Transcript

Right, we're recording now. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this meeting of the Climate Change Steering Group. Welcome to members of the Councillors who are with us, but not members, and also to any members of the public who are watching. This is a meeting open for the public to observe, but not to participate in. Right. The agenda then, item one, is apologies for absence. Do we have any? No, we don't have any. Thank you. Item two, disclosure of interests and dispensations. This is to receive any disclosures by members of disposable peculiar interests, although in registerable interests, non-registerable interests in matters on the agenda, and the nature of any interest in details of any dispensations obtained. Members are reminded of the need to repeat their declaration immediately prior to the commencement of the item in question. Has anybody anything to declare? No. Right. Item three, then, minutes of the last meeting, which is March the 28th, may I sign them, and are there any matters arising? May I sign? Yes. Into the course. Happy to sign. Yeah. Thank you. Matters arising. Anybody got anything? Catherine, can I just mention the, um, the Delaware, um, presentation on Monday? Yes. Both super tonight were there just for the morning, and I think Lucy and Belize stayed for the afternoon as well. Yes, I didn't get that, but just carry on. No, um, I'm just wondering how the afternoon went and whether it was worth it, basically. I don't think that is strictly a matter arising. Oh, sorry. I just wanted some feedback, really. But you can do it under the item nine under any other business. Oh, okay. We'll save it for them. Okay. Right. Thank you. In that case, we can move on to item four, which is clean growth, UK net zero business and project presentation, please. Lucy or Elise? I think it's a cat. Yeah. It's a cat cat. Paulie. Come on, all counts. I do apologize. Oh, no. Hi, everybody. Nice to see you. It's green. So I've got a short presentation to share with you, and then obviously, please feel free to ask any questions. Okay. Can everybody see this? Okay. Yes. Yes. Thank you. It's small, but yes. Let me just should do full screen now. So yeah, thanks for inviting me today. So I'm just for another week, one of the regeneration offices for other district council, and I've been looking after the UK Share Prosperity Fund and the Rural England Prosperity Fund for the council. So I just thought it was useful just to kind of put the funding into context really, but basically, this project's coming out of this UK Share Prosperity funding that rather has, of which there's 1.6 million for both funds over, well, it'd be over the three years and we're just into the final year at the moment. Mix of revenue and capital funding, and it's there to support community in place, supporting local businesses and people and skills. So as part of this project, net zero project, we have allocated £150,000 from UK Share Prosperity Fund, and that's all going to be spent this year on the net zero business project. So just to sort of put the businesses into context, really, for Robber, we've got just over four and a half thousand SMEs in Robber, which is, you know, a very high number of small businesses, predominantly in manufacturing and tourism and hospitality sectors. Most SMEs are in the early stages of transition to net zero, and this is really just due to capacity, but also funding and investment for net zero projects, programs, if you like. We did a survey last year of businesses that we talked to on our business alerts, and they kind of said, yeah, we really want to do something around net zero, but we kind of need a bit of help, particularly around carbon accounting and sort of carbon action planning and general sort of more wider sustainability aspects of the business as well. Obviously we are, you know, large majority of others, and, you know, in the high-world national landscape or in a conservation area, and all. So that brings its own not just challenges, but opportunities as well for net zero for the businesses, I think, and obviously, you know, this area really supports the new climate strategy for rather reaching carbon neutral by 2030. So there's lots of reasons why, you know, we felt it was important to do this project as part of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and partnering with Clean Growth UK, who's sadly aren't here, but would love to come back at one of your future meetings and report back to you. So Clean Growth UK are based at the University of Brighton. It's a green of innovation network, UK-wide, but we're lucky to have one of the local clean growth south-east is based in Brighton, so not far away. They've got, they've been launched in 2014, and throughout that time they've been building up experience of working with small businesses, particularly in the southeast around a new net zero three, it should say 360, actually it says 350, sorry about that, 360 programme, and they're already working with Wield and Eastbourne Lewis and Aaron, so kind of have got those local government relationships as well. They've already got 3000 business members, and they've been doing a lot of bigger innovation projects with businesses, looking at clean green innovation and manufacturing particularly, so they work with the academics to help businesses do that. They've already delivered low-case grants, which is a low carbon grant across the southeast, so they've got lots of experience in this area, hence I was going to partnership with them. And over the next year we're going to be running the rather net zero 360 programme and energy efficiency grants that are going to be launching on the 7th of May, so you're the first group of people that we've actually talked about this, so it's quite exciting because it's obviously not launched yet. So this won't take long, but just sort of really just to share this information with you that the net zero 360 programme will be a series of workshops. The first one is going to be at Ashburn in place on the 24th of June, it will be open to any small, medium enterprises in brother, we've got a target that we want to support up to 50 businesses, it's part of the outputs, the targets we've got in the UK Share Prosperity Fund that will help support 50 businesses. And so it's a one-day workshop, it kind of gives an overview of what net zero means for businesses, looks at what carbon accounting looks like, how to measure business carbon footprint, what comes into that. And then obviously there's opportunity with networking, talking to other businesses that are in similar positions, so it's that kind of beginning of a network really as well. And then at the end of that they'll have access to the clean growth UK business carbon calculator and they'll help businesses develop a net zero plan as well. So yeah, it's really exciting, we're going to be launching this with press on the 7th of May, so and obviously information will be disseminated through our networks as well. The other element that we're going to be launching is business efficiency grants, so as part of that 150,000 we've got a 60,000 pound grant pot, that will be open to any SMEs that have been trading for over two years. We are looking for businesses to contribute 1,000 pounds of their own budgets, of their own funds, but we'll be able to put up to 5,000 pounds towards those projects and then we'll be able to support projects like LED lighting, source heat pumps, insulation and other energy efficiency solutions for those businesses. It will be assessed on a first-conversa basis and we'll be doing that in partnership with delivering that in partnership with clean growth UK, but actually it will be mainly managed through the regeneration team at Royal District Council. We do have another rural business fund running at the moment, but that's for much bigger pots and monads for up to 35,000 pounds and we've been completely inundated through that program, so it's currently paused, but this gives rather a kind of another opportunity to fund some of these smaller projects that really contribute to net zero in Royal District. So I think, yeah, there's a bit more information there, obviously there'll be information on this going up in the next week or so through the regeneration pages, through our news pages, but also on the clean growth UK website and there's the regeneration email address if anybody wants to know more about it, or otherwise speak to me in the next week while I'm still here. I'm happy to answer any questions and thank you for listening. Can I just kick off and ask, is this information on the website the only way we're publicising this? Or is there going to be a general comms release? Yeah, yeah, there'll be a general comms release. It's with our comms team at the moment and it'll be going through social media channels, business alerts, MyLerts, they'll be going out through the clean growth UK network as well. So thank you. And can I announce you took my precious number tonight? Oh, yes, please. Okay, thank you. Yeah, we would really appreciate any kind of marketing support, any, I mean, we can send out, I'll probably do a separate Councillor briefing as well, and to the parishes as well, I just think that's kind of what we generally do, and obviously Councillor Clean, you sit on the shared prosperity board, so yeah, we'll get the message out, so you've got some text to send people as well. So if you, you know, people want to include it in nalings or newsletters, then the information will be there. Yeah, thank you. That would be very useful. Thank you. Councillor Osborne. Yeah, I think I think Catherine's almost covered off while I was going to sort of say there. It's always useful with, if we as members have sort of that last email, that last slide with the emails on it, is always the easiest way to get it out to parish councils and chambers of commerce, anybody else. Right. Yep. So, yeah, it'd be useful. Thank you. I'll send that on with my email to Councillors, and that's really helpful. Thank you. That's good. Thank you very much. I can see no more hands, so thank you very much, Kat, and you're moving on. I am sadly, but I really can't wait to see how this project, how successful this project goes. Yeah. I'm sure you'll keep in touch. Absolutely. I just thought I'd take this opportunity to say thank you to Kat for working on this, because she and I have been working on this for about a year behind the scenes trying to get this. I'm ready. So I'm really excited that it is here now. Excellent. Thank you very much. So the next item, then, is home upgrade grant. Someone's going to give us a verbal update. Is that you, Lucy? Nope. That's Nick. Nick, Adam. It's just appeared on your screen. Hi, Councillor. I've got a few slides of that that help. Yes, please. Yeah. Okay. Can you see that? Slowjack. Yeah. Thank you. Hey, can you see that slowjack? Yeah. Marvellous. If I raffle through them, just at the last presentation, go for Q&A afterwards, if that's okay. Yeah. So I'm Nick Adam from East Waterloo's Councils on project lead for HUG 2, and work very closely with Lucy on trying to deliver home upgrade grants for private housing. What is HUG? It's basically a government grant scheme for private homes. It's there to deliver energy efficiency upgrades. It's got some criteria for it, as you might expect, 36,000 income. It's only anything, anyone that earns less than that, you're eligible equally if you're off-gas. It's also eligible for people that are recommended accommodation, but there's a bit of a catch there. The landlord can only own four properties or less. So if you've got a large landlord, poor FOGO, it's more applicable. But nevertheless, it's there reasonably generous in terms of the criteria and the set out. It runs up until March 2025, so we've got a year to deliver our targets, and it is a consortium of four local authorities. So it's East Point and Lewis, Rother and Hastings. We've also got a Fifth Lake Authority, East Essex County Council, and that's very important because they manage the Warhol and Czech service. They've got the lead on sort of field poverty strategy across the county, so overall, within the sort of five local authorities, we are trying to work very closely together to make sure we can target the right at homes. The measures themselves, this is what's up for grants, the scheme itself, how they've set it out. They've divided the measures into three pots, so you have Grade A pots. They are the ones that are viewed as the most important, so PV is now up there, a lot of insulation, internal or external, external is easier to do in terms of resident disruption and ASL coupons. So that's the priority, and if we're going to spend any money, 60% of the money has to be spent on Grade A measures. Grade B, this is less, but I'll just pick out the one that's important because in flats, storage heaters are there, so you can get a brand-spanking new storage heater under this grant, and Grade C, you have windows and storage heaters for other properties. So the blend of those can apply to the property mix in terms of the actual money that's available. This is how it's split even further, so it's a bit of a jigsaw. For us managing the program, when we're doing all of the assessments, we're really looking at all of the surveys, and then slicing it different ways to see actually how we can apply it best to different properties. But generally, if it falls into energy efficiency fabric measures and green heat, green heat is the easy one, or clean heat, it's 14,000 whatever type of property, so that's the easy bit. For energy efficiency, there's slight variances depending if it's a cavity property, or if it's a solid ball property, and then cut again if it's a flat, or detached, or mid-terris. So again, once we've done a survey, we will see what the property type is, and then work out what the measures are, and then work out what grant it could get. The best return is a solid ball-detached property for a green heat, and that can get up to 38,000, so looking at the maximum amount in a given property is 38,000, and the lowest would be 22,000 for a flat, and the rest is a blend in between. In terms of our aims, so we're trying to go for 150 homes to deliver this year, we started with RODA, we've got a bank of homes that we have assessed, we've done 31, what we call retrofit assessments, so the government requires a PAS certification, so it's PAS 2035, if you want to look it out, it's quite a long process, but nevertheless, that's what we're complying with, and it's retrofit assessments, that's where a surveyor looks at the whole house, looks at the whole menu of options that could be done to a property, and then we look at that survey, and basically look at the ones at the top priority match those against the grant, but we've done 31 in RODA, and we're now trying to convert those to approvals and then instruct our contractors to actually go ahead with the works, there's one bit in the process that can cause properties not to proceed, and that's called a batch approval process, so all the surveys get bundled up, we submit them via a portal, to the government portal, and they basically check out homework, and it's the costs that sometimes fail, so where we've gone to contractors to actually price it up, that doesn't always match with the expectations of the government, and therefore they get passed back to us to reconsider, so that's the one key stage in the process where with good intent we might try and create a big pipeline, it might actually drop, but the next phase, because we've done RODA, and we're trying to sort of convert that pipeline into works, the next phase is Lewis District, so that's the council I work for, and we're in the process of generating leads, if, as a result, both of those programs, we're still short, we'll just pay musical chairs, we'll go to Hastings, we'll go to Eastbourne, and then we might come back to Rolla, so it's really trying to target the properties that need them the most, and matching it up with the grant, and trying to deliver it in time, and we've got till December, end of December to actually have our finalist properties up for batch approval, which gives us three months to then to deliver, so the last slide is really where to go, and we have got postcards that we can print, so when it comes to Brother, having its turn, if you'd like to add to more marketing, we can print some more, we had a really successful mail drop there postcards to the Canberra and Ryan area, which is where we've got our leads, and I've talked to Lucy, that was one of your priority areas, but if you want to find out more, or if you've got any residents that are interested, this is the key slide, or any to file up and get more of our leads, that is it, I hope that wasn't too fast for you. No, that was really helpful, thank you, did I ask, are we using local businesses to do the work? We're actually about assessors, yes, the contractors at the moment, no, but we are trying to onboard more local contractors, if that's a priority we'll get that established with Regipit Works, they're based on those things, so we can switch that. Thank you, it would be a personal priority for me, because I'd like to see a local businesses benefit. Right, well, I'll... Yeah, and if they're local, they're spending less carbon getting to us, aren't they? Yeah, I'll take that onboard, thank you, yes. Thank you. Anybody else? No. Right, well, thank you very much, that's really interesting. All right. Hopeful, thank you. Okay, just... Right, moving on then to my career where it was projects upgrade, now I'm tempted to say this is just going to be in these, oh, I could have got one right, right, please. Yeah, good afternoon everybody, so yes, the next two items on the agenda both relate to the coronation living heritage fund, which is split into two distinct projects, so I've submitted this as two reports to the meeting this afternoon. The Microwoods Project Update Report just sets out how we received this funding in October to plant three urban microwoods in our urban areas, one each in Bachel, Bexhill and one in Rye. When we applied for the funding, we didn't have to specify exactly where we were going to plant the microwoods, so having received it, the first job was to actually work out the best location, so the report sets out the work that has gone on with key stakeholders and which sort of ecological reports have been considered to try to identify the most appropriate locations, and following various reviews on a number of sites, we have landed on the battle sites being at Coronation Gardens Recreation Ground, and again, we've looked at that recreation ground as a whole and considered various things that go on there, including sort of lines of sites onto the ground, proximity to residences, the fact that there's some reptile habitat relocation that's gone on from the Blackfriars site to decide exactly where the recreation ground is going to be the best place to plant this microwood. So these microwoods, they really are, as you can see, if you look at the report, they are very small areas of woodland, about the size of a tennis court, about 200 metres square ed, so very small and densely planted areas of woodland. So still absolutely plenty of open space left on that recreation ground for it to be continued to be used for leisure and recreation as it is now. Same goes for the site at Ry, which is on Mason's Field, popularly used for recreation, as an open green space by local residents with a play park there, but we would just be taking up a tiny space in between some of the existing trees there, again, to plant a small microwood on that site, and in Bex Hill, the selected location has been a sea-borne road recreation ground, which is just behind Pepton Community Hub. Now there are already some existing trees on that site, and again, play equipment that's been used, so we're actually going to have to split the microwood there across to 100 metre square plots, roughly, but we have run that past defra, and they've said that's absolutely fine for us to use the funding and do the planting in that way. So they are the three sites that we are focusing on at the moment. We do still have a few checks that we need to conduct at those sites regarding subterranean infrastructure, just to make sure we're not going to disturb any pipework or cabling. If we do go in and plant these microwoods, because it does require some quite intensive soil preparation, we'll be digging down into the ground, so we just need to confirm that there's nothing there that's going to be disturbed before we go on to the next phase, which will be to speak to Natural England to discuss the specific best mix of tree species to plant in those areas, and then we'll be procuring those trees from a nursery that meets the funding criteria standard, which is called this Plant Healthy Accreditation, so that's a biosecurity standard that we need to comply with as well. Looking forward beyond that, we'll be using community planting days to plant these woods, so we've already had loads of great engagement with some local community groups that have agreed to coordinate groups of volunteers to come along at all three sites to help us to actually plant these woods over the winter between 2024 and 2025. Woodlands must absolutely be planted by the 31st of March 2025 according to the funding, so hopefully by then we will have these all planted, and the funding also includes some follow-up remulturing and rewatering for the next couple of years as well, so again we'll be engaging with the local communities to help us to really connect them to these woodlands, because the whole point of this funding pot is to plant trees in commemoration of King Charles' coronation and to bring the community to engage with these green spaces, so there will be lots of engagement going on there. Thank you, exciting, nobody has a hand up, so we'll be then move on to the community orchards, please. This is the sort of the second part of the same funding pot from Defra, so again planting trees to commemorate the coronation of King Charles III, but this part of the funding has been awarded to local authorities to give out an onward grant scheme to other organisations to plant trees, specifically in this case fruit and nut trees, so we have created this grant scheme which opened for applications on the 1st of April, any formerly constituted or non-profit organisation is welcome to apply for anywhere between £505,000 to go towards the costs of fruit or nut trees, which could be in a brand new community orchards that is being planted in a community space, or it could be to complement and expand an existing community orchard as well. These are capital costs only, so the grants will cover the cost of the trees themselves, any tree protections like canes or spirals or fencing or the tools needed to plant the trees, unfortunately it doesn't cover any revenue costs with regards to staff or volunteer expenses for the actual planting of the trees, but we have created a number of documents which are available on the website, there's links in the report to anybody who's got the agenda pack open that takes you through to the webpage and all of the guidance documents that have been created to really talk organisations through how they might want to plant a community orchard that things they might need to consider, and that signpost onwards to specialist advice as well from things like community orchard projects. The hope is that plenty of parish councils will apply for this funding that might already have spaces, community spaces that could be improved or with the planting of these fruit trees, but as I say, any non-profit organisation, including schools, colleges, they're able to apply as well to plant orchards on their grounds as well. We've taken on board some feedback from previous grant schemes, including the community grant schemes that we oversee here at the council, and the smaller organisations have said that they don't always have the reserve to pay out for projects up front and then receive grant funding at the end, so what we've been able to do with this particular grant scheme is offer 75% of the grant awards to the successful applicants up front, so they can use that money to go away and plant the trees and then just claim the final 25% on completion of their projects. So we haven't had any applications to the scheme just yet, but I have had contact from a number of organisations that are certainly putting together applications. The scheme will be publicised through the MyLerts email this week, going out to residence, and it will be in the members bulletin at the end of the month as well, and it has been pushed up through social media and on our web pages begin as, you know, echoing cats' comments earlier. Anyone that's able to sort of push this out through their channels and publicise this with any local groups that you think might be willing and able and wanting to plant some fruit trees in your parishes, then please do do for the details on. Thank you. The papers say there are three plant healthy nurseries in East Sussex, where are they? Oh, you're putting me on the spot there, I'll just follow this link. I think there's only one in East Sussex, I think the other two are in West Sussex from memory, sorry, let me just look up the directory here. There is a map, but unfortunately it doesn't tell you that, until you click through. There's a directory that's linked through on the report, so you can look through, but I think it's in the way any other, I think it might be based in will do, and the only one that's in East Sussex and the other two are in West Sussex. Okay, thank you very much. Again, you've answered everybody's questions before they ask them, so we can move on. Gosh, do you plan to action plan a progress report to this must, I think, be Lucy? It is, yes. Good. It's very well done. Okay, so in addition to the number of reports we received today, obviously, are on that update updated action plan, but in addition to that, we have got a number of updates from the last month. The first one on here is about funding energy efficiency measures and community assets, so we've got the virtual energy project on here, and the details that are in there, there's about the six halls having been completed. I think it's actually now eight, judging by the update that Elise sent around to us yesterday, but I'll go by what's on here for today. So six have been, have their works completed, and I've done a third or ten halls of assigned grant funding agreements, so works due to take place, and ten halls have grant approvals in process. So, completely all projects will save an estimated 1,115 tons of carbon, so as I said, yes, it's updated almost daily at the moment at this point, so it's really good. We've got to support retrofit skills partnership, so this is a partnership that's being led by East Sussex County Council, which we are supporting, and officers attended a retrofit awareness course, just over a week ago now, and that's attended from officers from across the council, so there are people from housing planning and myself attended. What else have we got in there? So climate awareness training for all staff, you might have seen on our social media posts in the last 24 hours, and on our news article that Elise and I faced on it, we've had our next cohort of officers certified carbon literate. We actually have a total of 43 now, I think that's a typo in the report, it says 53, I'd like it to be 53, it will be 53 next time, 43 have now completed their training, and we've got a further 50 booked onto future courses, which now means that we're eligible to start applying for our carbon literature as an organisation, so we're going to start the application process for that, so watch out for that. So exciting instructions since the last meeting is obviously the decision-making or decision-making support to all the carbon and co-benefits decision support tool, which is being introduced from the new civic year next month, so members will be aware of the member training session, we've also now had two officer training sessions on this, and officers are starting to use it, starting to come to us, having had a play around and starting to use it for the first time, getting used to it. We've got a third training session with officers next week, but that feels like really exciting progress. And then on another couple of bits, some small bits that we've got going on here, I think, so we've had things like, we've got a staff marketplace team's channel set up now, which officers are starting to use, so this is where officers are encouraged to share, sell, swap, anything, not just office equipment, which was previously, which is really great to see. We've continued to get reports into the biodiversity audit, again on here it says we've received nine reports, I've received two more today, we're now up to 12, so they are coming through, and they are starting to be, well, for example, the work that Lee's just mentioned, coronation gardens, we're able to use one of those reports when we're looking for our locations for the microwaves. And then the final point on there is about supporting local community renewable energy generation, and again, this goes back to the village halls project, because we have four village halls that have now accepted grant offers towards solar, which cover 50% of the cost of that solar installation, and we'll be working with Energize Sussex Coast to match fund or buy panels, so yes, I think that is a quick, we'll sort of talk through a bit of any questions on any of the other other points on the report, happy to answer them. Yes, Councillor Burchin, Councillor Burchin, yeah, here I am, just thank you. I know I've mentioned this before, but it's still worth mentioning again, you talked about rather working towards accreditation for climate awareness and training, and that's actually quite costly, as far as I've found costly procedure to achieve that, and have you managed to find anything for smaller parishes and towns that they too could work for recognition when they are trained? We've got so many parishes, I think it's something like 30 or 25, something like that, there's potential for a lot of other organisations to get recognition and work towards that. Sure, so just to give a bit more context to everyone else that's not aware of the process of going through it, a huge part of the cost of becoming a carbon digital organisation is the training of the staff themselves, which is what we've obviously reduced the cost by bringing that in-house and having a lease and I train the staff, the cost to actually become, to go through the process of becoming a carbon digital organisation, I can't remember from my head it's 1,500 or 2,500, I would need to double check that, but yeah, so obviously to smaller towns and parishes, that would be a big chunk. It's about 1,000, I think it does depend on the organisation, so for rather I think it's slightly more than that. Could there be a scale if we used rocks so it would have them all together? I don't know whether all of them would be able to apply together for carbon literally to become carbon literate themselves as an organisation. I know that there are ways for the officers to become, the ways for the Councillors to become trained for free, for example, ESOSIX are training, I think a number of battle parish Councillors did they're training that way. I'm just rambling around now, long story short, as no I don't know a different accreditation scheme which costs less, I still think the carbon literacy accreditation scheme is the best one which is why I've pursued it for rather, but we'll continue to keep an eye up for anything that might be more appropriate at a smaller scale. Thank you, thank you, Councillor Osborn. Yeah, do we have a list of the village halls which have sort of signed up for improvements or have received improvements? It's just the sort of fact that I've been telling all my village halls and parish Councillors for the last two years to do something and you only want to know that I've had anything done was piece marsh so I've been wasting my breath or I've actually got somewhere. I can take that one if that's okay. There were 26 halls have received funding through the first round of funding. I haven't sort of published a list of who those halls are but I'm more than happy to share that in some way with you, with everybody. We will be opening a second round of funding through that village halls project as well. So in the first round where the grant offers were sort of targeted to the village halls that we knew had measures that would really see a big decrease in carbon, in the second round we're going to open it up much wider so any hall can come forward that's participating in that project and there's 39 in total it's going to be a bit more of an open process so anybody that didn't receive an offer in the first round will be able to provide the second round. Thank you. Could I also ask, does it have to be a village hall because Ashburn and Maram going tonight is trying hard to replace its village hall but also it mainly meets in the sports pavilion. Yes, the the criteria of the of the project right at the outset was it's a village or community halls doesn't have to be a village hall but we've gone by the acre definition of sort of village halls and so this again the second round of funding it will only be open to those halls that received a decarbonisation survey in this sort of first phase of the project. So yeah so Ashburn and more obviously invited to participate but because they are going through that process of trying to get a new hall then obviously it didn't make sense for them to take part. Thank you. Sorry Lucy. It was just to say that I think it's said or some sports pavilion have received grant funding through the rural community infrastructure grant so for similar measures so if it's not suitable to go through that through through the village hall energy project and try going through the rural community infrastructure grant instead I'd like to double check and they're still open thank you right nobody else then gosh we're speeding along today. So that brings us to the last item which is any other business and we'll start with Polly because you wanted to ask about the event at this other way. Thank you Katherine. I'm actually thinking about it maybe this isn't the time in the place to ask you for feedback it's just that I had to leave at lunch and I'm no suited to and I haven't had time to catch up with you but what do you think. It was a brilliant, I think just speaking personally it was a brilliant event I'm really glad I went along. I really did. But I know I just had to explain it a bit further it wasn't just although it was the whole of the south east and climate assembly so we had our kind of officer colleagues from other decent bees attending and people have come across from Brighton et cetera. London too. It was a very changing people I'm really sorry I couldn't stay to have it all pulled together with it. Yeah thanks Lucy. I think it is, can I speak? Yes of course. Yeah. I think it is relevant to mention because in the minutes it said to look whether rather might do some sort of similar event. So I think it is relevant to feedback. This is the south east cultural assembly that we went to on Monday. I personally found the morning quite depressing, there was a lot about eco-anxiety and not nearly enough about moving forward from that point and that was my personal feeling. And so if the discussion is what, if we are to take it forward ourselves then I'd like to have that mentioned, I don't know, it was a lot, it wasn't positive at all in the morning. That's my touch. Do you think, agree with me, Broly? You were there? I was there actually Sue, you know that I didn't agree with you because I felt the morning was more getting to know people and I didn't think there was anything left about you going target. So yes, you know that I had a different view on it really. Yeah, that's good to say, you know. Yeah. Sorry. I'm muted. I'm muted. Because the dogs are barking. No, no, it's fine. No, it's just to say so I did actually meet with Paulie the organizer before the event. And we discussed doing it as a joint event or not. And it was quite clear that there were certain parameters that that particular event did have to meet. And the fact that it was focusing on eco-anxiety was very strong from the office as you always thought that event was planned to be. And so I wasn't particularly surprised I was expecting that. And it was various factors that I think I went into previously about it being much wider than rather, it was felt that this wasn't the right approach for us to do jointly but it was right for us to have a presence there, which is what we did. Good. Thank you. Can I just say that immediately there were four polys registered. How can you become a guest in another poly? Well, okay, the last item then is next meeting to be confirmed. Well, if we carry on, that should be happening with last Tuesday's, sorry, last Thursday's at two, that makes it, I think, May the 30s. Chair, just to say that that is actually the planning committee meeting, so that date is not going to be appropriate. I know Lucy was thinking that we might have a little bit of a break for a couple of months and restart again, perhaps in September, but I don't know whether that has been agreed. Why does planning take precedence over us, given that we've been in the diary for a long time? Planning. Planning has been in the diary a lot longer than climate change, Councillor. Okay, it definitely would all be out as well. Right. Okay. Well, I suppose it would rule me out as well. I mean, I should be away, but I was hoping to go remotely. Okay. And what do we think about having a few months off, because I think we need to carry on monitoring this strategy personally. Why don't we go for June? Okay, just take one month off and then go for June, you can do that. That makes it the twenty-sevens. Except that's planning again, sorry. Sorry. That's planning move to the last Thursday then from the— Right. I do think that we should have some kind of consistency here, because all members of course it's stuck in their head that we're last there's visit to a clock, a step today where it's three. And this, to my mind, is a previous commitment. So, what's the first three o'clock? Sorry. I prefer three o'clock, actually. What's the next o'clock? It's in the way of planning. The scene's just planning. You can have a tail planning. Chair, Chair, it's not advisable to do it on the same day as planning committee meeting because we cannot guarantee that the planning committee meeting will finish. It could go on all day. I've been involved in planning meetings. But why has it moved from the—it's always been the third Thursday for a very, very long time? It's just the way it is full on this year with regards to when the full Council meeting is and when we can have the next few meetings, later on in the year it does fall back to being towards the middle of the month, the planning committee meetings. So, it's just for the next couple of months where it's an issue. In that case, can we keep it as the last Thursday, up to two, and extraordinarily, for those months when planning gets in the way, change it. How about Wednesday the 26th of June? Does that work, Julie? I would have to double check the calendar, but I think that's OK at the moment, yes. But I can let you all know. We can pencil that in and then I'll confirm it. Okay. Thank you very much. Are you waiting to call it or playing with your question? I'm just asking, is it two o'clock or three o'clock? I prefer—I don't mind, actually. I get a longer after lunch coffee if it's three but that's not necessarily a good thing. What do you think, members, three or two? I vote for three. Right. Happy with three. Yes. You have managed me. Yeah. Right. It's three. I'm happy with three. So was that skipping marriage, are we? And we're going three in between. The three o'clock on the 26th of June. So, Lucy, you all have left us by then, won't you? Yes, this will be my—this is my last easiest year. What can I say to the miss you enormously and thank you ever so much for everything you have done for us. You've been a real inspiration. Thank you. Yeah. And here here. All the best in your future. Thank you very much. All the best. See you around. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you, Lucy.