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Thursday, November 18, 2021

Newbury Weekly News

Your views talk to us POST: Newspaper House, Faraday Road, Newbury, RG14 2AD EMAIL: editor@newburynews.co.uk Email letters to editor@newburynews.co.uk with your full name, a terrestrial address and daytime phone number. DEADLINE: MONDAY NOON

Let’s look at the budget in more detail, Ross SOMEWHAT out of the blue, councillor Ross Mckinnon, the Conservative member in charge of your council tax at West Berkshire Council, recently decided to write to the NWN about his budget of March this year. He talked of his good stewardship of taxpayers’ money and asked where the Liberal Democrats would save the money to cancel the green bin charge which generates income of £1.2m for the council and where he is now spending £900,000 on food caddies, which certainly eats into that amount. What he doesn’t mention in his self- congratulatory remarks is the £4.6m he had left over from his budget of 2020/21– that’s £4.6m more tax collected than he needed in order to deliver your council services. Put another way, this is about £65 per West Berkshire household; or the £22m of your money that he has squirrelled away in his reserves – that is about £315 per West Berkshire household. Plenty of money there, Ross, to drop the green bin charge. And he doesn’t mention the £960,000 the council lost on its first attempt to re-develop the London Road Industrial Estate – having broken procurement rules – or the income lost by chasing Newbury Football Club out of its home in Faraday Road years before the development was due to start (it still hasn’t).

temperatures will rise by more than 1.5 degrees). I disagree with Greta Thunberg’s critique that ‘COP26 is a failure’ and also with her underlying message. Yes, more needs to be done by almost every government – and most businesses, and most individuals – around the world; vested interests and bad incentives both need to be tackled. However, to continually declare that ‘the world is burning’ and that our children have no future unless all aspects of modern life are ditched is demotivating (‘what’s the point of changing my behaviour?’), psychologically damaging and far removed from reality. So how are we doing locally? The council’s environment strategy has two key parts relating to carbon; achieving a net-zero council operation by 2030, and enabling and encouraging all residents and businesses within West Berkshire to get as close to this goal as possible. Other parts of the strategy deal with improving our natural habitats and biodiversity, encouraging active travel, improving our resilience to climate change, and working more closely with other organisations and groups. The strategy also has to mesh with the council’s other strategic priorities. Overall, this council has made strong progress over the last year. Among the many good things which have happened, we launched a plastics recycling trial, which has

Now I tried to be considerate regarding the difficulties that Covid presented to the council last year, but if he is now going to crow about how he handled your money well – by taking much more than he needed – then I need to speak up. And the green bin charge is simply a tax by another name – a service you used to get for free which you now have to pay for – sounds like a tax to me. So, Ross, we had started to put your flawed budgeting of last year behind us, but since you mentioned it… JEFF BROOKS Deputy leader of the opposition and spokesm an on finance, property, commissioning and economic development West Berkshire Council Progress in West Berks on the environment SHORTLY after COP26 has concluded in Glasgow, we will be reviewing West Berkshire Council’s annual progress on our environment strategy at the executive this Thursday. The full results of COP26 aren’t yet known, but as might be expected there are both encouraging elements (including agreements on methane and deforestation, India’s long-term commitment to carbon neutrality, and green finance) and disappointing ones (non-attendance of key leaders, limited progress away from coal, and the increasing risk that global

been extremely well supported by residents and so far has diverted over 10 tonnes of waste plastic from energy recovery. The wildflower verges project has resumed after Covid, aiming to survey most of our massive roads network and improve wildlife where advantageous (volunteers are very welcome). More electric vehicle charging points have been installed. We continued the rollout of solar PV panels on school and council office rooftops and started the development of a large solar farm at Grazeley. In terms of our long-term commitments, while not everything is in place and there are still significant risks, we have a good chance of becoming a net-zero council within the next nine years. The wider target of becoming a net-zero district is far harder and a longer term challenge – the Government is aiming for 2050. The council has several important roles to play; helping enable this transition, communicating with residents and businesses, and working with central government and other organisations to act and influence policy. However, most of the big changes will come from individual choice and market forces. We can all play our part in many different ways, which all start with simple decisions based on our own situation (for example, around travel, what we buy, and what we eat). I look forward to us all responding to the climate challenge in the years

ahead, helping make West Berkshire an even better place for everyone. STEVE ARDAGH-WALTER Executive member for the environment West Berkshire Council Where we go now after COP26 has finished WELL, it’s over now and time will tell. If nothing else, it has given us two weeks of focus on what the issues actually are. Whilst following COP26, I was looking more for what was not said and who was not saying it, rather than what was. Let’s be positive, a lot of countries have made a lot of verbal commitments that I hope they follow through on. It gives me some hope. The missing bit comes down to the production of energy by the three biggest polluters (China, India and the US). As these same countries happen to be amongst the largest producers of goods on the planet, then we are still stuck in a situation where the products we consume are created mainly with dirty energy (ie coal). I therefore conclude that we must target the worst first and urge any activist who wants to make a difference quickly, to focus their energy on how they might influence these countries to move towards a greener future faster. My proposal was and is that as a nation we should introduce a labelling scheme where we can tell,

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