Agenda item

Report of the Head of Community Services

The Head of Community Services presented the report.

In response to a Member question about how the organisation could further improve its already comparatively excellent recycling rate of approximately 46%, the Head of Community Services advised that an emphatic focus on food waste could take them up to between 50 and 60%. There was also a need to focus on containers; and then national Government policy also had to be considered. He went on to advise that it would cost circa £1.5 million to do these improvements to food waste recycling. Central Government grants to fund this had been promised but at the time of the meeting were not yet forthcoming.

In response to a member question about the Council’s electric vehicle strategy, the Head of Community Services advised that Council owned land had been phase one and the next phase would be the housing stock, but this was all constrained by what the Council owned. The Climate Change Programme Manager explained that there were six sites. The most recent planned scheme was a solar hub to be based on London Road, Coalville.

In response to a Member question about how Zero Carbon factored into procurement decisions, the Head of Community Services suggested there was more to be done but this was a work in progress. The Council intended to accentuate the focus on environmental sustainability and integrate it into all organisational procurement moving forward.

In response to a question about the failure to attain a previous government decarbonisation grant, the Strategic Director of Communities advised that the Council still had not had a response as to why they had not attained the grant, even though a response from national Government had been requested several times. This would be chased.

In response to a Member question about retrofitting housing stock,

the Strategic Director of Communities returned to the earlier discussions concerning the management of the Council’s housing stock. There was also, they added, the need to factor in public opinion on decarbonisation investments and there was a need to educate some residents. The 2030 task was not underestimated and required a wholesale and holistic change going forward.

In response to a Member question about utilising mine water, the Head of Community Services advised that this was a specialist and potentially quite tricky endeavour, and further work was planned to investigate both the possibilities and risks of the process.

In response to a Member suggestion that there was a requirement to make the new Leisure Centre in Coalville more environmentally sustainable, the Head of Community Services advised that there are Solar panels, amongst a variety of environmental features, and there was a latent possibility in the design of the Leisure Centre to retrofit it to make it more environmentally sustainable at a later date. It was noted that making all the district’s leisure centres more sustainable was a priority.

In response to a question about how the electric vehicle charging point roll out data was being collated, the Head of Community Services advised Members on the strategy going forward and how it was monitored.

In response to an expression of concern from a Member that the earmarked reserve had three quarters of it spent already, and a significant amount of that on staffing, the Head of Community Scrutiny advised that this spending had all been processed through Cabinet and previous Scrutiny Committees; as for staffing, this was a budget which encompassed three years of expenditure.

In response to a suggestion from a Member that the infrastructure should be put in place for electric vehicles whenever new car parks were developed moving forward, the Head of Community Services advised that the organisation was endeavouring to embed Zero Carbon into everything people do.

The Chair thanked members for their comments which would be presented to Cabinet when it considers the report on 25 July 2023.