Route map sets out North Northamptonshire Council's climate commitment

24 March 2022

A Climate Change Route Map which will set out how North Northamptonshire will work towards carbon neutrality is the focus of a paper before a meeting of the Council next week.

Last month, the authority declared its commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030 with £1million to be spent over the next three years to kick-start carbon reduction initiatives.

The route map shows how the council’s commitment to be carbon neutral will need to be embedded in policy making decisions as well as through a number of bespoke projects.

The blueprint shows how strategic planning policy will need to be guided by climate mitigation objectives while transport policy will include a continued drive for active travel projects such as electric bikes, the installation of more electric vehicle charging points and ongoing work with transport providers to explore accelerated adoption of electric vehicles.

The climate agenda will also influence procurement procedures in the council with work undertaken to explore how the authority can make best use of local suppliers who have a commitment to reduce carbon emissions and promote green practices.

The council will also produce a carbon management plan which sets out the means of capturing carbon emissions from buildings and vehicles.

At a meeting of the council in July 2021, we declared a Climate and Environment Emergency which was a very important commitment for us to make as a new council.

While we have set a goal to be carbon neutral by 2030, addressing climate change is a much longer-term commitment that will require innovation and widespread change.

This route map is a significant step forward in showing tangible evidence of how we are going to work towards that goal. The actions we take must be kept under review and I will want to bring back the Carbon Management Plan to the Executive later in 2022 in order to build on this and provide further actions that we will need to undertake to meet our 2030 target.

We have an important journey ahead of us which we are committed to seeing through so that by 2030 we do not look back and wish we had done more when we had the chance.Cllr Harriet Pentland, the council’s Executive member for Climate and Green Environment

This is an excellent piece of work which sets out clear plans of how we aim to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change.

Cllr Pentland and her Executive Advisory Panel have done a great job at moving this forward in a very short timeframe.Cllr Jason Smithers, Leader of the Council

Since its inception as a new council, a great deal of activity has been undertaken such as instigating a tree-planting initiative which has seen more than 2,000 trees planted in the past three months as well as continuing a campaign to ‘feed the bees’ by allowing wildflowers to flourish in some roadside verges, where appropriate.

The authority also hosted its own conference – NN Climate 21 – in November, to showcase pioneering measures already in place and in development to reduce carbon emissions in the North Northamptonshire area.

The specific budget of £1million funding over the next three years to tackle climate change will be allocated as £500k for the 2022/23 budget and £250k in both 2023/24 and 2024/25.

Further work will continue throughout 2022 including the creation of a Carbon Management Action Plan, a report on which will appear before the Executive later in 2022.