Questions to be asked by Members of the County Council of the Leader of the Council, a Cabinet Member, or a Chairman of a non-Scrutiny Committee. The question will be answered by the relevant Member and the Member asking the question may then ask a follow up question which will also be answered
Minutes:
Mr. D. Nixon asked the following question of the Cabinet Member for Environment and Assets whose reply is set out below the question:-
Question
The U.K. Climate Change Projections 2009 on the Staffordshire County Council web-site are based on the now discredited Met. Officer’s Hadley Centre. This is forecasting hotter, drier summers and warmer wetter winters. Since 2007 we have had colder, wetter summers and colder drier winters.
(a) Why is the Staffordshire County Council web-site, therefore, still spouting forth on information that is not now relevant and that has been shown to be discredited?
(b) What is the point of the Staffordshire Council tax-payers funding people in jobs that to most of them seems an irrelevance?
(c) Are the climate jobs at Staffordshire County Council those jobs that the Tax-payers Alliance calls’ non jobs’?
Reply
(a) Firstly, the Hadley Centre is a world renowned centre for climate studies and has not been discredited. SCC’s policy on tackling climate change is based on peer reviewed science, namely the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. This is the world’s leading internationally accepted authority on climate change, set up through the United Nations and comprising thousands of experts from over 120 countries.
The Member appears to be confused between climate and weather. Weather refers to atmospheric conditions which are happening at a particular point in time, whereas climate refers to the average and variability of weather over an extended period of time, often described by scientists as thirty years. Therefore the weather experienced in the last five years can not be claimed to invalidate the Hadley Centre’s predictions. Weather records over the last 100 years or so clearly demonstrate that the climate is changing. Weather in the UK is, as the member himself has observed, becoming more extreme and unpredictable. The vast majority of the County Council’s advice to the general public on climate change is concerned with enabling them to make financial savings through energy efficiency measures and behaviour in the home, as well as advice on grants to support those in fuel poverty. This is provided through the OC3 website which is jointly run and supported by every other public sector organisation in Staffordshire plus several third sector groups. This website received 76,254 hits in the last financial year, suggesting that the people of Staffordshire find it extremely relevant.
(b) Regardless of individual opinions on climate change, the Climate Change Team undertakes a wide range of projects connected not just to climate change but mainly to energy conservation, cost saving and renewable energy, making significant financial savings for the county council. To give some recent examples of cost saving projects:
i. A solar PV project on 13 of our libraries will make energy savings and generate income equivalent to £38,000 pa at today’s prices for the next 25 years (index linked).
ii. A second solar PV project has secured guaranteed free electricity for 25 schools for 25 years with the panels installed at no cost.
iii. Phase 1 of the Carbon Trust Schools programme ran for 6 months in 2011/12 and saved the 10 participating schools a total of £55,486 from their annual energy bills. Phase 2 will be commencing in 2012/13.
iv. A project to use some of our redundant closed landfill sites for growing Miscanthus is expected to yield around £300,000 revenue and £190,000 profit over a 25 year period.
v. The team works constantly within the authority to reduce energy consumption, implement alternative renewable energy sources and to provide advice on mitigation against climate change.
vi. The County currently spend approximately £10 million per annum on energy. The climate change team makes a vital contribution to achieving our target of 3% energy reduction year on year.
The small team is also involved in adaptation planning, which works across SCC (including the corporate Risk Management Team) to ensure continued service delivery in the event of increasing extreme weather such as fire, flood, snow or heatwaves as evidenced by recent events.
(c) It is considered that a small team of 3 officers (with a salary bill of less than £110,000) who are working hard to save this large authority up to £20 million in fuel costs over the next 10 years, install renewable energy, help the public to make their homes more comfortable and affordable to heat, contribute to the authority’s actions to mitigate against climate change and provide services and back up to the public, businesses and local authorities throughout the County are not “non Jobs”.
As responsible cabinet member I have complete confidence in the importance of and the amount of resource applied by SCC around matters pertaining to the environment. My Policy is not to chase Carbon reduction for its own sake, but to save taxpayers money through efficiencies, energy cost reductions and income with any carbon savings being a bonus.
Mrs. C.R. Jebb asked the following question of the Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport whose reply is set out below the question:-
Question
(a) What consultation did you undertake with the Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire before changing the County boundaries to exclude the City of Stoke-on-Trent?
(b) How much did it cost for the new "Welcome to Staffordshire" signs?
Reply
The new County Council signs do not indicate a change to existing county boundaries but do distinguish between the two different local authorities. The Chief Executive and Leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council and all eight District Councils were advised, in February 2012, of the County Council’s intention to improve its boundary signing on strategic roads as part of a wider drive for prosperity and promotion of local pride in the county for residents, visitors and investors. No response was received from the City Council to our letters. We have not changed the County boundaries so the question relating to the Queens representative in Staffordshire is a misnomer.
The County Council recognises that the image we present to residents, visitors and investors is a key part of Staffordshire’s drive for prosperity and promotes pride in our county. As such, a rolling long term programme of signage renewal and installation started being implemented from March 2012 that will replace a hot potch of dilapidated and mixed signage that despoils our County’s borders. This follows our practice of rebranding to the new ‘knot unites’ image when it is appropriate, to keep costs down, that has been rolling out around the county and can be seen on our vehicles, Web site, letterhead and recently County Farms.
As we have numerous highway gateways to the County it was deemed appropriate and value for money to commence with the main arterial routes into and out of the county – these being the ‘A’ roads of double digit and above such as the A5, A34, A38 and A53 etc, where probably 80% of traffic is concentrated and more importantly probably a good 90% plus of non-local traffic originating outside of Staffordshire, to whom we wish to convey that they are in our County Council area.
Each “Welcome to Staffordshire” sign costs in the region of £200 and they are being funded on a rolling programme through the County Council’s maintenance budget for highway signs. The signage programme complements our extra £50M investment in Highways that was designed to arrest and turn around the years of under investment in our County’s Highways that had left us with deteriorating roads and equally disintegrating and neglected County signage.
Supplementary Question
You say that the signs distinguish between the two different local authorities, but of course they do not say it’s the administrative boundary of Staffordshire County Council. If you want to distinguish between Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Authorities, you need to say so on the signs. And surely the County Council has the capacity to commission signs that say “welcome to Staffordshire County Council” where we border with Stoke-on-Trent to show that distinction?
Reply
I can assure the Member that that is in hand.