LETTER: Council is doing its bit for our environment

With reference to your letter from Dr Andrew Rollinson of Extinction Rebellion (Express, October 24).
LETTER: Council is doing its bit for our environmentLETTER: Council is doing its bit for our environment
LETTER: Council is doing its bit for our environment

Wakefield Council has been working for sometime now to reduce emissions, save energy and generally have a much greener agenda.

It is already involved in the northern forest project and the introduction of electric car points.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

At the May council meeting, and in the knowledge that the world climate crisis is clearly worsening, we agreed to go further and faster and proposed that plans for the next ten years would be made available to the December Council meeting. Our web site requested suggestions from the public to contribute to that plan.

If the responses were not concluded by November, then they couldn’t be included in the December submission.

In September - six weeks ago - it was agreed that I would become chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee that will not only be looking at our current actions but our future proposals.

ENGIE, which has have world wide knowledge and expertise, is involved in constructing the plan.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

I have no idea what Dr Rollinson is referring to in terms of ‘a politically engineered token gesture’.

Unlike many other councils we are all trying to work together to do our bit to improve our environment and hope that the private sector might do so too.

As a council we have had our budgets cut by central government every year since 2010, so our ability to do more environmental projects is somewhat limited.

As is our ability to make the massive changes that are needed across the world to save our planet but we hope to contribute in some small way.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It would be great and of much more use if Extension Rebellion was supportive instead of carrying out inept action recently on London Transport when they prevented travellers going to work.

Coun Olivia Rowley

Chairman of Wakefield Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee