Wokingham council has been taken to task over its climate change strategy.

The council has committed to making the borough carbon neutral by 2030.

Its Climate Emergency Action Plan has four key areas of focus: sustainable transport, sustainable homes, transitioning to renewable energy and encouraging residents to change their behaviour.

The council deliver an update on the progress of the action plan during a meeting.

Opposition councillors grilled Gregor Murray, the Conservative executive member for residents services, communications and emissions, over the progress of the plan.

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Cllr Paul Fishwick (Liberal Democrat) took Cllr Murray to task over the council’s park and ride scheme at Coppid Beech, a 256 space park and ride, which will cost the council an estimated £3.052 million. The park and ride buses will run services to Wokingham and Bracknell town centres.

Cllr Fishwick said:  “An in-depth study of eight park and rides in the UK indicated all of them were a financial drain on the authority, with the exception of one, and concluded that urban fringe bus car park and rides such as this one was described as a policy of car traffic redistribution rather than car traffic reduction. Would you agree with that?”

Cllr Murray answered: “The biggest thing we can do in terms of climate change is to drive behaviour change and to be able to that for transport, in an area where we have some of the highest car ownership in the country, we need to start solving the reasons why people are moving around our borough, so we have to try and solutions to the fact that people are commuting, they’re trying to go the station, the shops, and the school run."

Bracknell News: Gregor Murray, the Conservative executive member for residents services, communications and emissions. Credit: Wokingham Borough CouncilGregor Murray, the Conservative executive member for residents services, communications and emissions. Credit: Wokingham Borough Council

He said: “The simple case here is we have to start putting in place different means and different measures to get people to travel separately. Park and ride is one of them. I think we have to start with an open mind and say, this is a way of changing the way people moving around our borough, we’re going to need to find other measures as well, such as greenways, cycleways. I think we’ve got to look at everything. We’ve got to look at everything with an open mind.”

Cllr Murray was also quizzed by Cllr Rachel Burgess (Labour) over the collapse of the council’s planned Green Bank scheme which would have assisted businesses and companies with loans to retrofit properties with energy efficiency measures.

“The failure of the Green Bank has got a really big impact on our ability to meet our overarching objectives here. I can see that the [carbon] saving figures for that item are still mentioned in the report, but Legal have said we’re not doing that so I don’t understand why they’re still there. ”

Cllr Murray replied:  “If there is any duplication then yes of course we will take it out, we’re not trying to double count on anything, we have to be realistic, so we will take those points onboard and we will action them accordingly, if there is double counting involved.”

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Councillors were scrutinising a report on the Council’s Climate Emergency Action Plan. Rhian Hayes, a senior stragety advisor for the council, said a main report will be provided to councillors on July.

Later in the meeting, Cllr Murray said: “We’ve always said this is a living document, things are going to come into it, things are going to drop out of it, that’s the way things are going to be. Programmes are going to live and breathe somewhat, and overdeliver versus expectations. If you look at things like the solar farm, and the capacity of the solar farm that we were originally planning for that site, it has increased ever since the plans for that project started being thought through.”

He was referring to the council’s plans to build a solar farm in Barkham with approximately 72,000 panels. It is hoped the solar farm would reduce the borough’s carbon emissions by 94,000 tonnes while it is in operation.

The exchanges occurred at Wokingham Borough Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Management meeting on Wednesday, June 16.

You can watch how the meeting played out using this link.