising that point. I think we can really, sort of, address people in your situation and say, this is how to do, this is how you can find out, this is what you should ask your freeholder, you know. And, and, and make it as easy as possible, um, because I, I'm sure you're not the only person in that position. Council Potts? Uh, two points for me. So, thank you both for that presentation. Just, I mean, you know, newly elected, so I'm just, sort of, coming to this. But, obviously, and it's related to, Council Jeeps' point just there around, sort of, listed buildings and conservation areas. So, in terms of stuff like Windows, I know, for example, Kensington and Chelsea did an SPD, which meant that they didn't have to require planning permission to put solar panels in unlisted buildings, for example. Is that something that we've looked at and that we've considered and, you know, looking at the document now, it says that, you know, it should usually be acceptable, but would that still require planning permission? So, apologies if that's a slightly basic question, but, again, just trying to think about speeding up the process and making sure that, you know, we can, you know, with the climate emergency, we get to that point. So, just a question on that one. Second one, obviously, you mentioned the, uh, free pre-app advice service is now available. Just, sort of, wondering when that was launched, roughly how many people have used it to date, and if it's obviously new and that alert number's quite low. So, what are you planning to do to promote it and, sort of, push it to make residents aware that that's a service they can tap into? Thank you. Uh, I'll try with a second one first and then return to the first question. I will, I think it's at least, it's at least about a year and a half that we've had free advice, but that it was limited in time, and then now it's unlimited, as in, you know, for, I don't have the exact figures we can try and find them, but certainly colleagues in development management tell us that the take-up has been good. So, you know, people are, everybody who's called has been able to be given advice, so that's the main thing. We are able to satisfy the demand. I'm not sure what the figures are. Now, on the, we can confirm that, on the Kensington and Chelsea, yes, we have spoken with colleagues in Kensington or Chelsea at length on many occasions. What they've done is, they've done something slightly different, which is called, it's effectively, in advance, permitting a development, whether it's solar panels or wind replacement, it's a permitted order, development order, permitted a development order for some parts of the borough, and then, I think, for all of the borough, for some measures, it's, there's been a lot of publicity around it, and it's great, it's a good measure, but you still, it doesn't necessarily simplify the process, you still need to apply for listed building consent, you still have, it's not, here is something that you can do, and you just do it, you act, there's still a process, and it's not necessarily much shorter than what we are trying to do. So, that's the first point, and the second point, their take-up has been very low, for whatever reasons, and some of those are the nature, this is what colleagues at Kensington and Chelsea tell us, tell us, it's the nature of some of their residents who are absent quite a lot of time, or, there's been literally a handful, over quite a significant period of time, for some of those, we've been following what everybody else is doing, like, all the time, literally all the time, not just in London, and I think London is slightly ahead of others, but elsewhere, there are good, good examples of good, good work happening elsewhere, and certainly followed KNC quite a lot, very low take-up on some measures, I think their window replacement order came in relatively recently, it's very early days, but what we are trying to do is, it's kind of different ways of doing things, so they're permitting in advance things, it doesn't necessarily create a shortcut, so they can do it quicker, there is still a heavy process, so we might as well do this and address all of the measures, measure by measure, and offer all of the free help, effectively, to hold people's hand, and then try and encourage take-ups, so, hopefully, that we'll be able to deal with lots and lots of things, not just certain kind of narrow things, and ultimately, with some people, it will be money and funding. Councillor Russell. Yeah, and first of all, really welcome this, it's incredibly helpful to have both the, sort of the SPD, which is some more professional version, and the Retrofit Handbook, which is, you know, it's, it, from what I've looked at it so far, it looks really well set out, and easy to understand, I'm sort of wondering, you know, there is, the scale of Retrofit, that is needed, that is needed in a borough like Islington, is absolutely massive, and we've got different, we've been talking about different housing tenures, and the different needs that people living in different housing tenures have, in terms of being able to retrofit their home, or get the council, or their housing association, to retrofit their building. There's also the issue of doing retrofit, along whole streets, where, if you, if someone works out what, you know, if you work out what needs to happen, and you've got a whole street of homes that are all exactly the same, whether it's council, whether it's council, housing association, or privately owned, there, there could potentially be kind of economies in, of scale, in kind of working together, to do a street, or in the same way that the council, when it's upgrading an estate, will do a whole estate. And I just wondered if you've started thinking about that, kind of, kind of the way that Islington streets are sort of pepper-potted with privately owned housing association, then one that was council and is now partners, or, you know, it's like, there's, it's like, the, the housing tenure is, is very mixed. And whether you've thought about, just in terms of the rollout, and the hand-holding, how that plays into, actually, the objective of getting more homes insulated, so people have lower bills, and, you know, all, all those resilience benefits of having a better home. Right, the honest answer, we are beginning to think about this, so I think this, the SPD and the handbook talk about what and how, on, on all of these different typologies, and it can apply to everybody, you know, regarding, well, some measures, regardless of tenure, but certainly, you have the rule book, if you like, so here it is, and I think it's, it's the next step, how do we encourage people, how, obviously, there'll be different circumstances, some people might have funding, others won't, we might be able to access funding, or there might be, so I think, it could be, depending on, again, to some degree on funding, whether or not we can identify some, some streets where, with a bit of hand-holding and helping people to access funding, we could perhaps try and speed up the take-up, and looking, I don't know if you remember, there used to be grants for shop friends, from historic England, in the past, so you get the grant, we administered the grant, our planning officers, and historic, conservation officers, will then, do a little guidance, or whatever, and say, you apply for this money, and you replace this shop front, and this is what it's going to look like, so it was a lot of money, but, you know, we've done some, you know, nice stretches of town centres with that, and I can envisage, potentially, if funding becomes available, things like that being done, and the other thing is, and this is not something that, strictly, through plan, we can't do a huge amount, through planning, is around contractors, who will do this work, because quite a lot of the time, the question arises, what, you know, can you recommend companies, and which builders can do this, and there's been some, not necessarily highly professional ones, doing things, we as a council, can't identify them, but I think, I suppose, from the, from the inclusive economy perspective, and generally, hopefully, a local market, or London-wide market, is being created, and, and more, and more contractors will appear, to these, to do these measures, so, hopefully, that might help, as well, because, I think, a lot of the people, who have tried to do things, have struggled with finding good contractor, sorry, sorry, I'm jumping around stricely, it, it's, it's something, we certainly need to think about, how do we, get, whole streets, to engage, and be able to do measures, Flora, are we going to add something? Yeah, quickly, to add, on, the, appointing contractors, um, we are linking, to the construction directory, that has a special, sort of, filter, on, um, retrofit providers, and, and, it will also link, into, um, uh, sort of, retrofit, uh, or, um, uh, building, I can't, the word that escapes me, but, like, um, a building, building shop, a shop to buy DIY, um, sort of, goods, and, so, there is that element, and, I just, wanted to raise, sort of, tangentially, I think, it's a fantastic point, that you've made, in terms of economies of scale, I just, wanted to say, we are thinking, communally, uh, about, uh, about, heat networks, in the future, and, I think, a lot of the, the thinking around, communal, and, it's included within the SPD, however, I completely appreciate your point, around retrofit, and, this, sort of, the benefits there, so, I think, we can take that away. Thank you. Yeah, and, we, uh, we did have Cali Energy come to this scrutiny, actually, a couple of years ago, now, and, that was a group of residents that got together, and, and, they weren't having much success, and, working with the council, would this enable them, would it be easier for some, or, group like Cali Energy, to, to work with the council, now? We'd certainly, welcome it, and then, you know, take it, take it from there. I'm not sure whether some of their issues were around funding, as well, not just what measures are permissible, or not permissible, I'm not sure, so, you know, that, there's, there's planning side of things, what we can permit, and hold their hand on that, and there is, of course, the funding, and the implementation. Sarah? Hi, yeah, I was just going to add, on Cali Energy, we do still have the Islington Community Energy Fund, and we do work with Cali Energy and Power Up North London, and we do try and promote them to any groups who are interested in collecting together, to, to take on energy projects, so that's something that's ongoing, and we're just doing an evaluation of the scheme so far, to think about how we might move forward with the next phase of that, and then, just to pick up on Flora's point about heat networks, a key piece of work that we're commissioning now is our detailed local area energy plan, and that is really a very technical piece of work that will look at the whole borough and identify the kind of optimal routes to decarbonisation, and identify the sort of priority areas for heat networks, and where those can be, be best expanded, and then the other kinds of interventions as well, such as electric vehicle infrastructure, vector grid charging, solar, and light touch retrofit as well, so there, there will be a study that's, that will be very detailed, kind of looking at what the options are, and how best we might apply our interventions going forward, which will really help to support the SPD. Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, everybody, and really, it is really, really good that you've done this work. Thank you so much, and for coming here again. And just a question, because when the consultation ends, there'll be new, probably changes, weren't there, to be, to the documents? There'll be a few changes, so would you come and tell us about those? Yes, we can, whenever soon, so yes, there will be quite a lot, we expect there'll be quite a lot of comments. We've already received quite a few, there'll be, there'll be others, there'll be some redrafts, and perhaps as we go towards the adoption, we can come and present again in terms of changes and what has happened in the meantime. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're moving on to the 12-month update on the Circular Economy and Green Jobs Review. And this, yeah, yeah, okay, so this is Sarah Hitchcock and Council Champion, Executive Member for Environment, Air Quality and Transport, to present. If I just say a few words and I'll hand over to Sarah. I mean, I think the, what you've just heard actually, probably the first item and the second item is the level of thinking that's going into, not actually just understanding where we are, but also really thinking about actually how in actually very, very difficult circumstances we can achieve what we want to achieve. And I think, again, I think we've said, the committee said before, how much they, how grateful they are to the officers who are doing this work. And, you know, three years ago, four years ago, some of those questions that both Flora and Sakiba are asking themselves, about actually how do you get this to work, that wouldn't really have been their job. So what I'm going to do now is let Sarah just introduce the topic. It's a very, it was a very interesting scrutiny. It's gone through some quite wide-ranging topics. But I think you're going to give an overview and then sort of some highlights, aren't you? Yeah, so obviously we've got two reports tonight. And apologies, the synchronisation of this has gone a little awry, so you've got two annual reports on the same evening. But if I start with the circular economy and green jobs one, this was a scrutiny review that you conducted from 2022 to 23. And there were a number of recommendations, all of which we accepted. And these were largely around waste and recycling, and our work with the NLWA, and also some elements of our net zero carbon programme, particularly around our sort of retrofit work. So just to quickly give an overview, because I appreciate it's quite a dense report, in terms of the first recommendation, which was about really working with North London Waste Authority to support us in our reduced reuse and recycle ambitions through their waste strategy. Obviously, we have been working closely, both councillors and officers, with them on the development of the new draft joint waste strategy, which is out to consultation at the moment, and I believe that closes on the 23rd of January. And then once that's published, obviously we'll be sort of pushing to deliver that, and obviously welcome any feedback from members on how we can sort of strengthen that. We've also been working closely with them on advertising their apprenticeship programmes, and also their job placements and training placements, and that's done through our iWork team, who obviously do lots of work with residents, getting them into training and support. We have completed our year one update report on the recycling and weight reduction recycling plan, and a very comprehensive programme of repair and reuse events took place over the last year, so we're really trying to ramp up that engagement to encourage the circular economy and to encourage and empower people to understand what they can do themselves. And those have proved really popular, and there are a number of groups that are now starting to emerge and wanting to take that forward in local communities as well. One of the things that the Scrutiny Review did focus on was reusable products, and particularly nappies and period products, and we've very much taken that on board through the work of the NLWA and also through the voucher scheme for nappies, and we've had some real success in increasing the uptake of that over the course of the year, so that's been a good result. And similarly, there's been a really, a positive new campaign through the NLWA on promoting reusable period products, and again, we're just evaluating that, but it seems to have been very successful, and again, Women's Environmental Network who presented to the committee have been very much supporting that and delivering events as part of it. So I won't go through all of the different activities that we've been doing, but there's quite a range, including some investments from NLWA and LAL in the reuse and recycling centre, so that we can have a more accessible facility and better signposting as well, so really just trying to make it more accessible and expanding the range of materials that are now being accepted for recycling as well. And then there's been campaigns that we've been joining, such as the Eat Like a Londoner campaign, and very much sort of taking a leading role in promoting those. Council has continued to monitor the performance of London energy through the NLWA, and so that's done through their regular board meetings, and they get very comprehensive reports on that. In terms of carbon capture, there was actually a full update on that presented at the NLWA meeting in July this year, and we've included a link to that report. And that work hopefully will be bringing forward some real investment in the carbon capture and storage going forwards, which is very much a positive for this area. Supporting residents in making sustainable choices and reducing waste. There's obviously lots we've been doing, particularly with our major food waste campaign, which hopefully councils were aware of from the autumn last year. And we've been supporting that, not just with communications, but with targeted door-to-door engagement, which behavioural science has proven is the most effective way of really affecting change. So that is ongoing. We are evaluating that as well and thinking about the next steps on that too. And the Thriving Neighbourhoods campaign continues to deliver improvements on estates, making sure that they're up to standard and that they're conveniently located, as well as supporting that engagement with residents. And there's three estate recycling officers now who are working specifically on that and with colleagues from across the council to really support that kind of change. There's some details about some of the projects that have been delivered through that as well in the report. And we're already getting some initial results from the Benetton estate, very early days, but there does seem to be some very positive increases in awareness and recycling as a result of that. In terms of maximising opportunities for local food growing and food supply, there's a huge amount of work going through the fantastic Isms and Food Partnership. And the committee have also heard from our colleagues at Cranfield University who developed a mapping tool for urban food growing. And we also got some funding from UCL to look at a potential vision for the urban agriculture in Islington as well. So there's lots of work that's coming forward on that. And we've created and refreshed new food growing spaces on estates as part of the Thriving Estates programme. And in terms of circular economy, we've had funding from ReLondon to set up a circular economy cafe at the Jean Stokes Centre. That's very much in its infancy, but we're looking forward to seeing the results of that so that we can get activities for local people to learn how to reduce their food waste as part of that. I will move on to the next recommendation, which was again about lobbying. We have now got a small public affairs team and they have got a number of key priorities that they're lobbying for under the greener, healthier mission. And waste and recycling was one of them, and particularly clear guidance on that national waste policy. And we did feed in to the government consultations on the extended producer responsibility and the deposit return system. And those policies are now coming through, they're now progressing through the new government, and we are expecting funding through those, which is really positive. The NLWA has also just recently appointed a new public affairs manager as well. So that will again help to strengthen the lobbying that we can do. So as valuable as it is, as Islington Council doing that lobbying, having that combined voice with other local authorities is also very helpful. So we try to seek to lobby in partnership where we can. Recommendation four was focus more on the green skills and about how we could build our in-house capacity for retrofitting. And we have given a number of staff training. So we've now got four fully certified passive house designers and six staff who are qualified in energy efficiency for older and traditional buildings. So really trying to sort of think about how we can support, particularly those challenging properties in conservation areas, which are very much a part and parcel of the Islington sort of typology. And those staff have been working both on new build and with our retrofit teams and sort of sharing experiences on our social housing decarbonisation work. So all of that learning is being embedded through the teams. Can I just interrupt you? Are you going to work through every recommendation? Because there's quite a few. There are. I was just going to pick out a few. Pick out a few. That's great. Thank you. That's OK. So yeah, there's a number of things on the green skills, but that was the kind of key thing, I think, about building our in-house capacity. The other one which Andrew has earlier touched on was our community-led weeding programme. That was a recommendation, and that is being taken forward. And as a result of that, we are reducing the use of glyphosate, as he mentioned, but that will help to strengthen that reduction as well. And in terms of the community energy schemes, which I already touched on, so I've mentioned community energy fund, and that we are currently evaluating that, and we're continuing to promote those community energy groups. One of the other key ones in this report was about last-mile deliveries, and we are developing a freight action plan, and that should be completed this summer. And that's really quite a comprehensive piece of work, looking at all of the different opportunities for eliminating as much emissions from freight as possible. So that work will be coming forward. We're continuing to obviously work on the council fleet as well. And there's various bits in the report about some of the individual projects that have been supported as we're developing that work. One of the things to mention is that we are working with the Cross River Partnership to identify and deliver a trial micro-logistics hub. So that's going to be something new for us to try and establish if we can create a hub where we can get last-mile deliveries for the borough. And then just to finish up on this one, there was a recommendation about how we can use our air quality monitoring as part of our climate ambitions. And in fact, there are correlations between the two, and so we are very much looking at the monitoring of our annual status report, which did show a 50% reduction in NO2. And NO2 is very much produced at the same time as CO2. So you can sort of read some correlations into that. And we're continuing to look at how we can use that data. Really, I just want to say, you know, this is a... Can you turn the mic off? It's a really detailed report, it's excellent, and it's so good to have done all that scrutiny work and to have those recommendations followed up. It's absolutely brilliant, especially the training. For me, that was one of the recommendations I really was keen on, and the training, the retrofitting and the energy is absolutely brilliant. So I'll just pass it to the committee. Now, I'll just ask you to be brief. I'll take Councillor Russell and Councillor Heather. Thank you, and thanks for the report. Just on the retrofit, there's a really good project at the LLDC, the Old Olympic Park, where they're doing a lot of retrofit training, and it just might be worth connecting up with them, because the transport links are pretty good on the overground, and they're doing... There might be some good connections for colleges in Islington. But the main thing I wanted to pick up on was the 7.17, which is the bit about delivery riders, and it says that specific locations, including Highbury Corner, the council works with TfL, Community Safety, Licensing, and the Metropolitan Police to improve facilities and education to reduce the impact on the local area of delivery riders. And I was just wondering if there's any work... The way that's written, it sounds like the delivery riders are a problem, and actually, the delivery riders are workers who are working in often exploitative conditions and who kind of need support. They would really benefit from access, for instance, to toilets if you set up a delivery hub. And I just wondered whether there's any work going on to think about the well-being of those delivery riders, as well as thinking about it as a... I mean, you know, as an issue of a load of people hanging around at Highbury Corner. So it certainly has been in the past. It might be worth getting a bit of an update from teams. Well, that's the inclusive team that's been working with that. I mean, it's absolutely the case that they do see delivery drivers as being a marginalised community who need support as well. I mean, one of the things they've done around Highbury Corner, for example, is work with TFL to get a specific bay for delivery drivers to put their motorbikes in, because people were complaining that they were parking on Highbury Corner. But of course, you know, if you don't have your cycle near you, then A, there's an issue with theft, but also for these drivers and riders, moving around quickly is important for their own... Obviously, the money they earn depends on how quickly they get places. So the actual... The problem with the... It's the model in itself that is the issue. I mean, they are required to move around quickly, and they'll get their job based on how quickly they can get to spaces. We can pick up... We can ask for a bit more of an update of that. Councillor Heather, then. Yeah, before I go out and make my point, just to try and be helpful, I mean, I'm on licensing now, but we found a solution to what Caroline's mentioned, because our problem was McDonald's in Seven Sisters Road, and we took them to a licensing review, and what they did was they then started to use non-motorised delivery drivers, which has caused a lot of the problem. We also got that franchisee, because it's important to understand that McDonald's stores are not all the top McDonald's. They're franchisees. The franchisee lets them use the toilets, and they've even got, like, an area that they can sit down in there. So that's how we did that there. So I did share this with people in the council about what we've been doing on that. Anyway, but on my point is about... Obviously, I am the recycling champion, and I know that we've got a target of reaching 40% of the recycling and our sold waste by 2030, but we... And you've heard me say this before, that we're sort of not going to walls that. We're going away from it, or, you know, there's a problem. And I appreciate that we're doing loads of work, and it's not easy and whatever. And it's a bit hard to understand why that's happening, but... So, therefore, and I know, like, this is... We've already mentioned about the government and the money for the extended producer responsibility and, you know, removing waste, you know, source so we don't get waste and whatever, but... And you did mention, Sarah, about the money coming in for that. What, realistically, can we achieve with the money we're going to get? Is that... It seems to me, and other councillors have mentioned this, it's not rocket science, that that's part of the problem, is reducing the products at source so they don't get made in the first place, excess packaging and whatever, but it seems to be really slow and whatever, but I just wondered what can we do... What are we going to do with the money that we're going to get? Andrew may be a better person to come in on that one. We're working through a series of actions at the moment because, obviously, so part of this money is actually to pay for the work that we already do, i.e. disposing of the packaging that's coming in. So it's not necessarily additional, to do additional things, if you like. I think Matthew, I think, is working through a series of options at the moment, which I think he's going to present. Yeah, we were due to do our waste reduction and recycling plan for the next two years. The GLA's just decided that, actually, they're going to give us a year extension on the existing one, so we don't need to do one now, but, obviously, we do want to look at options. So we're putting cases together to see where we're going to have the most impact. Food waste is a key one. If we can get more people taking up food waste, that would have a massive impact, both in terms of carbon reduction, but also in terms of cost on the levy, because cost to dispose of general waste against food waste is a big difference. So we are looking at some options and proposals, some of that funding is doing stuff that we're already doing, the collection and disposal of packaging waste. There is some around lobbying. We'll see what the extended producer responsibility tax has on manufacturers to say, do they start changing their production methods, so we reduce the amount of packaging that's going into the waste stream. So, yeah, there's plans. But, yeah, there's more coming out. There's more funding coming around food waste collection as well. But, you know, we've got a pretty comprehensive service in terms of the offer. It's getting residents to take that up and use it consistently, which is an ongoing challenge. And we perform pretty well compared to other boroughs as we presented the last time. I think the point you make is that, actually, and one of the things we're trying to do, and the Waste Authority is trying to do, other boroughs are trying to do, is actually push the government to go further on things like extended producer responsibility. And the other thing that we don't have at the moment is the compulsory recycling. So we can't really enforce against people who don't recycle. Now, of course, you want to think about, actually, how you use those powers, but those powers aren't there at the moment. And I think, you know, for me, actually having the government coming out with some very strong statements about why we should recycle, you're doing a national campaign, possibly around the food waste. As I said, by 2026, local authorities are going to have to provide food waste to all properties. It would actually be really helpful, I think, because, you know, we do tell people we've got this food waste campaign, we do an awful lot of work around comms and things like that, but actually there needs some really high-level sort of pressure, which then we can then piggyback onto and explain to residents why it's so important. Councillor Hayes. Thank you very much. Yes, I'd echo. It's a very informative report. Thank you very much. I had just a couple of questions. So one was, is there any evidence yet, and it might be too early, or it might be, as Councillor Champion has said, it needs to be part of a broader thing. It looked like a lot of reach from the social media campaign on Eat Like a Londoner, but have we seen, or is it too early to tell whether that's led to actual behavioural change? And then the Gene Stokes initiative seemed very interesting, and I'm conscious there's a number of kind of local food projects trying to stop food going to landfill and make it available to people, but I wonder, and it's a bigger picture issue, but thinking in the earlier discussion about the funding streams that are needed to achieve the scale of change that we need, I know in the report that WINGS, you know, is no longer operating, we saw the loss of bright sparks. It seems to me that there are some good models that work, but that are not in the current environment going to be self-sustaining, and is there any talk London-wide or is there talk elsewhere about how some of those initiatives could be supported? Because clearly, they do have a beneficial impact, but, you know, some of those, it's disappointing for people who are involved in them that they come to an end, but also they do have a role in behavioural change and in shaping people's expectations. Is there a timetable for the review of the Community Energy Scheme? I was just thinking with the previous discussion, the more we raise awareness of retrofit, the more likely it is that people might want to do something and would need financial support for that, and I hadn't quite realised that the St John's Mansion was also being, there was a heavy focus on decarbonisation in that, so that's really brilliant that we're bringing an empty building into, you know, good social use, and we're doing that in a way that is contributing towards decarbonisation, so thank you, very helpful. I don't know in respect to... I can under-know. I know there is some evaluation going on of the trials that are carrying out at the moment, but the door-knocking is still ongoing. I think comms certainly have some stats, but we can pick that up, unless Andrew knows anything, in any more detail. No, we'll have the sort of hits and link through, so we'll have the sort of data on that which we can provide, but in terms of whether that, how that relates to behaviour change, that's a lot, that's a bigger, tougher question to ask, and that's one of our problems with charter change, how do you measure the impact? And so, well, if we're going to invest X amount in this, it will yield 1% recyclable, it's very hard to sort of show that sort of correlation. I know there are some reports back from the people who are doing the door-knocking about what they're sort of, you know, what conversations they are having with people and what percentage of people are saying, yes, actually, we'll give a go. But again, I think there'll be a final report to be prepared on that at some point in the future. I'm just one of the other, just talking about last mile delivery, which I think freight for us is really, really, really important, trying to allow businesses and support businesses and other people to move around more sustainably is absolutely huge because we know that if we can do that, that takes traffic not just off our local streets but also our main roads as well. One of the initiatives which isn't in here, I think, is we're working with Amazon on essentially what they're doing instead of driving around the borough, they're parking up in two places in the borough, one in Cali, one in Junction, which I've just started. There'll be a driver with the van but they will then have people who will make deliveries on foot and that was just started. I think we've had it from November, the Cali trial has been going on and I think that's quite successful and they're going to start on Junction. I think they started on Junction today so that was quite interesting. In terms of funding streams for Brightsparks, we would have supported Brightsparks had there been a Brightsparks to support and I think that's one of our problems with that. So there is some money around but again, it's making sure it's sustainable and long-lasting but Library of Things for example is something that we would look at to do but our problem is finding the right premises for it so it's sort of bringing everything together and making sure things are sustainable going forward. Okay, so yeah, it's quite sad the demise of WINGS. I think they came to the committee, I've got a memory of them coming but there may be some it's quite a cutthroat business isn't it that and it's a battle for it's precarious as has been said. So thank you very much for that. So we're moving on to the next report and how can we do this? Yeah, we have got obviously this second report is a lot longer a lot more road ranging but there are some areas of synergy with the other one because some of the things that we discussed about waste and recycling and so on and also about freight are also covered in this report. So I think probably the things to highlight are some of the challenges particularly that we might have had with some of our retrofit projects. So the first recommendation was for a model house and we've identified hybrid quadrant for that. We've got a very long way in terms of getting really great designs for that project and costings and this is not unique to this particular project but in general because costs have gone up very significantly it's really affected viability of all of our retrofit and new build projects and so you will probably see through the report that's the same challenge for the Borley Road Passive House project and when we also look at our corporate buildings you know we've done this fantastic work on the waste recycling centre which is brilliant we've got aspirations to do lots more but the funding model at the moment is not in the council's favour in terms of match funding and so that is a challenge for us but we're constantly trying to find ways around and there was discussion earlier about cyclical works and how we sort of make the most of those and that's something that we're trying to do through the strategic asset management plan and so on but yeah we still have a very strong ambition to try to bring these low carbon retrofit projects forward but some of the costings associated with them are proving really challenging in the market at the moment I think that's one of the reasons we're so keen to take advantage of the government's and the previous government's determination to work with heat networks and we're part of the advanced zoning pilot that the government's doing at the moment and we've also worked with 3CI on trying to find models around a sort of future neighbourhood that looks at heat networks because clearly with heat networks actually the level of retrofit that you would need to do to make it affordable is less so it will enable us to do more does the committee have any questions on that net zero report thanks Councillor Heather on page 19 recommendation 13 it's about a renewed focus on waste management on estates and premises it's about improving recycling and food waste you've already mentioned something about that but specifically it talks about 13.4 about the six month trial that's just ended and that was in feasibility of providing food waste collections residents living above shops but then it sort of links to it something about some new burdens funding for local authorities so I know that's what you're sort of talking about but so we've done the trial and obviously you know not just at this meeting you rightly said if we can increase food waste do you actually know how the trial went I mean it says it's successful but like is it going to be and is it dependent on that other money to sort of roll it out further so as it worked are we going to do more and we'll you know what will that lead you probably can't say exactly but it'll improve the recycling rate anyway won't it so the government have already committed to requiring every local authorities to deliver food waste to every household which will include flats above shops and the new burdens money will is we will get it we've already had some in terms of capital that's transitional this year next year and then there will be some money for rolling that out I think we wouldn't be able to afford it without it would be very difficult to afford it without but we are expecting money that will enable us to do that yeah that's right it was successful so we know sort of rough I think we presented it last time in terms of actual what level of recycling that rate that would contribute and the cost of rolling that out across it to every property in the borough so yeah we would use that new burdens funding to do that because that's a legal requirement that we provide that service to every household just to say thanks because that's like positive that's a positive thing because it would be very easy in all of this like because I've got confused you know how much are we doing and whatever and but what you're trying to do is you're trying to work on like tangible steps that we can take to increase the rate so that it improves the overall rate and I appreciate it's really difficult yeah so thank you thanks Councillor just to follow up on the food waste collection from above shops is the what's the density of food waste bins are you kind of thinking of having that is there a kind of certain length of street that each that people might be expected to walk to get to a food waste bin if they live above a shop I don't know what that length is but clearly if you go along Holloway Road they are relatively close together but that may be something that we would have had a look at I don't know whether that's been a barrier getting people to walk to the nearest point but it's something I can take away and again unless Andrew knows any more I just wanted to say about the you know I've been writing to ministers for the environment and secretary of state for the environment probably I'll write about you know saying the situation of trying to retrofit and improve conditions for residents is we need more funding probably write about that as well so it's frustrating because you do all this work and the funding's not there it's really good work that you're doing it's partly also the way the funding operates so you know the problem is that we get grant funding which we can't always take advantage of because we've been required to match fund so even if we had the same amount of money but we were allowed to spend in a slightly different way we could do more than we do now I'm just going to go to any other questions no so I'm just going to check with you could you say your name again do you have a question my name is Jana Rock I've got lots of questions but I'm fine I mean I just wanted to listen in and see where you know what you're scrutinizing and like what your opinions are of the councillors I will catch up with Ruth Hayes councillor separately because we this is our ward so it would be good to do it on a more itemised basis thank you that was really interesting thank you thanks a lot really really appreciate that work you've done and I've got to apologise Sarah because quite often you're at the end and I rush you and it feels really unfair because you do all this work but I promise next time you will go first I really appreciate the fact that you all really do scrutinise and read all the reports and I know there's a lot of information in there but yeah I know that's really appreciated thank you very much thanks everyone and the meeting is oh quite closed thanks Emma is on my case that's great so we've just got to go to work plan can we agree the work plan please thank you thanks Emma thank you
Transcript
Thank you for sharing tonight's meeting. Please note that we are not expecting a fire alarm test this evening, so if the alarm is sounded, please follow my instructions and evacuate the building. Please remember that this meeting is being broadcast live on the council's website, and please turn your microphone on when speaking, and remember to turn it off when you're finished, to make sure that you can be heard on the broadcast and in the chamber. Please speak clearly and directly into your microphone. I will now ask my fellow members and the officers to introduce themselves, starting on my right. Councillor Ruth Hayes from Clerkenwell, Vice-Chair of the Committee. Claire Jeans, Cangry, Councillor. Councillor Gary Heller, Fingery Park Ward, and I'm also the council's recycling champion, and I'm here to substitute him for Councillor Nanda. Councillor James Potts, Councillor for Junction Ward. Councillor Caroline Russell, Highbury Ward. Councillor John Ryan, Head of Natural Environment. Andrew Bedford, I'm the Assistant Director for Green and More Active. And Matt Bonamy, Head of Transport Projects. Sorry. Rooney Champion, Executive Member for Environment, Air Quality, and Transport. Sorry. Hi, I'm Sakeba Gerda, Head of Planning Policy and Development of Viability Service. Hello, Flora Walker, Sustainable Design Officer and the Planning Policy Team. Welcome to Councilor Zahmett at the back there. Thank you. And so, um, we have got apologies tonight. Councillor Phil, councillors Phil Graham and Trey Ananda. And we've had a declaration of substitute member from Councillor Gary Heller. Thank you very much. Are there any declarations of interest to declare? No? Thank you. So, now we've got the minutes of previous two meetings, actually. We've got November and December. So, can we agree with the minutes of November, please? Thank you. And December? Thank you so much. And my report is very brief. It's just a reminder that on the 23rd of January, at 7.30, there's a joint meeting with Thames Water, the Environment, Climate Change, and Transport, and the Corporate Resources and Economic Scrutiny Committees. Everyone's encouraged to come. It will be Thames Water's third visit to the Scrutiny Committee, and we will again hold them to account. And I just wanted to say that, you know, the government has introduced new stricter standards for private incinerators, and I've written to Ed Milliband, MP, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Mary Cray, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Environment and Food and Rural Affairs, and also Steve Reid, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, urging them to also introduce emergency legislation to make supermarkets and food manufacturers stop using plastic packaging and single-use plastics. So, that is the end of my report. So, we'll move on to, oh, just to say that public questions will be held after each agenda item. And moving on to the order of business. So, first of all, we're going to take the, the order of business will be as on the, on the, on the agenda, yeah. So, the scrutiny report, the scrutiny review on cleaner, greener, more inclusive streets, greening in Islington, and we have a presentation from Andrew Bedford, John Ryan and Matt Bonamy. Thank you. If you, you've got about half an hour for your, if you give us about 10, 15 minutes for your presentation, then we can take questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chair. So, yeah. So, we're looking at green streets in the borough. Oh, no. Failed straight away. I've just turned it off of the line. so why green streets obviously council has a mission around a greener healthier islington so we're aiming to ensure that islington's neighborhoods will look fit and feel greener more attractive and cleaner a number of benefits and reasons why we're looking to do that climate adaptation mitigation is a key one we've done a lot of work around net zero but obviously the the impacts of climate change are going to be with us they're they're baked in the we've hit our 1.5 degrees for the first time so we know climate change is here it's real so we need to mitigate and adapt so the greening is a key way of doing that protecting us from extreme heat and trying to mitigate the impacts of surface water flooding we want to support biodiversity and access to nature particularly nature on people's doorsteps octopus came and talked about their nature neighborhoods project talked about nature as as not as a destination but as something that's you know on our doorstep and of course improving people's health and well-being access to green space and nature uh really good for people's mental health and well-being and we want that to be equitably experienced across the borough because not access to green space is not equitable across the borough um we've got a number of key programs that we're looking to deliver our greener streets through the livable neighborhoods program our street tree planting program and the islington greener together so we have some key targets um so delivering more liveable neighborhoods we aim to cover the borough by 50 by 2026 we aim to plant 600 more trees a year than we lose annually we're looking to increase the borough tree canopy cover from the current level of 25 which actually is quite high for an inner borough the average uh london uh tree canopy cover is 21 but we're aiming to to increase that to 30 by 2050 and to achieve a 1.5 hectare increase in public green space by 2030 so how are we performing around that um at the moment livable neighborhoods 24 of the borough has been uh covered by a livable neighborhood and we've got another 37 that is planned and in program um around tree planting we are forecast to plant uh we did about just just short without about 981 trees i think it was last year and we're we were on track to plant a thousand trees this year so we lose about 300 trees a year on average that's why we sort of uh need to plant around uh 900 to a thousand in order to achieve that target uh the increased green space target this is quite a challenging one we've uh increased by 12 percent we've got 22 planned and committed so we've got on target to achieve 34 by 2026 um and we've got new i think it's integrated together projects that have been approved um so still quite a way to go on on that uh livable neighborhoods uh livable neighborhoods are sort of the next phase of the low traffic neighborhood program so to think about schemes not just as a traffic uh filtering uh scheme but actually placemaking we want our streets to not just be where we reduce cars but to bring other benefits so greening is going to be a significant part of that but also walking uh cycling and building sort of local sense of community and neighborhood hubs but but greening obviously is going to be a key component and probably where the majority of our greening uh green infrastructure in in interventions uh will be delivered through uh we've got some just exam examples of some schemes that are planned as part of the cali livable neighborhood project there's a number of pocket parks um that on the left there's randalls road which is on the approach to bingfield park currently very urban um brought quite concrete uh space that we will create new planting in and on the right there an example in the mildmay livable neighborhood scheme so there's a lots lots of pocket park proposals as part of that livable neighborhood program uh we've also got our school streets this is an example robert blair primary school where major planting has taken place along there again a very um urban uh road which has now been enhanced significantly um through planting and uh and tree planting we've been doing another things in the background as well to support the delivery of of of greening we've got our isn't and greedy together program which is really focused on supporting communities uh to enable community ideas to green the neighborhood and enable them to uh support the management and maintenance we've had funding for a highways greening accelerator program uh we've got our greener together champions and we've also had funding around a green finance for islington pocket park which i'll talk a little bit more about so the greener together program we've had a one and a half million pound um investment into community-led street greening initiatives um also supported by additional funding through sill uh we've had two rounds now first round has been delivered uh 26 projects um with one hydrofields crescent about to be delivered this year and another nine projects uh that have been uh agreed for round two um and they've been a mix of things say from small planters and pocket parks to uh parklets like the one there on maiden street to pocket parks and more significant greening so ranged ranged in scale but the key difference with these ones they're all uh community managed and community maintained and there's some examples of some of the schemes uh that have been delivered some some before and after photographs um of the types of schemes that have been been delivered um the highways greening accelerator program uh was a project that was fun it was joint with camden where we looked at what were the what were the skills what was the capacity uh that we needed to develop because this is very much a collaborative effort between my service and and highways and and transport uh to deliver this so we needed to build the skills up and look at what are the systems and processes and barriers to putting green infrastructure on the highway um so we we had funding um from the future parks accelerator program and we developed a number of resources um a practical guide which has come out of a bespoke training course what we did for for engineers and for highways uh staff as well as green space staff around skilling them up to be able to include green infrastructure into the designs that we're doing um not just ones that we're we are commissioning to get landscape architects to do um a street planting guide and sort of best practice guide looking not just at what we're doing in camden but in london and uh nationally and even internationally so those are really great resources and some links on uh there to the website where they are hosted we also got funding from the natural environment investment readiness fund which is a bit of a mouthful um which is defra funding to really look at how do we streamline the process and how do we look to lever in additional finance because if we want to deliver significant change at scale because you know we don't want to just do sort of piecemeal small interventions really we've got bigger ambitions we want to deliver a program at scale because that's what's needed for if we're going to mitigate for the climate so how do we lever in additional resources to do that so this project looked at how do we do that and it took the sort of concept and idea of um some of the stub roads uh one of a previous officer was doing a site visit i think it was with council clute actually on new north road to look at the problem with mopeds that were coming through uh this location well actually this is a lot of dead space it's not necessarily doing a great deal um so could we be more ambitious and create this idea of of stub road conversions into pocket parks um and actually we start to look at how many of those we've got across the borough we realized actually it's quite significant and we identified about a thousand locations where this was the case whether it's already filtered it's not not really already through traffic um and we've identified about 250 sort of stub roads that we think are potentially convertible um so uh you know it creates a sort of potential pipeline of projects that we can deliver at scale and if you did if you scale that up across across across other boroughs you can see the sort of scale of impact that that could potentially have so the project looked at and you can read some of the detail just what are the benefits of how do we collate those benefits because lots of the green financing mechanisms like carbon credits don't work for urban green infrastructure if you plant eight trees on a stub road you're going to get about 150 pounds a year in carbon credits it just doesn't stack up because of the costs of urban green infrastructure against the benefits so it really starts to look at how do we layer up the health the social benefits as well as the environmental benefits and then start to explore what alternative private green finance options there might be out there so we've got a report on that which we can we can share as well um it produced some documents we've tried to streamline we've done a a design guide for pocket park framework and an analysis tool to help us uh prioritize sites um we are in the process of trying to uh deliver some demonstrator projects and then look at use environmental social governance funding and philanthropic funding for the private green sector to see if we can lever in additional resources just ask what what wsp is at the bottom so wsp um is a consultancy sort of an engine firm and so they they worked with us we commissioned them to help us on that piece of work so that's why it's got to be sp on that and those documents are hosted on on their website okay so just update on the trees and tree service we've now got a new natural environment team which combines the tree service nature conservation team and the isn't agreeing together team and we're hoping that collaboration will enable um a better design but also the the feeding of information between those team members for example we do uh observations to planners so the planning department is advised by the nature conservation manager on biodiversity and the tree officer and planning advisors on trees we'll try and combine that team make that more more with tree planting we've been very successful this year and in previous years we're securing funding so we've managed to get 300 000 pounds this year alone for tree planting through different grants and also secured a post to deliver which is very important through the woodland creation accelerator fund uh james robertson tillet is now the tree planting and engagement officer um so we're on track to plant um the the council's commitment for the 600 more trees than we lose every year and we're looking good going into the next few years to deliver they and um in 2019 we had a canopy cover survey done on the whole borough and we established that we had the 25 canopy cover we worked out all sorts of facts and figures from our database to get a better understanding of the private uh sorry the publicly owned trees this is a new survey which will review that data but also give it on the new wards so we'll have accurate data to to present to the new wards because that was in the old ward data or ward boundaries um but also it will feed into a lot more of the environmental values of the trees so we'll be able to look at individual trees and area-based trees for the uh the their value in pollution interception um stormwater interception uh and the other town help us guide equity and where we're going to be planting in the future it will also form the um the baseline data for an urban forest management plan where we'll be reviewing um the next slide please andrew um we've had a tree sponsorship scheme which has been quite successful the last couple years um this was one of the council's climate action pledges was to set up a tree donation scheme uh we are working with trees for streets who are a charity um a branch of uh uh no pun intended um but trees for cities um which is a successful charity um it's been quite successful as you can see we've had over 100 trees or donations towards 100 trees but we think we can do it better in-house and we're quite fortunate their model seems to work best where you've got local authorities where they've got lots of space no funding for trees and no resource we're quite fortunate where we have got some funding for trees we've got a resource and we think we can manage um we have started to promote tree pick planting so the tree pit garden so we've got a lot of tree pits in the borough and most of them are empty or they've got bitmap tarmac all sorts of stuff in there so promoting residents to take ownership of those and it's it's um it's it's a relatively simple thing to do but it with we're getting a lot of um positive interest from from residents they can take ownership of the sites they register them online with the council um and we make sure that we don't don't go in and uh we put any weed clubs we don't use weekly or any money but don't scs don't come in and strip it and the tree officers are aware so that if anything happens to the tree there's warning put up there as well um and it's now a category of in bloom so it's getting um more promoted and we've got over 100 sites now um and we've given some good advice on what you can plant what you can't plant um to maintain these sites um we have our greener together champions program um this we've done sorry i forgot to switch my back on um greener together champions program which is linked with the greener together so i've been working with uh groundwork who provide training support to those volunteers it's based around this the green together schemes but actually we've broadened it out and actually the majority of our hundred over 100 uh green together champions actually aren't connected with the scheme at the moment so um uh they provide sort of uh training uh guides and tools uh to support the groups in in doing that management maintenance because we know volunteering it's not you can't just expect people to just take stuff on without support i think that's that's really key so we want to support uh those volunteers that are getting involved in that um and that's that's been proving very popular uh it's a bit of a case study um in here as well which you can sort of read more on a particular one of the particular uh champions uh talia uh for for one of the schemes um and her experience uh involvement in it and the benefits that she's got from it but um i won't go through that all in detail um question yeah yeah andrew on on this um green together champions i noticed that this is the funding program ends in february i've come on to challenges i mean obviously that's last year so yeah all right okay yeah i'll ask you about that yeah i'll come on to that um well but this is one yeah well i'm talking about communication so um we are looking to develop some plans for how we sort of put package sort of green streets so one of the proposals that the climate panel came up with us around sort of greener streets program so we've got a tree pit gardens want to combine that with the community weeding scheme that's promoting reduction in glyphosate use uh opportunities for pocket parks and other greening so we so we're looking at trying to develop that into a scheme uh we're working with octopus who came and talked to you about the nature neighborhoods project uh and how we support uh that next phase from turning that from a from a plan into something tangible and deliverable at a neighborhood scale and and we're looking and we're working with climate action teams as you as you quite uh rightly pointed out counselor heather the funding for the green together champions program does come to an end so we're looking about how we sustain that going forward part part of the the the the funding was to try and create a network of self-sustaining which we will then try and um support internally but we want to we think there's an opportunity to coordinate uh environmental volunteering and engagement across the piece and how do we coordinate that because no some people want to get involved in greening other people want to be recycling champions other people want to be energy champions actually how do we look to coordinate that so working with sarah's team um around uh coordinating volunteering engagement around an environmental theme um rather than just individual schemes but yeah that's so that's one of our our challenges is how do we make sure we can sustain that um so yeah in terms of in terms of next challenges um we you know it's a huge challenge to try and scale up to deliver that those those schemes those schemes are expensive to really deliver a good quality pocket park you're looking at a sort of 250 000 pounds minimum probably matt would probably want a bit more than that um so so that they are expensive um if we're going to do them as we would like to do them um you know our funding sources for that are limited so how do we how do we lever in new funding um we've got a very challenging target so over 1.5 hectares so how do we seek to seek to achieve that as much as possible um and it's not just it's not just the financial resources it's also the sort of capacity within so matt's team to actually design up community engage with the communities and deliver the schemes we also have a challenge around how we maintain the greener together is great it's fantastic getting communities involved in managing and maintaining spaces but that's actually a minority of the greening schemes that we deliver a lot of schemes delivered through the liveable neighborhoods and the cycleways don't have communities at the moment attached to them maintaining them so how do we uh find the resources to to maintain those on an ongoing basis um so you know that's that's very much a challenge that we face um we are in the process of developing a green infrastructure strategy for the borough because we've been busy doing lots of stuff but actually we don't have a policy framework around around that and there's a huge amount of things we're trying to do in the public realm um a lot of competition for space cycleways bicycle hangers electric charging points pocket parks greening so actually where does that fit within that framework so we we're going through a process at the moment um to uh to develop that we're working with some of the individuals from the climate panel on the next phase of engagement uh to sort of make sure their ideas are embedded and we're aiming to have a draft sort of ready by march and april to then take through a governance process so that will provide a sort of strategic policy framework around our greening there we go thank you very much really very good presentation so i'll put it out to the committee for questions any questions or comments that the committee would like to make okay um councillor hayes i saw first i looked yeah councillor russell and did you have your hand up yeah thanks councillor potts okay so councillor hayes thank you very much it was a very interesting presentation um i've just got a couple of questions so on um i think you said it was about 300 trees a year and lost do we think there is anything that could be done to reduce that or is that just with the number of trees we've got that is pretty much optimal because you know there'll be accidents there'll be natural um causes etc um shall i ask all my questions thank you and i'm conscious um the tree survey um the maintenance of trees is something that residents often raise and i appreciate all the constraints of resources but will the tree survey also look at the scheduling of pruning of trees that might need pruning or you know the kind of the challenges that that faces and you know i'm conscious that lots of trees are very close to people's living space and in that's great in some ways because it brings nature's doorstep but it can also mean that pollen or that falling leaves or that branches falling off are hazardous to people and uh my final question uh was about the um green finance brislington pocket park framework and just really what the where those sources of investment might i know there was some suggesting that we're philanthropic sources are we and there's been quite a lot of reference to working with octopus which is great to see that that kind of combining with our uh local voluntary sector partners is the aim to look at joint partnership bids or could could we just have a bit more about where that is going thank you okay i think you could take those three questions and then we'll move on to councillor russell thanks thank you councillor yeah with regards to the 300 trees we're using losing annually uh we've got a public tree stock of nearly 40 000 trees so it's a very small percentage of our tree stock and trees having finite lifespans and living in a very harsh urban environment it's how i would expect it to be um this also includes the trees lost to storms uh vandalism vehicle strikes as well so trees get old uh get diseases and die so we're actively removing probably about 250 of these and 50 year losses this also includes the losses for some of young trees as well and when you transplant and move young trees they don't like it so we we get about a five five percent loss of all the trees we um less than that now but we were getting about a five percent mortality rate um so i think we're managing that and it's about right um yeah and the the numbers numbers look good um with the eye tree and the um inspection service they're separate so we inspect every single public tree at least once every three years so we've got a three yearly cycle of inspection and that fulfills our duty of care and it means we're data rich we spend a lot of time inspecting trees every year recording on our database and that's how we manage public trees the eye tree survey is looking at 200 random plots across the whole of islington so that will capture the private tree stock as well so the data on the private tree or public trees this means we'll have the full picture of the bar so they're two separate surveys so they won't impact on the other um and then with regarding with planting for consideration and planting we're much more aware now of the impacts of trees that the trees can have we find we're planting a lot more smaller trees than large canopy trees and you're right that trees can cause damage to property and there are seasonal issues and seasonal problems and we're much more cognizant of trying to be aware of that so we're not planting heavily fruiting trees on footpaths anymore we're not planting large trees in small places so we're trying to future proof our stock by reducing the maintenance costs in the future but planting the right tree for the right place but also very aware we can't stop now because i could talk about trees for the next half an hour thank you yeah so it's so it's always difficult with trees yeah i love trees but is a common uh you know and obviously with climate change uh people say block trees blocking out light but actually that that tree is also providing shade so in intense heat actually that's that's providing important cooling function um and obviously those trees have a great system of dropping their leaves in the winter when you need more light so so i think there's a lot about trying to educate people around the benefits of trees as well to say actually yes it might you might be experiencing some problems but you know pruning the tree or clearing the tree because it's dropping leaves in the gutter is not one that we're going to you know um do on the green finance pocket parks um we've it's very very sort of early days with the green finance market there's uh and what we explored was there's a lot of there is a lot of private green funding out there um but the markets need to mature a bit there's something called the uk green taxonomy guide that we're waiting to see to arrive that will provide greater tax incentives for companies to invest in nature-based solutions nature-based solutions don't have a return on investment so you're looking at social value impact um we are working with partners across the country and including national trust around a woodland urban greening code so similar like you have a woodland peak code the woodland code could we create something similar that creates it makes it monetizes the value so so there's a lot of exploring there's there's something called environmental social governance which is sort of there's big funds that invest in environmental and social based project projects so there's lots of pots out there our tactic at the moment is to deliver some demonstrator projects we're working with ucl to try and measure and value value the benefits um and then trying to go back out to developers and funders to see if they would invest in the product and try and create a pipeline of projects and say at scale actually because it's not about investing in one pocket part they want to invest in 10 20 and creating a pipeline of projects that are investable so it's something that's developing and we want to be ready when the market matures thank you um yes i've got a question about the difference between uh low traffic neighborhoods and liveable neighborhoods because we've got um in arsenal and hybrid wards there's a very large low traffic neighborhood that was put in during the pandemic and then everyone moved on and started putting in liveable neighborhoods elsewhere and i just wonder if there is a planned program to do a bit of retrofit in the low traffic neighborhood zone to um uh deliver some of those liveable neighborhood benefits because i think it would be might be actually be quite helpful um so yeah that's one question um um uh the pocket park piece and the stub roads absolutely beautiful piece of work um and just wondering if you're if you've got the stub roads kind of mapped for the whole of the borough and in which case what's the how are you going to be working with ward councillors or you know what's the kind of rollout um process for that and then my third question is just being slightly um opportunistic in that we've got andrew here and we're going through the budget process and i've just got a query about locking park gates at night on which is in the budget papers and i just wondered if there were if you would be able to say anything about how you see that working because um i've certainly uh encountered quite a few people who are a bit concerned about it um from a kind of from a safety point of view in particular um particularly in terms of women and girls but also um i think we've got that question so i'll hand it over to and i was going to call you council bedford then but andrew yeah cool yeah i'll grab those first too so yeah low traffic neighborhoods to liveable neighborhoods as we all know it's the um the low traffic neighborhoods were put in during covid in a response to health emergency and were solely focused on traffic reduction and creating space for people to walk and cycle obviously the evolution of that is now what we call livable neighborhoods which is essentially the same thing but with a lot more carrots it's building in all of the public realm benefits specifically greening benefits opportunities for cycling opportunities for place making but also doing it with the community so you have multiple phases of of community engagement before we take any decision to implement a single project um and to come back to the real point of the question is is are we coming back i hope so um it's a longer term plan we know we've got an ambition to cover the whole of the borough with livable neighborhoods by approximately 2030 which was the manifesto commitment and the most recent um islington together commitment for 50 by 2026. um we are working away at areas of most need at the moment um kind of moving ourselves towards the north of the borough you know we're working on barnesbury at the moment we've worked on mildmay the cali tufton park etc and starting to kind of consider how we retrofit that program back into the historic ltns so it is definitely on the agenda i don't have a dent for you when i'm coming to hybrid but it is something we definitely want to do and arsenal and arsenal and st peter's and canterbury and all of them yeah absolutely um pocket parks and stub roads hope it's not really quickly as well but uh yes they are mapped um andrew showed the uh screenshot before there's approximately 300 odd stub roads identified as possible uh pocket parks of varying scales our approach to delivering on that at the moment is essentially embedded into the livable neighborhood program so it's without andrew delivering on this hopefully glorious funding package that's coming down the line um we are building it into our current program we're using it as evidence we're using it as insight to help develop our livable neighborhoods in the best way so the cali which you would have seen a picture from today you know there was a number of subroads identified just off cali road and through that package we're delivering a number of uh pocket parks through that program as well and we'll continue to do that as we move to the next neighborhood to the next neighborhood but again if a a golden handshake of money comes comes our way um we'll definitely create a love to create a subroad program just following up on that could counselors with sill um work with you to deliver some of this more livable neighborhood element to existing ltns absolutely i mean there is you know there's always an opportunity with with funding to to look at resource to look at uh where the areas of most need i will say caution though we have a fairly stacked program and we are kind of having to go through a process of um how would i put this identifying the areas of most need you know using our evidence that's disposable to us using our flood risk strategies our heat island impact studies our deprivation maps you know where is the best place to use our time and our resource it's not just financial money it's actually officer time that's really important here as well to deliver obviously on our larger goals of a fairer together and a fairer islington so an area might have some money but might not be the area of most need for me today but always open to have that conversation see where we can use our work so if you could turn your mics off and i'll bring council the championing thanks no it's absolutely um it's absolutely the case that we want to do livable neighborhoods right across the borough i think one of the things we're looking at the moment though is we know that if we are trying to get people to move around differently actually you need to create large areas and connected areas for them to do that um so you know we did we did discuss this could we should we have gone back to the ltns and to upgrade them and you know and that would have been really attractive but actually what we're trying to do is really connect more and more safer areas um not actually just even the livable neighborhoods now but also we're looking at doing sort of the the connections between the livable neighborhoods so we've done we've done southgate roads we're now looking to do a few others as well so it's absolutely the case that we don't want some areas to be prioritized over the others but actually from a resource point of view if you go into a new area and you start looking for example the cali you start looking at both cycle connections mild may you've got cycle connections you look at livable neighborhoods and change place at the same time that's quite a resource intensive piece of work but actually delivers an awful lot um so ab so you know absolutely um we are coming back but it's what you know how how do you most effectively use your resources and at the moment i think the feeling is that if we can change the space across a wide area of islington then you start changing people's ability to move around differently as well as their experience of their own homes thank you uh council champion could you also answer the locking the gate park gates as well yeah so i mean i think we we have we only lock half the gates anyway and that decision was taken some time ago um we're working carefully through on on to how we do that um to make sure that you know we do do it in a way that's systematic we yeah there are some real benefits to having parks open um if you lock them if you lock them you obviously you are reducing immunity for a number of people a part of the other problem is that sort of in summer for example we get the most um we get most issues actually if you start locking them quite late actually lots of those issues would have already happened so what we're doing is looking at how you use resources more effectively um so there are a couple of different things that are happening i don't know if andrew wanted andrew do you want to pick this up before i um i can do so some part of the saving that we would we would deliver from not because obviously it's a lot of resource to just arbitrary lock a lot of sites so actually a portion of that saving is actually getting reinvested back in the service to uh so for more sort of targeted taskings and patrols so actually using our park guard uh park patrol service to deal with the issues where they arise um we will retain the ability to do temporary locks on sites if we need to disrupt uh behavior but it will be on a sort of yeah evidence base and tasking base um obviously lots of our parks already you can't lock or we don't lock so so actually at the moment you know that if we're going to lock another site we have to unlock another one so it's actually quite difficult to manage whereas this one will be able to mean we can be much more flexible in targeting our resources where the asb starts to arise and actually deal with the problem thank you very much good answer so council champion i'm also coordinating an awful lot more with dan lawson's team who will also they're having some um mobile uh officers as well so it's a bit more of an understanding of the area so hopefully this will be an improvement and benefits it also means that we can tackle some of those areas which as andrew said um those parks aren't being locked sometimes we do get antisocial behavior in them and this way we can we can look at resources um more effectively thanks a lot okay uh council potts your turn yeah thank you chair um just a couple of quick questions for me in terms of obviously the greening the 34 that sort of accounted for till 2026 obviously we're such a dense borough i think it's really a challenge to sort of make sure we get to that 100 target what does the road map to that look like that 1.5 hectares i mean obviously the 250 to 300 stub roads you know how much of that would for example target as the council done any sort of analysis or data to sort of say actually that's could be the road map to doing so um just on that and then sort of the second point particularly around the tree pit planting that's a really great thing you walk down the street and you see that like residents have sort of taken it upon themselves to sort of plant a few flowers at the bottom of a tree for example so i'm really encouraged to hear that that's something that's that the council also going to be pushing for and getting residents to do themselves but how is the council going about that so what does the promotional campaign look like okay so yeah we we need to map out a bit more carefully the how do we get there to the we've got we know roughly the size of pocket park so therefore how many we need to now deliver for the for the input price to that match liveable neighborhood program will be delivering out so it's now trying to estimate okay for every liberal neighborhood we roll out roughly what do we think is the amount of of green infrastructure that we'll deliver um through that program it's going to vary from from from from neighborhood to neighborhood but we can get get a rough idea so we can start now to put put that road plan in place and know what level of resource we need because we've now delivered some schemes we know the costs so it's it it becomes easy so right we need to deliver 25 pocket parks till we hit that target for it i'm just off to me yeah so we will now start to to map that out now where we know we are we have a we have a tracker so we track every project um in terms of uh uh what scale we don't just count the greening as well because it's like transforming the sort of space around that so it becomes sort of usable green space um and you know so it can vary from a little pocket park to you know from a parklet to to some of the biggest games like st james's clark and well green you know what do you count in that so because obviously some of the if you just take the greening but actually we've transformed quite a large area so so sometimes it's about trying to we don't want to sort of um uh count stuff that's not really sort of but it but it but you know we're transforming you know new spaces but space on estate the livable neighborhood program will also start to deliver and open up spaces that are currently closed off um centurion close has done that so scheme that's delivered recently and there's some more uh planned over the next so you know we will get a lot further but yeah we don't actually have a what that would be that that's another action to do and tree plant the tree pit planting um that is that is being promoted via the website so we've got revamped the website uh is that we're working with islington gardeners in partnership with them and we promote it via our in bloom campaign but we do want to go a bit further um let's say this green streets campaign and package up a little bit about what what can you do as a neighborhood as a group of residents to to green the streets and and take local action so that's the next that's the next step i'm going to take councillor heather and councillor jeeps and then um if you could answer as briefly as possible because we've you've covered a lot of ground tonight and uh so councillor heather yeah just going back to what we were talking about earlier about greening um greening the borough and your hope to get sort of that funding to continue like uh resident engagement getting people to contribute to what's going on um as i saw as i just wondered so last year in the summer that they they were looking at doing it was pre-consultation about liverpool neighborhood in annette road and those workshops were really good i mean you they were really good i went to two of them i think um there was a lot of people there some people were there because they were worried if they're going to use their car wherever they like but there was also a lot of people that were interested in greening i just wondered have we got access to any of those are we approaching any of those people have any of those people shown an interest in being an isn't greening champion and the other bit of that question is is that in terms of that would there be any scope in the future if you know if we didn't get any funding would there be any scope for training those uh uh isn't greening champions to maybe coordinate people is that too much of a ask for them would those things be possible but it struck me that there were a lot of people that went to those liverpool that liverpool neighborhood uh consultation and obviously you've done a lot more and i just wondered like are we actually sort of able to you know get up get those people involved in the future because you know we we're always we're working in this climate of lack of resources and then leveraging in people volunteers is really important but you sort of have to have someone to do that so for example on the and over just quickly on this on the and over when we've got the community gardener the council's on on in finjory park funded a community gardener for two years under mark row she's doing fantastic work like getting people around that estate like to do gardening so but of course without her it wouldn't happen thank you council i'm just going to take council jeeps and then yeah i want to raise two matters here one is uh about hybrid fields and the unofficial path that goes through the middle of the fields which i think you need to deal with uh as a matter of urgency and stop people walking through it especially if they're walking from the arsenal it's gradually deteriorating and you need to do something other boroughs have managed to stop people cutting through parts and making the right mess of it but i'd like you to look at that as soon as you can the other issue is around trees there's two matters here one is i think that some a lot of residents uh don't understand and they especially if they see the butchery that's gone in hackney harringay and camden what they've done to their trees they cut them to being ridiculous pom-poms and they think well why can't we do that in islington well i want to turn that around i think those three boroughs and other boroughs should be charged with with murdering trees and i think we should get better communication with our residents who don't seem to understand that no we won't do that i spoke to some residents at the weekend on the estates and really they want the tree removed i'm fed up with it really and the other issue is around i think um which was mentioned to me some while back about compaction of the ground and is that something that is still causing a problem have you done anything about ground compaction which is um well you know compacting the the root space which causes a real problem to the trees and is there any plan to am i right or are you going to do something about that thanks yeah if i could answer the um you're you're right then we have tried to have a soft touch on our trees as much as possible but fulfilling our duty of care to maintain them so we don't over prune trees we try not to you're very right about education um we've started we're doing a lot more engagement with schools we're getting them a need for for large trees in urban environments for resilience the compaction is a problem and this can be helped by urban greening because introducing plants and bedding and increasing the the the greening and planting around trees reduces the footfall so that can help i'm also trying to in coming years where we have got tree planting and greening to reduce that compaction and to increase aeration and vegetation into the soil we we have in previous years um pressure injected into hybrid fields to try and decompact but it's obviously expensive and not something we can always do but we have done in the past the desire line across hybrid fields we did we did restore that many years ago and within a matter of months it was back as if we'd never done anything we've consulted in the past around putting an actual path and residents have always rejected that option so it's a very difficult one to solve is is the is the upshot of that um if we if we grass it it will and we put barriers and they still just go around so it's a very very difficult one to solve that one we don't have an answer to that um so you can say that your question engagement i think i think we want to take a more coordinated approach as we want to sort of uh work with sarah's team around how do we look at volunteering and engagement around environmental issues as a whole because i think you're right there's opportunities to promote the green together champions of the programs at the mass engagement events in the liveable neighborhood but as we're working together they say rolling out the pocket parts we want to do more of that as we go forward so that we can talk to residents so greener together was a borough wide sort of idea but trying to take some of those principles and apply them into the liveable neighborhood program so actually there are opportunities for residents to get involved in in the planting engagement and we continue to try and support them to do that um and there's lots of opportunities of what they could do not just within those green together schemes but but you know adopting a tree pit or or acting as sort of pioneers and support for for their neighborhood and getting green and going so we want to continue to try and do that we're working with the engagement team around uh a climate action fund bid uh around uh uh resilience uh network and adaptation climate change uh champions so um so not just in terms of dealing with extreme heat waves but then also around the greening and adaptation stuff so we're putting that together but that will be a longer term plan thank you so i'm going to give the final word to council champion well i think i think matt's i think i'm right in saying in respect of net road i think the um the organization that runs maton street and the stress garden have expressed interest in in helping with that as well as well as individual residents okay i really i just want to raise the issue about rain gardens i think they're a brilliant idea especially because around where i live in around an axe head people are concreting over their front gardens and their back gardens and their private properties you can't really do anything about it so rain gardens need to be promoted as a really beneficial thing i think so and discourage the concreting over i know you're doing that but just to make that point thank you very much you came is quite short notice and really brilliant presentation and great work thank you very much before you go i've just got to ask the member of the public do you have a question put your mic on put your mic oh no i just wanted to say thank you very much i i am actually a greener a greener is linkedin champion as well so it's been really good to hear that you are actually moving ahead and try to encourage more people to join um one of the things that we are facing is finding space for example to store the mulch that has been offered just now i just got a message so i think it's really important the practical the practical implementation of the idea is that they actually get seen through because a lot of things can just stop by not offering support as you said so with the tree pits and you know making sure that the people feel supported i think just giving you some feedback is really important but thank you what's your name um i'm i'm jana rock i'm coming from earth stock estate so i'm actually i'm actually got the funding for the estate to improve to to you know to green the estate so it's yeah thank you very much thank you so we're going to move on to the next item now that was a long item but it's absolutely worth it and it's part of our scrutiny so it's so important so the the next one we're moving on to is the update on the climate action supplementary planning document and we've got fiona walker and sakiba gerda to present thank you thank you and you you know we can't spend an hour on this please so if you 15 minutes sure yes we'll do our part in in 15 minutes so i'll just give a very quick overview of where we are at now and then flora will give the the full presentation on the climate action spd and the retrofit handbook uh i'm skiba gerda i'm head of planning policy and development viability service so we prepare all of these uh plans and strategies so the spd uh it's a piece of work that we've been working on for a long time as some of you will know and you have been involved in the early stages we did we have done over the last couple of years a lot of engagement with various groups all sorts of stakeholders particularly residents and local activist groups as well as businesses and housing associations and developers and agents and architects and everybody and as part of that process what emerged is that effectively people want everything to be addressed and it's a very complex matter if you want to try and address all of these issues so we've ended up and this is a in a good way we've ended up producing two documents which are slightly targeted to slightly different audiences although you know all of them deal with uh issues around climate action in different ways so we've produced a retrofit handbook which is a document which sets out sets a bit of background and flora will go into that but also lots of measures measure by measure and it's particularly aimed at uh existing residential properties as well as business properties and people who want to be able to do certain measures themselves we've had a lot of discussion over the you know in various workshops with local residents about this and then we've also prepared a supplementary planning document itself which is where we started from initially we called it net zero carbon spd but then it's broadened it's titled climate action and it deals with not just retrofit and energy use and things like that but also other things like biodiversity and dealing with flooding and harvesting rain water and lots of other things so everywhere where additional guidance was needed all of those topics are covered in the spd and the spd is a bit more technical and more aimed at uh not not entirely but some of the kind of more planning stakeholders if you like so uh both are out of consultation now we started in uh on 7th of january the consultation closes on the 18th one of the other reasons why we wanted to do this is that a lot of changes happen very quickly particularly around technologies with retrofitting so with retrofit handbook we'll be able to update it quickly without having to go through this very lengthy statutory process which the spd itself has to go through so for instance things legislation changes things that previously needed planning permission now don't as those changes occur you know through government action as well as simply technology is evolving so retrofit handbook can be updated very quickly quickly that's quite an important point otherwise it falls uh kind of comes out of date quite quickly so we're out to consultation as of the 7th we are holding two residents well stakeholder events but mainly aimed at residents and local groups but businesses will have also been invited and you know anybody it's open to anybody really uh 28th of january and one on 6th of february we also have we have a session with the isn't society on the 29th of january and there'll be other events that we might get invited to so that's where we are now i'll hand over to flora who is the lead officer who actually worked on producing the spd in collaboration with everybody in the in planning as well as across the country particularly climate action colleagues sorry thank you sakiba my name is flora walker yeah um i will be quick today because i know we've got lots to cover um just to briefly go over the relationship between the various documents that we have dealing with climate action in planning so uh the sort of key statutory document that we're consulting on is the supplementary planning document if you hear us saying spd it's because uh it has to be shorted it doesn't roll off the tongue and then as sakiba mentioned we've got uh the retrofit handbook that's also being consulted upon um and then in tandem uh we have two other supporting documents one of them is uh the um permitted development guide to net zero works and that just details the government's statutory um sort of when when it details when planning permission is required and when it isn't for net zero works and the latter one is a guide to repairing and upgrading windows in conservation areas and listed buildings um and then in addition to this there is a lot of supporting activity um but particularly within planning there's a free application planning advice service that's being introduced um where businesses and residents uh can uh qualify for free pre-application um advice on their planning applications or potentially it might be the advice saying they don't require planning permission and what they're proposing is permitted development and that's because we understand that sometimes planning rules can be complex and we just want to support people to bring through the measures when they when they want to okay um so i'm going to start with the retrofit handbook now um and um just a brief sort of outline of what what it's for so the key aim is to provide accessible guidance uh to enable everyone to understand retrofit considerations um from the very small diy steps that um to improve the energy efficiency of buildings um to like more complex more um more detailed um sorry yeah um more details uh retrofit measures um and uh also yeah as we said to understand when planning permission or listed building consent is required uh and when planning permission is required we state the information that is required uh to help people to make their applications um and then also to give worked examples of retrofit in a variety of contexts um so that includes some flats uh and it includes sort of buildings across sort of various areas in islington so i think sakiba we're going to just do a demonstration of how the handbook works we've made some efforts to try and make it as accessible and interactive as possible um so it should be accessible on an interactive pdf um as you can see we've split the document into four key um sections the first details about the retrofit journey and it's framed to support people to understand um the key concepts and the key steps around what is required and that's accessible to people even doing very minor sort of retrofit measures like draft proofing which don't require planning permission or anything like that um which most people can do regardless of tenure or whether they're living in flats um and then the second um part is key considerations um so in in that section we deal with sorry bear with me i'm just not following um yes so we deal with the whole building approach and so um so that understands a building as a com a combination of systems that all need to work together in unison um to ensure that the building's more energy efficient um we deal with the electric electrification of heat so the move away from gas uh ventilation to add moisture down to avoid moisture damage uh we do consider embodied carbon impacts for each measure and the disruption to the living environment uh and how older buildings and list listed buildings can sort of approach retrofit and then here's our sort of page of retrofit measures uh and we deal with quite a lot as sakiba said there was a real demand from our stakeholder engagement that people wanted some advice on actually what the different measures involve um so if we can click for example to one of the measures if we go to timber so this shows the solid and timber floor insulation and we've got an easy to digest information box on what's required how much it's likely to cost whether it needs planning permission how disruptive it is whether it's accessible to diy and including some other sort of technical considerations and diagrams thanks kiba and now if we can change back thank you very much thank you we just wanted to show you what the document looks and feels like um and then finally the section number four is the islington housing types uh so we include uh we've modeled georgian victorian and early 20th century flat and mid 20 20th century has home types and we provide three journeys uh which relate to three different extents of retrofit from diy to more comprehensive and these relate to three different budgets and for example you can see here we've got a heat loss diagram for your early 20th century flat and these are some of the typologies that were measured and for each typology we have the summary of measures and journeys so you can see here we've got the early 20th century flat typology and you can see the diy medium and comprehensive journeys and we've packaged them just just to show what can be um achieved if all of these measures are sort of delivered um together and you can see some of them the diy um measures they're they're quite doable without extensive um extensive works such as le led lighting and heating controls and things like that um so that that's the retrofit handbook i also have some words to say about the climate action spd but i don't know do you want to take questions now like yes okay fantastic thank you um so um the spd sort of we're going back to that statutory document um that um basically it's a document that that's for when you're finding out when your development needs planning permission uh when you need advice on what planning policies apply and when you need to find out what information is needed to show you comply with the policies and the climate action spd provides additional guidance on implementation of our local plan policies and within the spd we also include a chapter on retrofit just to make sure that the two documents are interlinked and joined up and yeah that deals with specifics on air source heat pumps solar panels windows external wall insulation and cycle storage um it's important to mention that um as as with the retrofit handbook um we want to focus on clarity and providing the required detail and accessibility um so we're not introducing new policy requirements within this document it's about detailing how we can deliver our existing policy um and a key difference to the last local plan is that we introduced many more requirements for minor developments um so therefore the spd needs extra guidance on supporting people for these smaller applications especially because those kind of applications you're not likely to um appoint an energy consultant for example so we needed to provide tools to enable anyone uh house from householders to um very large developers to put their applications in um so yes um and then just a detail on the contents page here and so we've got um key key chapters we have a sustainable design and construction statement that really um is it's a requirement for all planning applications now um and within it every application needs to um say how they're addressing our sustainable design policies um and we've introduced some templates to support different types of planning applicants to sort of follow what is needed because we do appreciate it's quite a long document and we don't expect everyone to read it all um but in the same way it needs to it needs to have that detail to ensure that the development that we're bringing forward is to the standard that we need um we as i said before we had the retrofit and planning for mission chapter we have a chapter on biodiversity and green infrastructure and a chapter on mitigating flood risk uh sustainable drainage protecting air quality heating and energy heating and cooling the circular economy the whole life cycle carbon um process and accounting and then finally sustainable design standards and i did just want to mention uh following our previous scrutiny committee um councillor the clerk you raised an issue on greywater reuse and recycling and we have addressed that within the spd i'll just briefly detail what we've done and so we've provided clarification that the following types of development are required to incorporate both rainwater and greywater recycling systems and so that means greywater reuse and recycling as well and so that's developments with the high or intense water usage and the spd kind of gives you some examples things like hostels or hotels um make all major developments and then for my minor non-residential developments between 100 and 999 square meters uh they're also required to um incorporate rainwater and greywater recycling um in addition uh where where these systems where developers say that they're not feasible we specified what detail we need to see so that they can demonstrate it's not feasible just so that we know they've really addressed it and explored it so i think oh yeah and here's a short example of how we've tried to within our sort of tools the this is an extract from our sustainable design and construction statement um how we've sought to sort of hold people's hands a bit for smaller applications on for example one of our policies is how to apply the energy hierarchy so we give people examples of how to reduce um energy at each stage the energy hierarchy i don't know and i'll i'll just add one point just one final we obviously this is all very very complex and it's very complex and it's for lots of different audiences depending on what they want to do and who they are etc etc but we see this eventually once it's finalized following consultation we'll have lots of engagement as a resource once it's there we see it as a resource from which we can then build more so we could extract things and turn them into leaflets say on specific topic whether it's solar panels or whatever and then do various things various initiatives as a council together with colleagues in climate action to promote things to use them for campaigns so there'll be a lot in there which can then be useful sorts of things to help people whether they're doing small measures which don't need planning permission whether they're leaseholders tenants etc so you know that we have different different groups in the borough of course some can do more might have more money to spend others might be able to do less but there will be things that most people can do within you know within their homes and we'll try and later on jointly with colleagues elsewhere this goes beyond planning try and promote some of these measures and encourage take-up excellent thank you very much for putting in the grey water this is going to make a big difference you know developers really really have not taken that on at all as someone's on the planning committee the late the last planning committee the developer did actually reroute the rainwater through to the toilets so i was hoping that that wording would be in the spd i don't know if you can have a look at that because the consultation is happening now anyway so we can you know everyone can add to this document so i'm just going to put out to the committee now councillor heather councillor hayes okay councillor heather yeah i mean it is quite a complex subject and obviously that's why you've done what you've done i appreciate the spds about the you know the sort of formal side of it and the handbook and i think that's really good that you know the handbook can be adjusted but the question i've got is that you talked about um holding people's hands and whatever but how how will the council field the inquiries i mean i suppose it depends how successful it is but how will the council actually field and resource the inquiries it's likely to get um especially if we're going to make it a success i'm just wondering like what sort of resources will be required there thank you um so specifically we have uh the duty planner um advice that's been funded and an officer is in place now um to sort of field exactly uh the type of application that i think we're looking at um so yes that there is some resource to to tackle that yes specialized officer who will be dealing with these measures yeah in planning to apply so that's one officer is it just one officer but that would be their full-time job yeah no no it's not i'm not trying to i'm just trying to explore like so what have you sort of getting any idea what the likely sort of amount of like inquiries you'll get we've uh the free planning application on retrofit measures the free advice has been in place for some time now and that i think we'll be recruiting another one but there's been quite a good take-up people phoning because previously they would have had to pay whereas now it's free for local businesses and residents so yeah there's been quite a good take-up and we expect with the promotion of the spd that will grow the take-up will grow and you know i appreciate what we're doing it is thank you thank you yes it was really interesting and great to be taken through how you might access different bits of the handbook um i had a few questions so i i kind of understand that during the consultation process there's formal routes the council uses to consult um it is likely that a particular subset of residents might have strong views and want to feed into that but i'm quite interested in how we think that idea of turning some of this into leaflets for people who might be interested in one bit and how how that might be publicized whether any thoughts gone into that or whether that's more a uh comms thing and i just wondered whether uh it might be possible and again it might be better as a leaflet uh giving people advice on sources of funding um particularly uh for community organizations and but where people who want to do this and may be linked to the shine service for individual residents on low incomes and you mentioned about tenure uh and of course there's the does it need planning permission yes or no but there's also do you need to ask your landlord yes or no and how would you do that and again i think some of these would improve properties and we would want to encourage landlords to give consent because it benefits everybody and it just struck me that with the consultation at the moment around licensing of landlords uh is there is there any crossover so that we are putting pressure on landlords as part of the licensing process to actively engage and support uh measures being taken thank you i'll have a go there's five things in there uh so yes we're doing the current statutory consultation and engagement and we're doing the events so we expect quite a few people to turn up to the events last time round it was it was sold out there was a lot of a lot of people in the room and hopefully we have two events now there'll be quite a few there and then through all of our normal measures but just afterwards i think all as we approach the adoption we are having discussions at the moment with colleagues in in climate action to then go beyond planning and look at some of these we'll use all the vehicles that we have and you know things are happening all the time and we'll develop a comm strategy around this and it could be sometimes we do things opportunistically like linking to something else which is a good vehicle to promote things so we can do that and continue to do that once the resource is there and you know once it's finalized and i think it's you know this is a lot of this is about planning and do you need planning permission if you do this is what you do and then we'll give you planning commission but that thing that more practical stuff beyond planning like the contracts like the lease holds what they allow tenants to do and not to do i think we'll the idea is we sit down with our own colleagues and you know in legal and and us as a landlord the council as a landlord talk about our own leases and hopefully arrive at a position where we can say for certain things tenants will not need and lease holders council lease holders and council tenants or housing association tenants etc will not need an approval from from their landlord but for those things that they might do and that's in the in the lease which already exists hopefully we can agree with with various landlords housing associations whom we talked to previously and ourselves that if they want to do xyz yes they can get that approval so i think that's a next step it's beyond planning but we will certainly engage with all of our colleagues elsewhere and including legal including us as a landlord and including other big landlords and i think it's a really good suggestion at the end around working with licensing and trying to encourage nudge persuade private private renters because that's probably those those people are probably struggling most in some cases where they're private rented the rents are high the energy costs are high sometimes the landlord doesn't have much much of an incentive to do measures particularly if they're expensive whereas public sector tech they'll be slightly better on on that or a lot better in some cases so i think that's an important one so that could be an opportunity to try and encourage private landlords to do as much as possible and then so it's better for them and for for the tenant and then on the funding things different funding sources appear over time and i think again i think it's good that we've done all of this work up until now and we'll have the resource so when a funding pot comes up i know there's been some from the mayor on solar panels or from various we can then develop another leaflet to say okay this is what you need to do in this link and this is how we this is allowed or not allowed and the planning but sorry it might be allowed without planning permission or if it isn't this is what you do and then we hold their hand on the accessing funding because that's a that's a really big barrier for i mean some of our residents as you know are willing and able to pay for for measures others are not so we need to also spend time and effort on trying to hold their hand to access money when money becomes available thank you um council jeeps yeah just want to ask you as the chair you may know more that um i mean this this is great but if you're a council tenant uh i used to live in a partner street property where the windows didn't open and they were bloody terrible so the poorest people are going to have to pay still high bills for uh heating their homes and that and yet no real opportunities to get windows which are not gonna i wouldn't say double glazed because this is you know victorian street property in a conservation area where you've got it's we're stuck with them aren't we so what what do you know what's being done i mean right now i'm in a i'm in a flat which has got um you know windows which are better but it's fair it's drafty i see something up there about draft proofing oh that's interesting maybe what are we doing and how are we can we say something as a committee to i don't know whether it's been said before and you've been on planning longer than i can we say something more saying look it's our our people who are in our our own social housing which can't afford to do things we may have advice going but who's going to actually do the works and that i don't there isn't a lot of money about but we need to say if we don't do this we can't have heat pumps in council houses because you've got to insulate the place before the heat pump would work etc so there's so many problems so is anything that we might say from here i've got a i've got a situation in my own ward where an estate needs the windows replacing and there's a it's actually the estate that you live on and there's actual sick for maintenance or capital works program that will take will replace those windows over 20 25 26 so that that you need to contact if it's a particular state you need to contact the housing property manager for that for your estate and see where you are on the on the um capital works program that's one answer and renting from the council yeah i know that's the main the main thing is to get all the whole estate done yeah so um did you want to come in on that point or no no can i do you have an answer to there's quite a few things in there but one of them is we are the the the spd and the handbook set out cases where people will be able to have their windows replaced so previously i there's been that perhaps more rigorous approach nationally etc about keeping on historic buildings whether it's listed buildings or conservation areas there was more resistance for the replacement we are now looking at and technologies are changing to be able to replace windows and in some cases introduce double glazing instead of single glazing so but obviously that requires money and with local with the social housing whether it's council housing or housing associations those initiatives come from the landlord and i mean some of our uh housing associations that have big stock are also looking at various measures on their own estate and trying to secure funding and of course the council is trying to do as much as we can it is costly so over time there will be there will be measures introduced once one's funding is available but until that happens then some smaller measures perhaps might be an interim measure and just to add um thank you very much for raising that point i think we can really sort of address people in your situation and say this is how to do this is how you can find out this is what you should ask your freeholder you know and make it as easy as possible um because i i'm sure you're not the only person in that position uh two points for me thank you very for that presentation just i mean you know newly elected so i'm just sort of coming to this but obviously and it's related to accounts of jeeps's point just there around sort of listed buildings and conservation areas so in terms of stuff like windows i know for example kenson and chelsea did an spd which meant that you didn't have to require planning permission to put solar panels in unlisted buildings for example is that something that we've looked at and that we've considered and you know looking at the document now it says that you know it should usually be acceptable but would that still require planning permission so apologies for a slightly basic question but again just trying to think about speeding up the process and making sure that you know we can you know with the climate emergency we get to that point it's just a question on that one second one obviously you mentioned the uh free pre-app advice service is now available just sort of wondering when that was launched roughly how many people have used it to date and if it's obviously new and that was quite low so what are you planning to do to promote it and sort of push it to make residents aware that that's a service they can tap into thank you uh i'll try with the second one first and then return to the first question i will i think it's at least it's at least about a year and a half that we've had free advice but that it was limited in time and then now it's unlimited as in you know i don't have the exact figures we can try and find them but certainly colleagues in development management tell us that the take-up has been good so you know people are everybody who's called has been able to be given advice so that's the main thing we are able to satisfy the demand i'm not sure what the figures are on the we can confirm that on the kensington and chelsea yes we have spoken with colleagues in kensington or chelsea at length on many occasions what they've done is they've done something slightly different which is called it's effectively in advance permitting a development whether it's solar panels or wind replacement it's a permitted order development order permitted development order for some parts of the borough and then i think for all of the borough for some measures it's there's been a lot of publicity around it and it's it's great it's a good measure but uh you still it doesn't necessarily simplifies the process you still need to apply for listed building consent you still have it's not here is something that you can do and you just do it you act there's still a process and it's not necessarily much shorter than what we are trying to do that's the first point and the second point their take-up has been very low for whatever reasons and some of those are the nature this is what colleagues at kensington and chelsea tells us tell us uh it's the nature of some of their residents who are quite absent quite a lot of time uh or there's been literally a handful over quite a significant period of time for some of those we've we've been following what everybody else is doing like all the time literally all the time not just in london and i think london is slightly ahead of others but elsewhere that there are good good examples of good good work happening elsewhere and certainly followed knc quite a lot very low take up on some measures i think their window replacement order came in relatively recently it's very early days but what we are trying to do is it's kind of different ways of doing things so they're permitting in advance things it doesn't necessarily create a shortcut so they can do it quicker there is still a heavy process so we might as well do this and address all of the measures measure by measure and offer all of the free help effectively to hold people's hand and then try and encourage take up so hopefully that will be able to deal with lots and lots of things not just certain kind of narrow things and ultimately with some people it will be money and funding councillor russell yeah and first of all really welcome this it's incredibly helpful to have both the sort of the spd which is some more professional version and the retrofit handbook which is you know from what i've looked at it so far it looks really well set out and easy to understand i'm sort of wondering you know there is the scale of retrofit that is needed in a borough like islington is absolutely massive and we've got different we've been talking about different housing tenures and the different needs that people living in different housing tenures have in terms of being able to retrofit their home or get the council or their housing association to retrofit their building there's also the issue of um doing retrofit along whole streets where if you if someone works out what you know if you work out what needs to happen you've got a whole street of homes that are all exactly the same whether it's council housing association or privately owned there there could potentially be kind of economies in of scale in kind of working together to do a street or in the same way that the council when it's upgrading an estate will do a whole estate and i just wondered if you've started thinking about that kind of the way that islington streets are sort of pepper potted with privately owned housing association then one that was council and is now partners or you know it's like there's it's like the the housing tenure is is very mixed and whether you've thought about just in terms of the rollout and the hand holding how that plays into actually the objective of getting more homes insulated so people have lower bills and um you know all those resilience benefits of having a better home right the honest answer we are beginning to think about this i think this the spd and the handbook talk about what and how on all of these different typologies and it can apply to everybody you know regarding well some measures regardless of tenure but certainly you have the rule book if you like so here it is and i think it's the next step how do we encourage people how obviously there'll be different circumstances some people might have funding others won't we might be able to access funding or there might be so i think it could be depending on again to some degree on funding whether or not we can identify some some streets where with a bit of whole hand holding and helping people to access funding we could perhaps try and speed up the take-up and looking i don't know if you remember there used to be grants for shop friends from historic england in the past so you get the grant we administered the grant our planning officers and historic conservation officers will then do a little guidance or whatever and say you apply for this money and you replace the shop front and this is what it's going to look like so it was a lot of money but you know we've done some you know nice stretches of town centers with that and i can envisage potentially if funding becomes available things like that being done and the other thing is and this is not something that strictly through planner we can't do a huge amount through planning is around contractors who will do this work because quite a lot of the time the question arises what you know can you recommend companies and which builders can do this and there's been some not necessarily highly professional ones uh doing things we as a council can't identify the but i think i suppose from the from the inclusive economy perspective and generally hopefully a local market or london-wide market is being created and more and more contractors will appear to these to do these measures so hopefully that might help as well because i think a lot of the people who have tried to do things have struggled with finding good contractor sorry i'm jumping around striply it it's something we certainly need to think about how do we get hall streets to engage and be able to do measures for are we going to add something yeah quickly to add on the appointing contractors um we are linking to the construction directory that has a special sort of filter on um retrofit providers and it will also link into um uh sort of retrofit uh or um building i can't the word that escapes me but like a building building shop a shop to buy diy um sort of goods and so there is that element and i just wanted to raise sort of tangentially i think it's a fantastic point that you've made in terms of economies of scale i just wanted to say we are thinking communally uh about about heat networks in the future and i think a lot of the the thinking around communal and it's included within the spd however i completely appreciate your point around retrofit and this sort of the benefits there so i think we can take that away thank you yeah we did have cali energy come to this scrutiny actually a couple of years ago now and that was a group of residents that got together and try and they weren't having much success of working with the council would this enable them it would be easier for some or group like cali energy to to work with the council now we'd certainly welcome it and then you know take it take it from there i'm not sure whether some of their issues were around funding as well not just what measures are permissible or not permissible i'm not sure so you know that there's there's planning side of things what we can permit and hold their hand on that and there is of course the funding and the implementation hi yeah i was just going to add on cali energy we do still have the islington community energy fund and we do work with cali energy and power up north london um we do try and promote um them to any groups who are interested in um collecting together to to take on energy projects um so that's something that's ongoing and we're just um doing an evaluation of the scheme so far to think about how we might move forward with the next phase of that um and then just um to pick up on flora's point about heat networks a key piece of work that we're commissioning now is our detailed local area energy plan and that is really a very technical piece of work that will look at the whole borough and identify the kind of optimal routes to decarbonization and identify the sort of priority areas for heat networks and where those can be be best expanded and then the other kinds of interventions as well such as electric vehicle infrastructure the grid charging solar and light touch uh retrofit as well so there there will be a study that's that will be very detailed kind of looking at what the options are and how best we might apply our interventions going forward which will really help to support the spd thank you sarah thank you everybody and really it is really really good that you've done this work thank you so much and for coming here again and just a question because when the consultation ends there'll be new probably changes weren't there to be to the documents do then there'll be a few changes so would you come and tell us about those uh yes we can whenever so yes there will be quite a lot we expect there'll be quite a lot of uh comments we've already received quite a few there'll be there'll be others so there will be some redrafts and perhaps as we go towards the adoption we can come and present again in terms of changes and what has happened yeah thank you thank you now we're moving on to the 12-month update on the circular economy and green jobs review and this yeah yeah okay so this is sarah hitchcock and council champion um executive member for environment air quality and transport to present if i just say a few words and i'll hand over to sarah i mean i think the what you've just heard actually probably the first item and the second item is the the level of thinking that's going into not actually just understanding where we are but also really thinking about actually how in actually very very difficult circumstances we can achieve what we want to achieve and i think again i think we've said the committee said before um how much they risk how grateful they are to the officers who who are doing this work um and you know three years ago four years ago some of those questions that both um flora and sakiba are asking themselves about actually how do you get this to work that wouldn't really been their job um so what i what i'm going to do now is let sarah um just introduce the topic it's a very way it's a was a very interesting scrutiny it's gone through some quite ride-ranging um topics but i think you're going to give an overview and then sort of some highlights on you yeah so um obviously we've got two reports tonight and apologies the the synchronization of this has gone a little awry so you've got two annual reports uh on the same evening um but if i start with the circular economy and green jobs uh one this was um a scrutiny review that you conducted from 2022 to 23 um and there were a number of uh recommendations all of which uh we accepted and um uh these were largely around uh waste and recycling and our work with the nlwa um and also some elements of our net zero carbon program particularly around our sort of retrofit work um so just to um quickly give um an overview because i appreciate it's quite a dense report um in terms of the the first recommendation which was about really working with north london waste authority and to support us in our um reduced reuse and recycle ambitions through their waste strategy um obviously we have been working closely um both councillors and uh officers uh with them on the development of the uh new draft joint waste strategy um which is out to consultation at the moment um and i believe that closes on the 23rd of january um and then once that's uh published um obviously we'll be sort of uh pushing to um deliver that um and obviously welcome any feedback from uh uh members on how we can sort of strengthen that um uh we've also been working closely with them on um advertising their apprenticeship programs um and also their job placements and training placements um and that's done through our i work team um who obviously do lots of work with uh residents getting them into um training and support um we have completed our year one update report on the recycling and weight reduction recycling plan um and a very comprehensive program of repair and reuse events um took place over the last year so we're really trying to ramp up that engagement um to encourage the circular economy and to encourage and empower people to understand what they can do themselves and those have proved um really uh popular and there are a number of groups that are now starting to emerge and wanting to take that forward in local communities as well um one of the things that the scrutiny review did uh focus on was reusable products and particularly nappies and period products and we've very much taken that on board through the work of the nlwa and also through the voucher scheme for nappies and we've had some uh real success in increasing the uptake of that um over the course of the year so that's been a a good result and similarly there's been a really um positive new campaign through the nlwa on promoting reusable period products um and again we're just um evaluating that but it seems to have been um very successful and again women's environmental network who presented to the um committee uh have been very much um supporting that and delivering events as part of it and so i won't go through all of the the different activities that we've been doing but there's quite a range um including some investments from nlwa and lel um in the reuse and recycling center so that we have a more accessible facility and better sign posting as well so really just trying to make it more accessible and expanding the the range of materials that are now being accepted for recycling as well um and then there's been campaigns that we've been joining such as the like a londoner campaign um and very much sort of taking a leading role in uh promoting those um council has continued to monitor the performance of london energy through the nlwa um and so that's done through their um their regular board meetings and um they get uh very comprehensive reports on that um in terms of carbon capture um there was actually a full update on that presented um at the nlwa meeting in july this year um and we've included a link to to that report um and uh that's work hopefully will be be bringing forward um some some real investment in the carbon capture and storage going forwards um which is very much a positive for this area and supporting residents in making sustainable choices and reducing waste um there's obviously lots we've been doing um particularly with our major food waste campaign which hopefully uh councils were aware of from the autumn last year um and we've been supporting that not just with communications but with targeted door-to-door engagement which behavioral science has proven is is the most effective way of really affecting change um so that is um ongoing we are um evaluating that as well and thinking about the next steps on that too um and the thriving neighborhoods campaign um continues to deliver improvements on estates making sure that they're up to standard and that they're conveniently located as well as and supporting that engagement with residents and there's three estate recycling officers now who are working specifically on that and with colleagues from across the council um to really support that that kind of change um there's some details about some of the projects that have been delivered through that as well in the report um and we're already getting some initial uh results from the benetton estate very early days um but there does seem to be some very positive um increases in awareness and recycling as a result of that um in terms of maximizing um opportunities for local food growing and fluid supply um there's a huge amount of work going through the fantastic isms and food partnership um and the committee have also um heard from um our colleagues at cranfield university who developed a mapping tool for urban food growing um and we also got some funding from ucl to look at a potential vision for the urban agriculture in islington as well so there's there's lots of work that's coming forward on that um and we've created and refreshed new food growing spaces on estates um as part of the thriving estates program um and in terms of um circular economy um we've uh had funding from re-london to um set up a circular economy cafe at the gene stokes center that's very much in its infancy but we're looking forward to seeing the results of that so that we can get activities for local people to learn how to reduce their food waste as part of that um i will um move on to the next um recommendation um which was again about lobbying we have now got a small public affairs team and they have got a number of key priorities that they're lobbying for under the greener healthier mission um and waste and recycling um was one of them and particularly um clear guidance on that national waste policy and we did feed in um to the uh government consultations on the extended producer responsibility and the deposit return system um and those policies are now coming through the now progressing through the new government um and we are expecting funding through those which is really positive um the nlwa has also uh just recently appointed a new public affairs manager as well so that will again help to strengthen um the lobbying that we can do um as as valuable as it is as islington council doing that lobbying um having that combined voice with other local authorities is also very helpful so we try to seek to to lobby in partnership where we can um recommendation four was focus more on green skills and about how we could um build our in-house capacity for retrofitting and we have given a number of staff training so we've now got four fully certified passive house designers and six staff who are qualified in energy efficiency for older and traditional buildings so really trying to sort of think about how we can support particularly those challenging properties in conservation areas which are very much a part and parcel of the islington sort of typology and those staff have been working both on new build and with our retrofit teams and sort of sharing experiences um on our social housing decarbonisation work so um all of that learning is is being embedded through through through the teams can i just interrupt you are you going to work through every recommendation because there's quite a few there there are i was just going to pick out a few yeah a few that's great thank you that's okay um so yeah there's a number of things on on the green skills but that was the kind of key thing i think about building our in-house capacity um uh the other one which andrew has earlier touched on was our community-led weeding program um that was a recommendation um and that is being taken forward um and as a result of that we are we are reducing the use of glyphosate as he mentioned but that will help to strengthen that reduction as well um and in terms of uh the community energy schemes which i already touched on so i've mentioned um community energy fund um and that we are currently evaluating that and we're continuing to promote those community energy groups um one of the other key ones in this report was about last mile deliveries and we are developing a freight action plan um and that should be completed this summer um and that's really quite a comprehensive piece of work looking at all of the different opportunities for um eliminating uh as as much emissions from freight as possible um so that work will be coming forward and we're continuing to obviously work on the council fleet as well and there's various bits in the report about some of the individual projects that have been supported um as we're developing that work um one of the things to mention is that we are working with the cross river partnership um to identify and deliver a trial micro logistics hub so um that's going to be um something new for us to try and establish if we can create a hub where we can get um last mile deliveries um for the borough and then um just to um finish up on this one there was a recommendation about how we can use our air quality monitoring as part of our climate ambitions um and in fact that there are correlations between the two and so we are very much looking at the monitoring of our um annual status report which did show a 50 reduction in um no2 and no2 is very much produced at the same time as as co2 so you can sort of read some correlations into that and we're continuing to look at how we can use that data really i just want to say you know this is a can you turn your mic off it's a really detailed report it's excellent and it's so good to have done all that scrutiny work and to have the those recommendations followed up it's absolutely brilliant especially the training uh for me that was one of the recommendations i really was keen on and the training the retrofitting and the energy is absolutely brilliant so i'll just pass to the committee now i'll just ask you to be brief and i'll take council russell and councillor heather thank you and thanks for the um report um just on the retrofit um there's a really good project at the um lldc the old olympic park where they're doing a lot of retrofit training and it just might be worth connecting up with them because the transport links are pretty good on the overground and um and they they're doing their their trip that there might be some good connections for colleges in islington um but the main thing i wanted to pick up on was the um 7.17 which is the bit about delivery riders and it says that specific locations including hybrid corner the council works for tfl community safety licensing and the metropolitan police to improve facilities and education to reduce the impact on the local area of delivery riders and i was just wondering if there's any work the way that's written it sounds like the delivery riders are a problem and actually the delivery riders are workers who are working in often exploitative conditions and who kind of need support they would really benefit from access for instance to toilets if you set up a delivery hub and i just wondered whether there's any work going on to think about the well-being of those delivery riders um as well as thinking about it as a um i mean you know as an issue of a load of people hanging around at hybrid corner so it certainly has been in the past um it might be worth getting a bit of an update from from teams well that's the inclusive column team that's been working with that i mean it is it's absolutely the case that they do see delivery drivers as being a marginalized community who need support as well i mean one of the things they've done around hybrid corner for example is work with tfl to get a a specific bay for for delivery drivers to put their motorbikes in because people were complaining that you know that they were parking on hybrid corner but of course you know if you don't have your your cycle near you then a there's an issue with theft but also for these for these um drivers and riders moving around quickly um is important for their own obviously the money they earn depends on on how quickly they get places so the actual the problem with the it is the model in itself that is the is the issue i mean they are they are required to move around quickly and they'll get their job based on how quickly they can get to spaces um we can pick up we can we can ask a bit more of an update of that um councillor heather then yeah before i'm going to make my point just just to try and be helpful i mean i'm on licensing now and but we we found a solution to what caroline's mentioned uh because our problem was mcdonald's in seven sisters road and we took them to a licensing review and what they did was they then started to use uh non-motorized delivery drivers which has caused a lot of problems we also got that franchisee because it's important to understand that mcdonald's stores are not all all the top mcdonald's their franchisees the franchisee lets them use the toilets and they've even got like an area that they can sit down in there so that's how we did that there so i did share this with uh people in the council about what we've been doing on that anyway but on my point is about um obviously i am the recycling champion and i know we've got a target of reaching uh 40 percent of recycling outside waste by 2030 but we uh and you've heard me say this before that we're sort of not going the walls that we're going away from it or you know there's a problem and i appreciate that we're doing loads of work and it's not easy and whatever and it's a bit hard to understand why that's happening but so therefore and i know like this is we've already mentioned about the uh the new the government and the money for the uh extended producer responsibility and you know removing waste you know source so we don't get waste and whatever but um and you did mention sarah about the money coming in for that what realistically can we achieve uh with with uh the money we're going to get is is that it seems to me and other councils have mentioned this it's not rocket science so that's part of the problem is reduced reducing the products at source so they don't get made in the first place excess packaging and whatever but it seems to be really slow and whatever but i just wondered what can we do what we're going to do with the money that we're going to get uh andrew may be a better person to to come in on that one they we're working through a series of actions at the moment because obviously um so part of this money is actually to pay for the work that we already do i disposing of the packaging that's coming in um so it's not necessarily additional to do do additional things if you like um i think matthew i think is working through a series of of options at the moment which i think he's going to present yeah obviously we were due we were due to do our waste reduction recycling plan for the next sort of two years the gla has just decided that actually they're going to give us a year extension on the existing one so we don't need to do one now but obviously we do want to look at sort of options so we're we're we're putting sort of cases together let's say we know where we're going to have the most impact um food waste is a key one if we can get more people taking up food waste that would have a massive uh uh impact both in terms of you know carbon reduction but also in terms of cost on the levy because cost to dispose of general weight against food waste is is a big difference so we are looking at some options and proposals uh but as kind of champion says you know some of that funding is doing stuff that we're already doing the collection disposal of packaging waste there is somewhere around lobbying we'd see what the the extended producer responsibility uh tax has on manufacturers to say do they start changing their production methods so we reduce the amount of packaging that's going into the work way into the waste stream um so yeah there's plans but we yeah there's and there's more coming on there's more funding coming for around food waste collection as well but you know we we've got a pretty comprehensive service in terms of the offer it's getting residents to take that up and use it consistently which is which is an ongoing challenge um and we perform pretty well compared to other boroughs um as we presented the last time i think the point you make is that actually and one of the things we're trying to do in the waste authority is trying to do um other boroughs are trying to do is actually push the government to go further um on things like extended producer responsibility and the other thing that we don't have at the moment is the compulsory recycling so we you know we can't really enforce against people who don't you know who don't recycle now of course you you want to think about actually how you use those powers but those powers aren't there at the moment um and i think you know for me actually having the government coming out with some very strong statements about why we should recycle you're doing a national campaign possibly around the food waste um as i said by 2026 local authorities um are going to have to provide food waste to all properties um it would actually be really helpful i think because we you know we do tell people we've got this food waste campaign we do an awful lot of work around comms and things like that but actually they need they need some really high level sort of um pressure which then we can then piggyback onto and explain to residents why it's so important um thank you very much yes i'd echo it's a very uh informative report thank you very much um i had just a couple of questions so one was is there any evidence yet and it might be too early or it might be as council champion has said it needs to be part of a broader thing it looked like a lot of um reach from the social media campaign on eat like a londoner but have have we seen or is it too early to tell whether that's led to actual behavioral change and then the gene stokes initiative seemed very interesting and i'm conscious there's a number of kind of local food uh projects trying to stop food going to landfill and make it available to people um but i wonder and i it it's a bigger picture issue but thinking in the earlier discussion about the funding streams that are needed to achieve the scale of change that we need i i know in the report that wings you know is no longer operating we saw the loss of bright sparks it seems to me that there are some good models that work work but that are not in the current environment going to be self-sustaining and is there any talk london-wide or is there talk elsewhere about how some of those initiatives could be supported because clearly they do have a beneficial impact but um we you know some of those it it's disappointing for people who are involved in them that they come to an end but also they do have a role in behavioral change and in uh shaping people's expectations and is there a timetable for the review of the community energy scheme i was just thinking with the previous discussion the more we raise awareness of retrofit the more likely it is that people might want to do something and uh would need uh financial support for that and i haven't quite realized that the st john's mansion uh was also being uh there was a heavy focus on decarbonization in that so that's really brilliant that we're bringing an empty building into some you know good social use and we're doing that in a way that is uh uh contributing towards decarbonization so thank you very helpful i don't know in respect to be like an under no i know there is some evaluation going on of the the trials that are carrying out at the moment but the door knocking is still ongoing um i think coms certainly have some um have some stats um but we can we can pick that up unless andrew knows anything any more detail no we'll have the sort of hits and sort of and link through so we'll have the sort of data on that which we can provide but in terms of whether that how that relates to behavior change that's a lot that's a bigger tougher question to ask and that's one of our problems with charter how do you measure the impact and so well if we're going to invest x amount in this it will yield one percent recycler it's very hard to sort of show that sort of correlation i know there are some um some reports back from the the people who are doing the door knocking about what they're sort of you know what conversations they are having with people and what percentage of people saying yes actually um we'll give a go um but again i think there'll be a find that sort of final report to be prepared on that at some point in the future i mean it's one of the other just uh last mile delivery which i think freight for us is really really really important trying to uh allow businesses and support businesses and other people to move around more sustainably is is absolutely huge because we know that if we can do that that takes you know that takes traffic not just off our local streets but also our main roads as well um one of the initiatives which isn't in here i think is we're working with amazon um um on essentially what they're doing instead of driving around the borough they're going to they're parking up in two places in the borough one in cali um one in junction which i've just started uh there will be a driver with the van but they will then have people who will make deliveries on foot and that that was just started i think the november we've had it from november the cali trial has been going on and i think that's quite successful and they're going to start on junction i think they started on junction today so that was quite interesting um in terms of funding streams for um like bright sparks um we we would have supported bright sparks had there been a bright sparks to support and i think that's one of that's one of our problems um with that uh so there is there is some money around but again it's you know it's it's it's making sure it's sustainable and long lasting um but i mean library things for example is something that we we would look at to do but with our problem is finding the right premises for it so it's sort of bringing everything together and making sure things are sustainable going forward okay so um yeah it's quite sad the demise of wings i think i think they came to the committee i've got a memory of them coming but the there may be some it's quite a cutthroat business isn't it that and it's a battle for it's precarious as has been said so thank you very much for that so we're moving on to the next report and how could we do this yeah i'm we have got um obviously this second report is a lot longer no a lot more road-ranging but there are um some areas of synergy with with the other one because some of the things that we discussed about waste and recycling and so on um and also about freight um are also covered in this report so um i think probably the things to to highlight um are some of the challenges particularly that we might have had with some of our retrofit projects um so the first recommendation was for a model house um and we've identified hybrid quadrant for that we've got a very long way in terms of you know getting really great designs uh for that project um and costings um and this is not unique to to this particular project but in general because costs have gone up very significantly it's really affected viability of of all of our retrofit and new build projects um and so um you will probably see through the report that's the same um challenge for the borley house uh borley road passive house um project um and when we also look at our corporate buildings um you know we've done this fantastic work on um the waste recycling center which is brilliant um we've got aspirations to do lots more um but the funding model at the moment is is not in the council's favor in terms of match funding um and so that is a challenge for us um but we're constantly trying to find ways around and there was discussion earlier about cyclical works and how we sort of make the most of those and that's something that we're trying to do um through the strategic asset management plan and so on but yeah we are we still have a very strong ambition to try to bring these low carbon retrofit projects forward um but some of the costings associated with them are are proving really challenging in in the market at the moment i think that's one of the reasons we're so keen to take advantage of the government's um and the previous government's determination to to work with um heat networks um and we're you know we're part of the advanced zoning pilots that the government's um do at the moment and we've also worked with 3ci on on trying to find models around around the sort of future neighborhood that that looks at um heat networks because clearly with heat networks actually the level of retrofit that you would need to do to make it affordable is is less um so enables it will enable us to do more does the committee have any questions on that net zero report thanks counsel heather um on page 19 recommendation 13 it's about a renewed focus on waste management on estates and premises uh it's about improving recycling and food waste we've all you've already mentioned something about that but um specifically um uh it talks about 13.4 about the the six month trial that's just ended um and that was in in feasibility of providing food waste collections residents living above shops like but then it sort of links to it something about some uh new burdens funding for local authorities so i know that's what you're you're sort of talking about but um so we've done the trial and obviously you you you know not just at this meeting you rightly said if we can increase like food waste do you actually know how the trial went i mean you said it says it's successful like is it going to be and is it dependent on that other money to sort of roll it out further to you know so if it as it works are we going to do more and we'll you know what will that lead you probably can't say exactly but it'll improve the recycling rate anyway won't it so so so the the the government already committed to um requiring every local authorities to deliver food waste to every household which will include flats above shops and the new burdens money will is we will get it we've already had some in terms of capital that's transitional this year next year and then there will be some money for for rolling that out i think we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to afford it without with it would be very difficult to afford it without um but we are expecting money that will that will enable us to do that yeah that's right um it well it was successful so we we know sort of rough i think we presented it about we presented it last time in terms of actual what what level of recycling that rate that would contribute and the cost of rolling that out um across it to every uh every uh property in the borough so yeah we would use that new burdens funding to do that because that's a legal requirement that we provide that service to every household just to say thanks for that because that's like positive that's a positive thing because it would be very easy in all of this like because i've got confused you know how much are we doing and whatever and but what you're trying to do is is you're trying to work on like tangible steps that we can take to increase the rate so that it improves the overall rate and i appreciate it's really difficult yeah so thank you oh thanks council just to follow up on the um food waste collection from above shops is the what's the density of food waste bins are you kind of thinking of having that is there a kind of certain length of street that each that people might be expected to walk to get to a food waste bin if they live above a shop i don't know what that length is but clearly if you go along hollywood road they aren't they are relatively close together but that may be something that that we would have had a look had a look at i don't know whether that's been a barrier getting people to walk to to um to the nearest point but it's something i can take away and again unless andrew knows anymore okay so um i just wanted to say about the you know i've been writing to ministers for the environment and secretary of state for the environment probably i'll write about you know the saying the situation of trying to retrofit and improve conditions for residents is we need more funding i'm probably right about that as well so it's it's frustrating because you do all this work and there's the funding's not there it's really good work that you're doing i mean it's partly also the way the funding operates so you know the problem is that we get we get grant funding which we can't always take advantage of because we've been required to match fund so even if we had the same amount of money but we were allowed to spend in a slightly different way we could do more than we do now i'm just going to go to any other questions no so i'm just going to check with you could you say your name again do you have a question my name is jana rock yeah um i've got lots of questions but i'm i'm fine i mean i just wanted to listen in and see where you know what you're what you're scrutinizing and like what your opinions are of the counselors i will catch up with rothay's counselor uh separately because we we this is this is our ward so it would be good to do it yeah on a more itemized basis thank you that was really interesting thank you thanks a lot well really really appreciate that work you've done and i've got to apologize sarah because quite often you're at the end and i i rush you and it feels really unfair because you do all this work but i promise next time you will go first i i really appreciate the fact that you all really do scrutinize and and read all the reports and i i know there's a lot of information in there but yeah i know that's it's really appreciated thank you very much thanks everyone and the meeting is oh quite closed thanks emma's on my case that's great great so we've just got to go to work plan can we agree the work plan please thank you thanks emma
Summary
The committee heard a presentation about the council's work on greening the borough, and heard evidence from council officers about two council policy documents, the draft Climate Action Supplementary Planning Document (SPD), and the accompanying Retrofit Handbook. The committee also considered two of the council's annual reports, the 12-Month update on the Circular Economy and Green Jobs Review, and the 12-Month update on the Overview of the Council's 2030 Net Zero Carbon Programme Review.
Greening in Islington
Andrew Bedford, Assistant Director for Green and More Active, John Ryan, Head of Natural Environment, and Matt Bonamy, Head of Transport Projects, presented this item.
The council has set a number of targets to make Islington greener, including a commitment to cover 50% of the borough with Liveable Neighbourhoods by 2026. These Liveable Neighbourhoods are an evolution of the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) that were introduced during the pandemic. However, they differ from LTNs in that they aim to deliver a broader range of benefits, such as greening, walking and cycling infrastructure, and placemaking, and are designed to be developed in collaboration with the community.
The council also aims to plant 600 more trees a year than are lost, and to increase canopy cover to 30% by 2050. There is currently 25% canopy cover in Islington, which is above the London average of 21%. The council is also committed to achieving a 1.5 hectare increase in public green space by 2030.
Councillor Hayes raised the issue of trees that are planted close to people's homes, noting that while they bring nature to people's doorsteps, they can also cause problems with pollen, falling leaves, and branches. Mr Ryan explained that the council is aware of these issues and is trying to plant smaller trees that are less likely to cause problems. He also said that the council is doing more to educate residents about the benefits of trees.
Councillor Russell asked whether there were plans to retrofit the existing LTNs to deliver some of the benefits of Liveable Neighbourhoods. Mr Bonamy confirmed that this was on the agenda, but that the council was currently focusing on areas of greatest need. He also highlighted the importance of creating connected areas for people to walk and cycle, and said that the council was looking at ways to connect the existing LTNs with the new Liveable Neighbourhoods.
Councillor Russell asked how the council planned to roll out its programme of converting stub roads to pocket parks. Mr Bonamy explained that the council has mapped all of the stub roads in the borough, and that the pocket parks will be delivered as part of the Liveable Neighbourhood programme.
Councillor Champion added that the council was working with the organisation that runs Mayton Street and the Stress Garden on the Annette Road Liveable Neighbourhood to see if they could help with the delivery of pocket parks in that area.
Councillor Jeapes raised the issue of an unofficial path that runs through the middle of Highbury Fields, and asked if the council could do something to stop people from using it. Mr Ryan explained that the council has tried to restore the path in the past, but that it has always been quickly returned to its current state. He said that the council has also consulted on putting in a proper path, but that residents have always rejected this option.
Councillor Jeapes also said that some residents do not understand why the council does not prune trees in the same way as other boroughs, such as Hackney, Haringey, and Camden. Mr Ryan explained that the council tries to avoid over-pruning trees, and that it is doing more to educate residents about the benefits of trees. He also said that the council is looking at ways to reduce ground compaction, which can be a problem for trees.
Councillor Champion added that the council is working with a number of partners, including Octopus, to develop a Green Streets programme, which will package up a number of initiatives, such as tree pit gardens, community weeding, and pocket parks.
Councillor Heather asked whether the council was approaching any of the residents who had attended the consultation events for the Annette Road Liveable Neighbourhood to see if they would be interested in becoming Greener Together champions. Mr Bedford said that the council was looking at ways to coordinate environmental volunteering and engagement across the borough, and that this would include working with Sarah Hitchcock's team to promote the Greener Together champions programme at Liveable Neighbourhood events.
Update on the Climate Action Supplementary Planning Document
Sakiba Gerda, Head of Planning Policy and Development Viability Service, and Flora Walker, Sustainable Design Officer, presented this item.
The council has produced two documents to provide guidance on how to make new and existing buildings in Islington more climate-friendly. The draft Climate Action SPD will provide guidance on a number of areas, including retrofitting, biodiversity, flooding, rainwater harvesting, and sustainable design standards. The second document, the Retrofit Handbook, will provide more detailed guidance on how to retrofit existing buildings, and will be particularly aimed at existing residential properties.
The documents are currently out for consultation, and the council is holding two stakeholder events, on 28 January and 6 February, to gather feedback.
Councillor Clarke welcomed the inclusion of greywater reuse and recycling in the SPD, noting that developers have been very reluctant to incorporate this into their schemes. She also said that she hoped that the SPD would include wording on rerouting rainwater to toilets, as this had been done by a developer at a recent planning committee meeting. Ms Gerda said that she would look into this.
Councillor Heather asked how the council would resource the inquiries it was likely to receive about the SPD and the Retrofit Handbook. Mr Bonamy explained that the council has funded a dedicated planning officer to provide free advice on retrofit measures. Ms Gerda added that the council expects the take-up of this service to grow as the SPD is promoted.
Councillor Hayes asked how the council planned to publicise the Retrofit Handbook to residents who might be interested in only one part of it. Ms Gerda said that the council would be working with colleagues in Climate Action to develop a communications strategy, and that this could include producing leaflets on specific topics.
Councillor Hayes also asked if the council could provide advice on sources of funding for retrofitting, particularly for community organisations. Ms Gerda said that the council would be looking at ways to do this, and that it would also be working with colleagues in Legal and Housing to see if it could make it easier for tenants to retrofit their homes. She also said that the council would be working with the licensing team to encourage private landlords to support retrofitting measures.
Councillor Jeapes raised the issue of council tenants who live in properties with poor quality windows. She asked what the council was doing to help these residents, and whether the committee could make a statement on this issue. Councillor Champion explained that the council's capital works programme includes replacing windows on estates, and that Councillor Jeapes should contact the housing property manager for her estate to find out when the windows on her estate are due to be replaced. Ms Gerda added that the SPD and the Retrofit Handbook set out cases where people will be able to have their windows replaced, and that the council is looking at ways to make it easier for residents to replace their windows with double glazing.
Councillor Potts asked whether the council had considered following the example of Kensington and Chelsea Council, which has introduced an SPD that does not require planning permission for solar panels on unlisted buildings. Ms Gerda explained that Kensington and Chelsea's approach has not been very successful, and that the council has decided to take a different approach. She said that the council's SPD will address all of the measures that can be taken to make buildings more climate-friendly, and that the council will be offering free advice to help residents navigate the planning process.
Councillor Russell welcomed the SPD and the Retrofit Handbook, and said that she was particularly impressed by the Retrofit Handbook, which she said was well set out and easy to understand. She asked whether the council had started thinking about how to encourage retrofitting along whole streets. Ms Gerda said that the council was beginning to think about this, and that it would be looking at ways to identify streets where it could speed up the take-up of retrofitting measures, possibly by helping residents to access funding.
Councillor Russell also asked whether the SPD would make it easier for groups like Cali Energy to work with the council. Ms Gerda said that the council would welcome this, and that it would be happy to work with Cali Energy to help them to achieve their goals.
Ms Hitchcock added that the council is working with Cali Energy and Power Up North London through the Islington Community Energy Fund, and that the council is currently evaluating this scheme to see how it could be improved. She also said that the council is commissioning a detailed local area energy plan, which will identify the optimal routes to decarbonisation for the borough. This plan will include looking at the potential for heat networks, electric vehicle infrastructure, and retrofitting.
12-Month Update on The Circular Economy and Green Jobs Review
Sarah Hitchcock, Head of Climate Action and Sustainability, presented this item, and Councillor Champion also spoke to the report.
This report was a response to a number of recommendations made by the committee in its Circular Economy and Green Jobs Review in 2022-23.
The report detailed a wide range of work being done by the council to deliver a more circular economy in Islington.
Key successes included the council working with the North London Waste Authority (NLWA) to develop a new draft joint waste strategy; the completion of a year one update report on the recycling and weight reduction recycling plan; and the delivery of a comprehensive programme of repair and reuse events. The council is also working with the NLWA to promote reusable nappies and period products, and to increase the uptake of the reusable nappy voucher scheme.
The report also highlighted the council's efforts to increase recycling rates. This included the introduction of three estate recycling officers, the delivery of the Thriving Neighbourhoods campaign, and investment from the NLWA and the London Energy Efficiency Fund (LEEF) in the reuse and recycling centre.
The council is also supporting residents to make sustainable choices and reduce waste through its major food waste campaign, which is being supported by door-to-door engagement.
Councillor Russell asked about the work being done to support delivery riders, and questioned the wording of the report, which she said sounded like the delivery riders were a problem. Councillor Champion explained that the council has been working with TfL to provide specific bays for delivery riders to park their motorbikes, and that the council sees delivery riders as a marginalised community who need support.
Councillor Heather asked what the council planned to do with the money it would be receiving from the government's extended producer responsibility scheme. Ms Hitchcock explained that some of this money would be used to fund the work that the council already does, such as collecting and disposing of packaging waste. The council is also looking at how it could use the money to reduce food waste, which would have a major impact on both carbon emissions and the cost of waste disposal. Councillor Champion added that the council would be pushing the government to go further on extended producer responsibility, and to introduce compulsory recycling.
Councillor Hayes asked if there was any evidence that the Eat Like a Londoner campaign had led to behavioural change. Mr Bedford said that the council had data on the reach of the campaign, but that it was too early to say whether it had led to behavioural change. He also said that the council was evaluating the food waste campaign and would be producing a final report in the future.
Councillor Hayes also asked about the Gene Stokes initiative, and whether there was any talk about how to support similar initiatives that have had to close down due to a lack of funding. Councillor Champion said that the council would have supported Brightsparks if it had been able to, but that the council's problem is finding suitable premises.
Councillor Champion also mentioned that the council is working with Amazon to trial a scheme where deliveries are made on foot from two hubs in the borough, one in Caledonian Ward and one in Junction Ward.
12-Month Update on The Overview of the Council's 2030 Net Zero Carbon Programme Review
Ms Hitchcock presented this item, and Councillor Champion also spoke to the report.
This report reviewed the council's progress in delivering its 2030 Net Zero Carbon Programme. The report highlighted a number of successes, including the identification of a site for a model house in Highbury Quadrant, the progress being made on the Borley Road Passive House project, and the completion of the retrofit of the waste recycling centre.
However, the report also highlighted the challenges the council faces in delivering its net zero carbon programme, particularly the high cost of retrofitting and the need for match funding from the government.
Councillor Heather asked about the six-month trial of food waste collections for residents living above shops. Ms Hitchcock explained that the trial had been successful, and that the council was expecting to receive funding from the government to roll out the scheme borough-wide.
Councillor Russell asked about the density of food waste bins that the council was planning to provide for residents living above shops. Ms Hitchcock said that she would look into this.
Councillor Champion added that she would be writing to the government to ask for more funding for retrofitting, and that the council would be working to take advantage of the government's commitment to heat networks.
Councillor Hayes asked if the council was aware of the retrofit training programme being run by the LLDC at the Old Olympic Park. Councillor Champion said that she was not aware of this, but that she would look into it.
Attendees
Documents
- Agenda frontsheet 14th-Jan-2025 19.30 Environment Climate and Transport Scrutiny Committee agenda
- Public reports pack 14th-Jan-2025 19.30 Environment Climate and Transport Scrutiny Committee reports pack
- Minutes 03122024 Environment Climate and Transport Scrutiny Committee other
- Minutes 12112024 Environment Climate and Transport Scrutiny Committee other
- ECT Workplan 2024-25
- Second Despatch 14th-Jan-2025 19.30 Environment Climate and Transport Scrutiny Committee other
- Green Streets Scrutiny Presentation
- 2409_Exec response to EnvScrutiny_CircEconJobs_Final other
- Additional Despatch 14th-Jan-2025 19.30 Environment Climate and Transport Scrutiny Committee other
- 2024_ECCT Scrutiny Committee report_Climate Action_December2024_v3_Final other
- Additional Despatch 14th-Jan-2025 19.30 Environment Climate and Transport Scrutiny Committee other
- 2024_ECCT Scrutiny Committee report_Climate Action_December2024_v3_Final other