It was good to hear today from Basingstoke Transition Network asking how the Borough should go about being carbon free by 2030…
I want the Borough’s Local Plan to lead on the Climate Emergency and include policies that will empower planning to ensure we see ‘passivhaus’ standards delivered, we see zero carbon homes not offsetting, that protect our rivers and countryside, that deliver renewable energy linked to local homes. There is so much the Local Plan can enable if we put the Climate Emergency at the heart of it. The Council has £2million sat in a Climate Change reserve. I want to see a programme of home insulation grants to help both the Council’s own stock of buildings, but also residents’ homes transformed. The cost-of-living crisis is real and saving people money on their fuel bills and enabling better insulation of aging housing stock is essential. I want to see direct investment of the Borough’s resources in renewable energy may be through a community co- where people can buy into getting cheaper energy from renewable sources. I think we need to invest far more in public transport. Electric hopper buses that connect communities, not rigid bus lanes that only go where the commercial profit drives them.  We need to embrace rewilding and the ecological emergency too. We can and must do more to protect species through protecting open space and the countryside.