Bedford council working to improve after below average climate change scorecard result


During this week’s Climate Change Committee (Monday, February 3), the challenges, shortcomings, and plans for improvement ahead of the next round of scoring were discussed. The 2024 results are set to be published in June this year.
The council’s 2023 score was 30 per cent, compared to the 35 per cent average for single-tier councils.
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Hide AdClaire Wilkinson, energy and water technical officer, said the council had performed well in some areas, scoring 58 per cent in collaboration and engagement and 40 per cent in planning and land use.
Councillor Sue Oliver (Labour, Kempston North) asked why the council had 23 questions it was “bound to get zero on”.
Ms Wilkinson said there were “lots of different reasons”.
“Some of them were where we may not have released evidence into the public realm for actions that we are already completing,” she said.
“It may be that we just missed the mark on certain criteria.
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Hide Ad“So where we might not meet it this year when we get the scorecards, potentially next year, we will have met that criteria.”
Paul Pace, service director – public realm, highways and waste management, added: “We have in the past been very good at promoting things and that’s where the evidence comes from this climate score cards.
“We have to provide evidence, it’s not just a case of if we can give them a business case or an element of where we funded a solar panel scheme or something like that.
“We’ve got to work with our comms team and get more of that information out in the way that we can use that as evidence to score us and get better points,” he said.
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Hide AdMs Wilkinson said the answers the council gave to Freedom of Information requests, which were also used in scoring, may not have been correct.
“We try to work really hard with our freedom of information team to try and steer the questions our way,” she said,
“But we couldn’t quite control everything.
“So things might gone back that weren’t quite correct or the questions didn’t quite match up to what we were expecting.”
Mr Pace, also raised concerns about inconsistencies in the scoring process.
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Hide Ad“I’m not going to say anything too much in relation to naming certain councils,” he said. “But we know certain councils seem to have got scores for things which we know they haven’t done. Which is a little bit unfair.
“We’ve been totally honest on how we’ve responded to the questions, but as I said it’s a little bit naughty when we know certain councils have definitely scored on stuff that we don’t believe they’ve done, and we’ve got good evidence they haven’t done.”
The final scores for 2024 are expected to be published in June, after which the council will analyse the results and report back in September with a full action plan.
The council remains optimistic that improving transparency and strategic planning will lead to better results in the next assessment.
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