Transcript

Thank you. Okay, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening to those attending the meeting and for anyone watching virtually. I'm Councillor Anthony McEwen. I'm chair of the Climate Change Working Group. Thank you for attending this evening's meeting. I'd like to inform everyone that the meeting will be broadcast live to the internet via the Council's website and will be capable of repeat viewings. The images and sound recordings may also be used for training purposes within the Council. In order to ensure that the meeting is managed efficiently and effectively, can everyone please keep to the following guidelines for speaking. Councillors should use the raise your hand function to request to speak and only speak when invited to do so by the Chair. Please switch off your camera and microphone whilst not speaking and remember to set your mobile phone to silent for the duration of the meeting. Any views expressed by any speaker in the meeting are the speaker's own and they do not necessarily affect the view of the Council. Please and Councillors be aware that the webcast will continue to be streamed live 20 seconds after the close of the meeting. This is due to a time delay in transmitting live. I'll now confirm the names of the remaining members of the working group. That's Councillor Pauline Bell, Angela Benham, Jenny Benzer, Joanne Collins, Joanna Collins, Dom Elliott-Starky, Simon Evans, Linda Grooby, Madeleine Hall, Ian Huddleston, Peter Inman, Pam Reddy, Jill Scott and Jean Todd. We'll now move to the agenda. Starting with agenda item 2, apologies for absence. I've been notified of apologies from Councillors Bell, Grooby and Reddy and Councillor Barrow will sub for Councillor Bell. Are there any other apologies? Nope, we shall move on again then to declarations of interest. Are there any disclosable pecuniary interests or any other interests on the matters before us this evening? Move them then to the minutes. Previous meeting, just in terms of accuracy, is there anything on page 3 and page 4? We did pick up one bit on page 3. Councillor Barrow was in attendance at the previous meeting and substituted for Councillor Scott. Any other issues with the minutes or are we OK that they reflect our last gathering? I'll be with those. OK, thank you very much. I'm just going to tweak the agenda ever so slightly. We'll now move to agenda item 6, which is an update from Transition Buxton around the repair cafe that they have and Jean Beale, who's the chair of Transition Buxton, I'm hopeful I've got that right, is here to talk to us. Jean. Hello. Yes, I am from Transition Buxton. I'm not the chair. I was. We all take two year terms. The current chair is in bounds, but I'm very much one of the active members of the organisation. I have prepared some slides because I've got some stats to share with you. May I share my screen? I can find how to do it in Teams because I usually use other systems. I'm not seeing quite how to do that. I thought it would be easy. Share. Oh, here we go. Share my screen. You're on mute, Anthony. Yep, sorry. OK, so I'm going to call up my slides. And. Can you see those slides? Are you able to see this? Oh good, yes. I can't see you now, so I'm just going to chatter away if I start going on too long 'cause I can talk for England. Just give me a noise to make me slow down and stop. So first of all, thank you for the invitation. We at Transition Buxton are very keen to work in partnership with anybody and everybody to tackle a problem on a planetary scale. We all have to do everything we possibly can, and that means collaborating and working together just to establish who we are. Transition Buxton was set up in 2009. We are now one of 350 roughly groups across the UK and given the topic of this evening's meeting, the sentence highlighted in bold, you know, we aim to reduce or eliminate waste, the use of fossil fuels and minimize the use of plastics. So you know, we're certainly on topic as an organization. The transition way is to connect head and hands through heart. You know, we all understand the science and we all feel passionate about a lot of things, but it's through doing and our hands that we get results and I'm going to just cover briefly some of the items listed on your screen at the moment. So the first and main one that I was asked to talk about is our monthly repair cafe. It's been running since September 2009. We have 10 sessions a year because we don't do one at Christmas and we don't do one in July because of the festivals. We've had, we had two stops and starts because of pandemic. So, so far we've had 35 sessions. We repair anything that we can that comes into us, electrical, electronic, mechanical, textile, ceramic, all sorts. We get toys, we get treasures, we get amazing items. Lots of things with plugs on the end. The majority of the items we get are small electrical appliances. So far, in those 35 sessions, we've processed 1,085 items of which 650 have been repaired. We see an average of 31 items per session and we have a 60% success rate. One of the reasons for that fairly low success rate is that a significant proportion of electrical appliances are designed not to be repaired. It's either not possible to get the innards or not possible to get replacement parts, etc. Designed in obsolescence is a profit making methodology that has been used for the last 50 years. But it's time, in our opinion, to change that. Those 650 items repaired have, we reckon, saved 21.4 tonnes of CO2. That's the equivalent of 88,810 miles driven in a petrol car. The little chart on the right is what we did just in the year of 2023. You can see that quite a lot of things either have to come back with a spare part or we simply can't repair them. It's usually because they've been designed not to be repaired. We have been signatories to the repair and new use declaration in 2023, which we did ask Robert Logan and we were all asked to get our MPs to sign it and he did not. We also circulated an international petition for the right to repair in 2021. Our experience in the repair cafe tells us that there is a need for a regulatory reform to eliminate designed in obsolescence. There is considerably more overt progress in the EU than the UK around that, but our manufacturers will have to conform to those EU rules anyway. But it would be really nice to see them coming in here in the UK as well. We believe in putting people before planet. Some of our other activities, we run the hard to recycle scheme through TerraCycle. We've been running that for quite a while. This chart shows you the weight of the stuff that we've processed in the last year or to date. 550 kilograms of crisp packets is a lot of crisp packets. I'm almost more worried about the diets of the people of Buxton than I am the environment on this one, but I don't know how many crisp packets that represents, but it's a hell of a lot. The plastic cages in the supermarkets are being well used and sometimes they'll cause some confusion. We get some of their stuff in ours and vice versa, but we have a good relationship going and they get swapped back and forth. We also have on our website a hard to recycle in Buxton document that people can download and print off or just refer to. Now that's the two-sided A4 document. It shouldn't be that complicated. There is a lot of things that are in it. You have to be really determined to recycle as much as it's possible to recycle in Buxton. And the library of things was launched in January of this year. We now have 87 items and 123 members of the library. It's so that people can borrow useful stuff that you don't need to own. Some of our most popular items are the carpet shampooer, the jet washers. We're getting a lot of activity around the gardening tools at the moment. The strimmer is out, that sort of thing. A long list of stuff, including an urn and mugs and things if you're having a party. And people have really embraced it and we're pleased. We have more capacity to loan out more stuff, so do please help spread the word. We are grateful to the County Council for hosting us at the library at Heath Park. And we're run by volunteers and that helps us have our pay as you feel pricing policy. We suggest prices, but if somebody finds that difficult, we will accept what they feel they can afford. We're not doing it to make money as long as we cover our minimal costs. We're perfectly happy. It's there to empower and enable people to not have to buy stuff, store stuff, maintain stuff. It's the kind of thing you used to borrow from your neighbour, but nowadays we have a bit more of a formal system for it. Almost last but not least, as you are probably aware, some of you councillors attended our certificate moment earlier towards the end of last year, I think it was, when we received our certificate from the Surfers Against Sewage as a plastic-free community. What we've achieved is, I think it's the bronze level and we're now aiming for silver, or it might be silver and we're going for gilt, I'm not on that committee. And that entailed us getting 18 businesses, 24 community organisations, six schools, the College and the Council all signed up to eliminating single-use plastic from their operations and to tell people why and what they're doing and why, because it's not just about eliminating the plastic, it's about making people more aware of the use of plastic and indeed the misuse of plastic. It's a wonderful material and we shouldn't be throwing it away. We also have the Buxton Cup, which is to reduce litter and wastage at events like Carnival. We run workshops and the Repair Café is very keen on sharing skills. If you bring something into the Repair Café, it's worth you knowing, you stay with your item and the repairer talks through what they're doing and encourages you to take an active part in the repair. So we're passing on skills or trying to, and it's wonderful, sometimes we get kids in and they stay for three hours rather than their parents, they're really quite keen to leave now because they love getting hands on with a screwdriver. We organise all sorts of things, seminars, films, swish and swap events and we have got a lot of education and youth outreach going on, which we're really proud of. We offer free home energy audits, although there are others doing it better than us now, we have to admit, but we're still there willing to do it. We have a dispersed community orchard of over 112 trees, I think it is now, and we love working in partnership, we think it's the only way forward. So our communications channels are bi-monthly e-newsletters, our Facebook page and group, and of course our website and email. I put those up there because we want to work in partnership with you all, because we can achieve so much more together, so if you have information that you want us to share in the community, we're happy to do that and vis versa, we hope that you'll help to promote the library of things, repair cafe, etc. I'm going to try to come out of this screen sharing now, see how we go. I'm back. Thanks Jean, that's a great round-up of a wonderful range of initiatives, not just the repair cafe, but a whole host more. Are we any comments or questions please for Jean? I've got Jean and then Gillian. Yes, sorry, thanks Jean for that. I perhaps should have declared at the beginning that I've been a member of Transition Buxton since 2010 as well. I just wanted to correct you on one thing Jean, I think the repair cafe started in 2019, oh you're right, yes. I even read my own typo. It's six o'clock in the evening, I'm fading fast. Thank you for correcting me. Just checking the minutes of the plastic committee thing, which I am a member of, but they've got a meeting this evening, so I don't think I'll get to it. The champions are being urged to become silver champions. That's my understanding, as I say I don't work in that group because I do so many other things at Transition, I don't get all that directly involved in, but I know we have achieved tier one and to achieve tier two we not only need to get more businesses and organisations signing up as champions, but the existing champions to up their game too. You know, it's anything, you're turning up the spiral, everybody has to do a little bit more and we want more people to join the champions program. Yes, I don't think I've got any questions, perhaps other people have, thanks. Next Jean at Gillian. Hi Jean, great presentation and also it's really good that we've brought a bit of Hayfield and New Mills to work with you in Transition Buxton, which is good. This is more a question for Anthony, I think really. Have we as a council signed up to the repair and reuse declaration? I'm not aware of that particular one. I don't know if Gillian or Jean can advise or David? I don't think so. When it was around, when there was a campaign around it, and I'm sure it's, well I suspect one can still sign up to it, we were specifically asked to approach our MPs. You know, also all the groups who run repair cafes around the country, you know, sent a message to their MP, please would you sign up to this? We got a negative reply from Mr Logan. We weren't asked to approach our local authorities, so frankly we haven't, but I could certainly send it through and you could take a look at it, you can at least read it. It's only like a four page, it's not long, you know, it's a declaration, not a treatise. Great, thank you. It would take Gillian next and then we'll go to Joanna. I don't think so, to answer that question. However, we did look at having a single use plastic policy for the council operations, but we don't really use any, so there wasn't a lot of scope. However, we, I have had online to do this for a very long time and everybody's fed up with me talking about it, but I'm determined to get it done. We're going to get a license for refill, and so that promotion we're about with your going for silver should be beautifully aligned and help each other. A license for refill, I haven't heard of that before. Yeah, so it's a license for the platform, the website, so from that we'll get lots of marketing tools and things that we can use, like whether environmental health officers can have a toolkit to advise businesses, etc, etc. So we'll try and tie that all together, Jean. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, when the climate emergency was declared in High Peak, however many years ago that was, six maybe, we all knew to achieve the necessary, we would have to work in partnership across the peace, business, civic society, you know, the not-for-profit and the local government. And so I'm pleased to have been invited this evening and hope that this is the beginning of more to come, you know, let's work together. Okay, thanks. I've got Joanna, then Madeleine. Sorry. Yeah, I think it'd be good to sort of, well, we're having an update now, but if these things happen, I think it's really important that this committee knows. I mean, some of it would have happened probably before the committee was formed. We've been going for 15 years, so. Yeah, but it would be good to know what the council's doing. Agree we don't use very much single-use plastic, but yeah, to have, as part of general updates, stuff on waste as well, as well as the annual AES thing. There was, there was, I can't remember if it was a protocol or a motion, but there was a working group a little while ago on single-use plastics, et cetera, which was agreed through the process. Partly, I mean, it was very good recommendations, but I don't know that a lot's been done. And that is partly because the government said it was going to do all sorts of lovely stuff about waste management and never did any of it. We can have another look at it to see what happened with it, because it was done, if I remember rightly, it was done during the days when Councillor Haykin, or it was started when Councillor Haykin was the exec member at least. So we're going back at least four, five years, if not more. The world's moved on a little since then. Okay. Thanks. Joanna Madeline. Thanks very much. My question, Jean, is about the library of things. Probably the most recent of the initiatives. Looking at the website, it seems that the inventory might not be available for public view. It might just be that I've not looked closely enough. What you've got on there is terms of borrowing and an invite to ask questions, but you can't see what those 87 items actually are. I just wonder if it's worth looking at doing that, because I would think that you'd attract more members. You can see them. It is all on there. Do you think you could possibly send a link? Because I have been through the website and I just can't find it. Well, it is on there and lots of other people are managing to find it. And I'm honestly surprised that you are having that difficulty, Madeline. You're a savvy lady. I've probably scrolled past it, but just as a different website, Madeline. It's not the Transition Buxton website. It has its own website. It's an interactive one. Okay. That's where the error is. So I'll happily send that through. There's a couple of little things here I'll send to us. I've tripped up. It's not that I'm necessarily terribly tech savvy, but other people might as well. I just think if it's just a trifle easier to get in, I think it would be helpful. It is quite easy. Frankly, I think you've just been looking at the wrong website. It is a library of things website. We've bought into the software that is used by lots of repair cafes around the country. There's a picture of every item, detailed description of every item and links to videos of how to use them and all sorts. So it is quite an elaborate website and transactional platform. Thanks very much. No worries. No worries. Just for information for folks, David has shared the link to it in the chat. Brilliant. Thank you. So it looks like Jean Todd's still got her hand up or set. Go on Jean. Yeah, I was just going to mention that it was me that brought the plastic policy motion and there's a lot of it that we have done and part of it is linked to transition books and surfers against sewage because it's incorporated. It says incorporate the reduction of single use plastic into the council's waste strategy, improve our recycling performance, etcetera. Installation of water fountains across the high peak. Well, I suppose that hasn't really happened. I believe there was one put in in Glossop once. There's one been put in in the community school here in Buxton and that was a student initiative as a result of one of the student conferences. They worked out, they were getting through some phenomenal number of plastic bottles per year in the school and so the students actually fundraised, got the money to have a fountain put in in Buxton Community School and get rid of at least some of the vending machines and plastic bottles. And it was work with encouraging public local businesses and partners. I mean, the transition books and surfers against sewage certificate is that was actually, it needed a council representative, which is why I'm a part of that committee in order to get the certification. So that's sort of part of this, the policy against single use plastic as well. Thank you for that Jean and thank you for your support in getting us this far. Okay, thanks Jean. Joanna? I think it will be quite good to sort of reconvene the committee or the working group for a short time to maybe push some of these things forward because there are some huge barriers. I hope parish council wants to put in a drinking fountain, but they have to pay Southern Trent for the connection, which isn't cheap. So there are things, you know, which perhaps we can try and get community groups to do without, and actually I'm going to ask a question about this later, but without involving Gillian too much of the teams who have already got quite enough to do, which perhaps a committee could try and push forward a bit. Yeah, I think that's fine. I think, yeah, it's a few years now since we had the working group. It'll be for those of you that are members of community selection to suggest it when that meets later on this month to see if they want it as one of their working groups. But we can try and add that into the list and see where it comes next. I can't see any further hands. So Jean, if I can thank you for your presentation this evening, you're quite welcome to stay, but you can escape if you want to. I'll hang on for a little while, but I will disappear when my stomach starts to grow. It's possible you could just stop, stop your screen sharing. Yep. Ooh, sorry about that. Yeah, done. Great stuff. Okay, thanks. I'll slip into the background now. Thanks Jean. Okay. We shall move on then to gender item, or move back to gender item five, which is AES talking to us about waste initiatives. And I'm presuming that's Jason and Marissa. Hi everyone. Yes, it is. I'll see if I can share my screen. Thanks Jean for yours. We haven't done one of these in our roles actually before, so I'm hoping I can just share my screen. I've got a document that kind of shows off the stuff we've done in the previous financial year because we sent it with the board report. But just to give you a little bit of background, me and Marissa came into these roles about a year and a half ago now. So I'm the engagement officer for Alliance Environmental Services and Marissa is the communications officer. Can everyone see the screen? Is that a piece? Yep, yep. Yeah, is that okay? Yeah, so for those who obviously don't know as well, obviously Alliance Environmental Services do the contract for the waste collections for High Peak and Staffordshire Hills, but also we do the street cleansing and the parks teams as well. So we offer the contract, obviously for those who don't know, we're part owned by both the councils in the Alliance and also part owned by Cheshire East Company, which is called ANSA Environmental Services. So there's a lot of people involved in the running of the company. And obviously our work is shared between Staffordshire and Mullins as well, so we'll be doing a similar meeting I think next week to share what we've been doing across the borough and the district. But this document we put together for the board report just to show off what we've been doing since we've come into these roles. And really, one of the first things we had to do was kind of rejig what we were doing with, in terms of the literature, but also the big issue of contamination. Quite recently, the councils have changed disposal contracts. So we run now, with the High Peak, we run with BIFA who take our recycling and over at Staffordshire Mullins, it's H.W. Martins, they do it. And one of the things that came across quite quickly was the contamination rate for recycling jumped up to somewhere near 20% of the recycling, which is too high really for the public, obviously, because we get charged because of the disposal of the recycling isn't recyclable. So we had to come up with a plan to see how we can tackle the contamination issue. One of the things is producing new leaflets that were clearer than the things we do want and don't want. So we send these out with letters about contamination as well. We take them to events and we've got a big banner now that says 'write stuff, write bin' to make it a little bit clearer. And this first document is just a document, the engagement numbers on the both sides there. And that includes events like community events, like well dressing that we went to in Endon last week. And then this week we went to the Rotary Club, which is really successful public engagement at the Octagon in Buxton, which is really well attended. We gave out lots of compostable bags and rice scoops to encourage or discourage food waste. And that just lists there some of the other promotional items. We have an activity booklet for primary school aged children, which we also give out skills. But just to go back to contamination, this is an example of one of the tags that we designed to make it clearer when it comes to the crews use logging contaminations on people's bins. It used to be like a little yellow sticker. And then the crew had to write on it what was unacceptable. So the bin wasn't emptied and then he'd write down. So we looked around the country to see what other councils were doing and we saw this tag system that could hang off the back of the bin. Some of them use a plastic tag, which isn't recyclable. So I think we're probably one of the first councils to produce a tag that is recyclable actually. So this is a cardboard tag that lasts well in the rain because all it needs to do is to tell the resident that we were unable to enter the bin on this occasion. And it might've been one of these things. So there's pictures of the items there that might be unacceptable that were in their bin on just a quick inspection by the crew. And that gets logged onto the in cab unit inside the vehicle. And then if the resident wants to find out exactly what was in the bin, they're able to go to the website, pop in the postcode, and it will actually tell them what the item was logged as well. So they could find out what the item was that was in the bin. Alongside the new tags, we launched the door stopping campaign. So we hired some agency staff to knock on doors, deliver the leaflet, and also conduct a survey. This was kind of last September time and that was in both districts as well. So we produced a survey that we took responses on a tablet. And then this just documents some of the engagements we did in the different quarters. And then we've got litter picks with Girl Guides in Buxton. So anything and anything really, people can book us for community groups for litter picking. We do creative talks or creative activities and PowerPoint talks as well. But we've built up a nice kind of like regular kind of return visits now. But we can't always visit every school because there's about 109 schools in total in both council areas. So we have made return visits for those who had us back, but we're trying to obviously spread ourselves evenly across the districts. This was the Apple Day last year in Harefield with the High Peak Mayor. And that was transition Buxton at the Octagon. That has been a regular event that we've been going to, which is the coincided with the youth, well the COP. I think we started, I think it was 26, 27, not sure what we're up to now. And we're back there this year again. That year we took a VR virtual headset and that took you into a sourcing centre. So we've taken that to schools as well. And that we lend from Derbyshire County Council. This was a busy time. That was one of the activities we do. That's a community clean up across over in Leek. We generally set up a stand with our promotional items when we go to those. This little one here is from a Buxton school with an assembly talk. So obviously get to more kids if you can do the assemblies. But we do do individual sessions in classes as well. And that's one of our creative activities, making clocks. So just to finish off, with the two new contracts that we have, we have been given a social fund from Biffa and HW Martin, the two contracts. And Biffa being a bigger company, have given us a bit more money to buy some recycling displays. And that's a picture of the ones we've just ordered. So there's a bean bag game for sorting the right bin. We've got a display bin showing the contents of a recycling bin. And then this item here is like a little mini sorting centre where you can turn the handle and all the waste goes past. And then children will be able to sort out the recycling, give them an example. When we do go into schools, we have lots of videos. We show the actual real sourcing centres as well. So just get the message across that there's actually real people sorting our waste out for us. So another reason for not obviously putting the wrong thing in the bins. Our parent company over in Cheshire Rees run two projects we're hoping to launch over here, which is a junior recycling officer for primary schools where they'll be our kind of little representatives in the school offering advice to the rest of the school so we can keep in touch with them. And we hope to pilot that in a couple of schools in the High Peak and Staffordshire Mullins this year. And then also, which is hoping to launch, which with help with partners, organisations like Transition Books and with some waste reduction volunteers as well, this would mean we'll be able to take volunteers to community events with us as well and talks and maybe again spread our workload around to the councils as well. And also continuing stepping up efforts to reduce contamination. One of the things we're hopefully doing is putting some Facebook ads, some more targeted ads getting out there in terms of talking about unacceptable items that we don't want in the bins. Sometimes talking to the public, it's just sometimes people just hope that it'll be recycled when they think about putting in either a crisp packet or a toothpaste tube, which isn't recyclable, but I think these things get dropped in. But ultimately we will be charged because they'll be having to go to general waste when it gets sorted. So it's just getting that message across to put the right thing in the right bin. And then just to finish off with the tag that we're launching, we're going to repeat the same one for the organic bin. That hasn't been a priority because we don't get refusal of items at the moment with organics so much. But the tag is actually cheaper than the sticker. So there's no reason why to keep it consistent. We'll put the same tag which is tailored for the food and garden bin. So there's some items there that will be on the tag just to say these are unacceptable for the food and garden bin. Things like plastic plant pots that might end up going in the bin with the plants. That was a common question at the weekend at the Bookstone asking about recycling plant pots. Unfortunately we can't accept them in any of the recycling bins, but you can take them to the tip, to the hard plastic section. And I think there's one more thing I'm just going to talk about, which is just, sorry to go on a little bit longer, but one of the things we work with the council is updating the website. And that's going through a bit of a refresh at the moment. So we want to put more alternatives onto the council website. And some of the councils have an A to Z of items that you can find out what to do with them. So literally a long list of every item that you might have in your house that potentially could be searchable. And if not, it would be just this PDF that you could scroll down and find the item and find where to put it. So hopefully this will be clear for people if they're unsure to either search this list, the colour coded the bins, and we'll have one over on Snaffish Mullins with the colours for their bins. But on the right hand side here, these will be the links for either a better alternative than the bin. So things like taking things to the charity shop, just get to the titles there at the top there, that is even better are alternatives. So for example, there we've got obviously asbestos and that's got none and then the link to the household recycling centres. So that will be in a PDF there. And then other things like charity shops, that would be the link to search your local charity shops. There's the TerraCycle alternatives and reuse organisations. And then other things like plastic bags, taking them back to supermarkets for soft plastic recycling as well. But yeah, we're going through a bit of a refresh on helping the council with their websites to make it clearer and hopefully give some alternatives and I'll stop sharing and take questions. Me and Marissa here for questions as well. Okay, thanks for that. Hey, thanks. Any comments or questions? We'll start off with Simon. Thank you, chair. Two things is can we have those documents available in an electronic format? Cause there was quite a lot of text on there that was difficult. Yeah, I have sent it to, I got confused, which one was coming first in terms of the Staffordshire Willers one. I've sent it to the Staffordshire Willers one, but not to the high peak, but yeah, we'll get them across to everyone for that document. Cause yeah. Brilliant, thank you. Second question relates a little bit to the kind of some of the queries I've had from constituents around issues of things being in the wrong bin, and it isn't always necessarily the householders that are putting them in. So I often see people, for example, I live on the same street as new Mills school and I quite often see at school emptying out time, kids will chuck their rubbish in the bin because that's the thing that they've been told to do. But they're not necessarily give any care as to which item goes into which bin. And sometimes householders feel they're being kind of penalized by things that they didn't even know they were in their bins. Let me just finish my question. Is there a kind of a, is there a kind of a, what's the system? Is there a kind of a, you know, is there a bit of leniency? Is there a way that something can easily be fished out and put in another bin and all that's time consuming, but it's, it's one that's caused a bit of a bit of bad feeling if you like amongst people that I've spoken to. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. No, thanks. Do you want me to jump in there, Jay? Sorry. Yeah, no, go on. Yeah, go on. Yeah. So basically with the contamination procedure for High Peak Borough Council, it's obviously if the crews find the contaminant in the bin, they'll report it on Bartet. That then obviously generates them putting the tag on and then we would unfortunately be unable to come back until the next collection. The resident will be expected to remove that. I understand obviously it's not always their fault and there is leniency obviously if they contacted and explained that, but we can't do that as standard when we're getting say 40, 50, 60 contaminations like a day on one round or like for up to all the rounds. So what happens is if it happens again, it's then triggered a letter and I would print the letter out and send that and we encourage the residents to contact us if they do think that it isn't their bin or if there is an issue and it isn't like their fault, like you were saying, if you were living near a school, then it's going to happen. Children will put things in the bin and it's not going to necessarily be the right one. Upon that, we would judge it case by case. So for example, if someone contacted me and say, Oh, I've been reported for the contamination. And like you say, with that scenario, it's kids putting it in after school when I put my bins out or in the morning on the way to school. Obviously case by case, we would take that and be like, Oh, well that's understandable. We can remove. They wouldn't be penalized for that. We would remove that contamination upon their contact. Obviously we can't do that without them contacting, but we wouldn't know otherwise. So it is all dealt with case by case. The last resort, we don't want to take anyone's bin away because that's what happens after the third contamination, but they are still given the chance to contact us and we will go around and talk to them. We will have conversations with them, see why they're struggling. If there's anything we can do to help, we don't want to take anyone's bin away for the contamination issue. It is more for the bins that are maybe abandoned or it's just people that don't necessarily want to recycle and obviously then it risks up the contaminated load. So there is always obviously that case by case, like we look at them individually and we would never want to penalize someone who is trying and it's just obviously out of their control or an honest mistake. Okay, Simon, do you want to come back? Yeah, it's a difficult one. I probably need to give it a little bit more thought because I don't think it's there. I can understand both sides of the argument really. It's one that I think it's an imperfect solution, but I don't know the perfect solution and that's probably where we have to go with the imperfect solution, unfortunately. But yeah, I think there's probably a better way of working it, but it's probably beyond my thought at the moment. Sorry, Simon. Yeah, just to pick up there. We are open to suggestions with this as well, so it's not set in stone with these things. And we have found because we've kind of educated the crews, some of the crews might not have been doing this as well as other crews. And then what's happened, some have got a bit more eager than other crews. So sometimes we have to kind of re-educate them, say maybe you're coming down a bit too hard, you know. So it's kind of a balancing act, but it's getting that message across whoever watches this as well. It's just maybe we need to be more explicit about the procedure. And it's not to say that first, you know, it's supposed to be three strikes and you're out, but there is some leeway. It's not set in stone and all you need to do is get in touch like anything where you've been maybe highlighted. Just drop us an email and we can resolve it quite quickly. So it's just getting across the residents that say, don't worry too much about if it wasn't your fault. Just explain the situation and we're happy to, you know, compromising, you know, and talk to you and cancel if it's been... because the crew get it wrong as well. The crew can lock the wrong bin and we have to cancel those off. So it's, yeah, because people do worry when their bin doesn't get emptied. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks, Simon. Jason or Marissa, is there anything that we could look at in terms of sort of a session at the school? If it's coming up as a particular hotspot around the school, could we look at a special session specifically on that, either saying, yeah, it's great you're sticking the stuff in the bin, but can you just make sure you stick it in the right one if it's a household bin or something like that? Yeah, like if we visit a school, it's probably quite a good idea to maybe put that into our kind of part of the education with the PowerPoints and things, bring that up as a topic within the school and say, like, obviously on the way to and from school, if you are, well take, basically take the litter home with you, don't drop it, put it in your pocket and dispose of it at home. Great stuff. Okay. Thank you for that. That's a great idea. But it's also on the South Valley Trail. Mine's the first kind of bin on there as well. So it gets used by lots of people. So it's not, I'm not purely blaming the school children in case Councillor Inman's on the call was the one of the guests, but it's, that would be, that would be most useful. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Councillor Scott next, please. Thanks, Chair. Thank you for that question. So thank you sort of leads into a question. We asked for some red textile recycling bags. We've got this mini recycling centre at St. John's Church in Hayfield and Anthony Morris from AES and Marissa have been working really well with us to kind of get that going. So thank you for that. I mean, it's in early, it's early stages, but I think it's working really well. But on the back of that, more people have been asking, why can we not have red textile recycling bags? And I think it's something to do with the particular trucks, but could you just explain that a bit more and then also, would it be possible for us maybe to have another site in Hayfield where these were picked up? So kind of like what, why is it a problem for the trucks to collect them? And also, can we have more please? But thanks for what you've done. It's great what you've done. So, sorry, Gillian. So in terms of the red textile bags, what it is with the reference to the truck is the trucks have, some have them, some don't. They used to have like a cage on the side of the vehicle, under the body of the vehicle, right between the front wheels and the back wheels. And it'd be like a cage that would then put the textile bags in. I mean, don't get me wrong, they're not massive. I would say like a large microwave kind of size. So they used to be used for the small electricals that we used to collect with the recycling, which is now done as a separate collection with the large electricals and they put the textile bags in. So what was the case is that they'd get full and then they wouldn't be able to pick any more up. So when we used to have them on the wagons, it was kind of still like a bit of a, like depending on how many bags, there would sometimes some be left. And then through new vehicles, they've then not been on the vehicles from my knowledge. And so what we do now is the crews will report a textile bag and then a supervisor gets a job and they will then go and pick it up, but it might not necessarily be on the day, like Brown Bin day. So it would then be like say a couple of days later, depending on the supervisor's jobs and like availability at that time. So I do agree it's quite a kind of long-winded process. You can still order textile bags from the council website. So they are still available for people to order, but it is maybe something we can look at in the kind of process of getting them collected. If there was like a more streamlined way. Cause like you say, it could be, I can see if it could, I could see it being frustrating obviously for a resident, pointing it out with the Brown Bin and then it not going. Yeah. Yeah. It seems to be, I think it's going to work okay through the church though. You know, cause we've got the contact there. So fingers crossed that that works all right. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thanks Gillian. Charlotte. Thanks so much. I just, I might've missed this, but what happens if they're, you know, three strikes and they're out, what happens to the rubbish then? Cause we've got a bit of a problem down our road with bins that never get, the right stuff never, ever goes in them. And, and a lot of it doesn't even go in the bin. I just wonder what's going to happen. You need to send an email and we'll get, we'll get on it. Yeah. I would, if the, if the crew I've, the crew do need to log it and they don't always log the bins obviously. Cause they obviously, if they haven't, if they've missed the bin and said it's, you know, identified it. Cause that's the other aspect of it. If it's not been identified to a property, they need to log it against the property. But to be fair, a lot of this looks like flighting sort of that they just leave around. But, but I think my main concern is that if they, if they don't get their bin collection, if they miss it, you know, what's going to happen? It's just going to pile up even more. Well, the, yeah, so in terms of it's not been entered, what we can offer, we can offer a clearance on a, on a general waste round. That's another option if they get in touch. So we can clear contaminated bins that way, but we should be removing it. So if, if that bin, if those bins have been identified, if you know them, you could just send a contact form to us or just email someone over at AES and say, these bins have been identified. And I don't know if they've been logged correctly. If they've been identified or it's just been missed. And we can either remove them, see if we can log, find the paper trail in terms of them being logged and just, just investigate every, every one of these gets investigated. Whether it's bins on streets, we need to send someone out there to check on them and then remove them. If there's, if they're still out there within a, after a week, we remove bins all the time. So we have a delivery crew that's delivering bins, but also bringing these kinds of bins in. Um, but you know, some of them get, are going to get missed. So if you, if you've highlighted one like that, I w I would drop it up, drop as a line, if it's not been... Sorry, I'm probably not explicit, but what will happen when, when they get their letter and they still ignore their letter and they don't get their bin collection, I must've missed what happens then. So the stages. So if they've been, if their bin has been tagged three times, then they've obviously not, they've not taken out the contaminant. So they get told, if you remove the contaminant that's wrong in the bin, we'll empty the bin on the next recycling round. So they'll have to obviously put that, if they can't rectify it and it's being logged as contaminant, we'll, we'll have to remove the bin and then they'll have to get in touch and either buy another bin. It's supposed to be six months as well. You're supposed to lose your bin for six months is the kind of strict rules, but we, we should be bringing those bins after they've been logged for three times of the, and then they will just lose that recycling bin. So then what happens to their waste? That's what I'm trying to find out. Well, we don't, well, we don't, there's only, yeah. So they've, I'm not saying they lose the right, so they won't have a recycling bin. So they'll only have, they'll only have the general waste bin as, as the, as their only source of... Anthony could I, could I just jump in there. Charlotte, what you could do in that situation is you could serve a community protection notice. So you could require them to use the bin properly. And if the bin's taken away, you could then require them to do whatever we would want them to do with that waste. So whether that is to put it into bags, whether it's to put it in the right bin or whatever. So I think that there are options after taking the bin away, because I appreciate where you're coming from. Cause if you take the bin away, potentially you're going to make it worse. So I think what you would do is go down that route, which again has got fixed penalty notices, enforcement, except your options down there. Yeah. We haven't got, we don't have the enforcement side of it. Yeah. Sorry about that. My daughter just made it in the kitchen. So I had to, I had to mute myself then. But yeah. So again, just to reiterate, the first, removing the bin as well is obviously the last, last resort. We, we don't want to be doing that. It only is if there is more of like a disregard for the recycling and like it's forced into that without any contact. Obviously they've got the three stages of contact to, to get in touch. If they obviously do need the help with understanding what's going, what's going wrong with their bin. Okay. Thanks very much. Okay. Thanks, Charlotte. Jennifer. Hi. Yeah. Sorry to go back to red bags, but I think maybe so much material probably does go into landfill. So I think they're probably, it's probably a really good thing, but so just to clarify, can individual residents request red bags, but would you prefer us to do what Jill has done and do it through an organisation so that the collection is a, is a bigger one and less frequently. And if so, could I do that in new mills then perhaps? Although it does occur to me that some of the charity shops collect rags. So perhaps I would talk to the charity shops first. So I'm just kind of wandering along those lines and I'd be interested in your thoughts. Thank you. Yeah. Individually. Yeah. People can log the textile bag and we will either post it out. So you've got the red textile bag and then put it out with your recycling. As Marissa said, you'll be able to then put it out with your recycling, but it's, it's not, well by all means, it's kind of a, it's not a perfect solution at the moment. We offer it as a service, but I do think personally, it's not great for sending out one vehicle to pick up one bag. So it's, so if any, if you, if you could copy Hayfield's initiative, it will be better for us and for the planet, setting out individual vehicles. But it is the service that we offer as the contract that we will come and collect each and every textile bag that gets logged by the crew. But we'll have to come back because of the space and these new vehicles that are there. But yeah, anyone can order a textile bag at the moment, but it does need looking at. Okay. Thank you. In that case, I probably wouldn't promote it perhaps, but I, but it does make me think maybe I should, it would be a good thing to get in touch with charity shops and perhaps promote that instead as a way to resell bags. Like I said, the charity bags that come round through your door that, you know, they're better at it because they're all, they're out there doing it on one day. Maybe we should look at that, maybe do like a, choose a day that we all go out and collect the textile bag and set a day like they would do with the charity bags. Maybe that's something we should, yeah. And choose a day, want it once a month or so, maybe if it's possible. And then we'd collect, we'd collect a lot more I think because it's, it's, it's not a great system. So we're not collecting very much either. Yeah. And people will probably bring you back in after the day and not realise that we're going to come back for it as well. Yeah. With fast fashion, the clothes are often, you know, are over very quickly. So it would be useful. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Yes. Thanks, Jennifer. Jean Todd, if you can flag this as something to be considered for the commissioning board that's coming up, looking at climate change issues in a couple of weeks and see if we can get a, get a more permanent or better solution flagged in terms of the red bags. Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, I think a monthly collection would be a good thing, a sort of one off thing, to be honest. I mean, I, I keep mentioning this. When I used to live in Germany, they used to have a monthly thing where you, you put your big household items outside and anyone could come along and just take them if they wanted them. And, and the, the local council be picking them up after a certain length of time. Okay. Thanks, Jean. Kath. Yeah. I think this red bag thing has been dragging on for years, hasn't it? I've never seen a red bag yet. And I've been on the council, I don't know how many years now. So I think we either ought to promote it and make a go of it or just tell people, no, please take it to the charity shop or, or if they're not good enough for a charity shop, an animal sanctuary, something like that. Thanks Kath. We have, there is a commissioning board scheduled for in a couple of weeks, which is looking at a range of climate change issues. So I think we probably should be able to add this one to the agenda and sort of see if we can come up with a better solution for it. Cause it has sort of rumbled on a bit and there's been a variety of different approaches given some of the vehicles that we're using. So we'll see what we can do to pick it up. Okay. I can't see any further hands up. So we can thank Marissa and Jason and you're free to escape. Thank you. We will hang around, but I'll turn my camera off now, my mic. No, thank you. Okay. We shall move on then to gender item seven, which is UK shared prosperity fund, NAG engagement. Gillian. You've missed off Katie nature declaration, but I'm happy to go before her. I just don't want her feeling that you've ignored her. She's further down the agenda. Yeah. So the, so this is just very briefly, we've put in an IED for this to be approved. So it's not actually finalized yet, but I just wanted to let you know what we're planning to do with shared prosperity. So this is the strand for energy saving linking to cost of living. And so what we're going to do with the funding is that the capital is going to be going to social housing to try and get a hundred percent of a social housing with local, local low energy lighting. So there will be either self installed or for people that are a bit more immobile or whatever they will have, Norse will be installing them on our behalf. And this will be tied up with a massive engagement program, which will be running with March to energy agency. They already do. Everybody's talking about climate change work, and they also do all their energy engagement work. Some of you will have seen their vehicle at your events. So we'll be doing a lot more events. We'll also be able to ask them to come to your surgeries or any events, other events that you have, if you just let them know. And they'll be able to give energy advice and then link people to whatever funding is suitable. Or if it's not, it may not be because if it's a social house, they can still do an energy visit and do small measures like draft proofing and things, you know, the sort of DIY kind of things. So that there's going to be a big program around that where we're hoping to reach probably up to up to 1000 people overall through different strands. And then the third element, which I think is quite exciting actually, is there's a part of the outputs is to fund three community groups to do energy measures. So we're trying to work with high peak CVS. Similar to the climate change fund that we have already, except this will be a one off opportunity for three community groups to get 5000 pounds to either do energy measures to a community building, so a scout hut or something like that. Or it could be to set up an energy saving advice scheme like Hayfield have had and Buxton have had. Jean Ball mentioned one earlier that Buxton had done. Buxton Rotary give out PACS. You know, so there's those two kind of options within that. So once we're past elections and things, we're hoping to get that advertised and out. And then we'll set up a panel probably from amongst this group to look at those applications and that's about it on that. OK, thanks Gillian. Any comments or questions, please? I can't see any hands up. Just for information, the individual exact decision that Gillian mentioned that should be out in the next couple of days. OK, in that case, we shall move on again to generator mate, which is the nature declaration and next steps. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. I'll just share my screen, so I'll put the declaration upon the screen. OK, so I'm the council's biodiversity officer responsible for delivering on the plan for nature amongst other things. And so over the last few months, we've been developing a nature recovery declaration with the Wildlife Trust. And this was approved subject to amendments back in April and was also run past the previous climate change working group meeting for comments. The declaration is now being updated and finalised to incorporate these amendments and also comments that were received after it was presented. And the final version was published on the 31st of May with an accompanying press release. The main purpose of the declaration, kind of similar to the climate change declaration back in 2019, is to acknowledge the fact that we are facing a nature crisis and to also identify the steps that the council can take in response to this. And so why is it needed? There's been a serious decline in nature and biodiversity since the 1970s and the UK now ranks as one of the most nature depleted countries on earth, which I think you'll agree is quite a shocking fact. So there's a thing called the Biodiversity Intactness Index from the National History Museum and that actually ranks the UK in the bottom 10% globally for biodiversity. And the recent state of nature report, so this is kind of a reputed partnership, which reports on nature and biodiversity data. And that report found that the abundance of wildlife and species in the UK was decreasing. So across the UK, about on average, there's been a decline in species since 1970 of about 19%, which is a really big decrease in a relatively short space of time. And nearly one in six species in Great Britain are now threatened with extinction. So there really is a requirement to acknowledge, you know, the fact that we are in a bit of a nature crisis and it's pretty critical for everyone to sort of take action on this now. So to address this nature crisis, the council's acknowledging these principles from something called the Lawton Report, which is essentially bigger, better, more and joined up in relation to kind of habitats and natural spaces. Now, many areas of the council's work do have an impact on nature, and so we do have a duty to conserve and protect it. The nature declaration, which we'll be able to share with the minutes after the meeting so everyone can have a look through it in further detail, makes a commitment to work with partners and our different partnerships to support the recovery of nature across the high peaks or across the borough. It's closely linked with the climate emergency. Nature is sort of key in tackling climate change and equally, you know, climate change is increasingly impacting wildlife and habitats and species. The main purpose of the declaration really is to act as a formal acknowledgement by the council of the current nature crisis and provide a strong commitment to nature's recovery. And this will help really make nature and biodiversity key considerations in future decision making. So next steps really now that this declaration has been sort of published is the council's plan for nature, which has been developed over the last few years with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, is sort of in the stages where we're looking to finalise it now really. And then once that's been finalised, we can focus on actually developing the various project strands and actually delivering on our aims and ambitions in relation to the plan for nature. So yeah, as it reminds of the plan for nature developed with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, we've used the baseline sort of state of nature across the high peak and it provides recommendations as to sort of how and where the council's efforts should be prioritised. And we're looking to run a public consultation on the sort of draft document plan for nature document. This will probably commence following the general election and would like to run the consultation for about four weeks. And then the next steps after that really will be to sort of finalise and publish the final version of the plan for nature, sort of taking into consideration comments from the public and local groups, and then hopefully have a potential launch event and community engagement day later on in the summer. So that's it from me for now and I'll stop sharing my screen and happy to take any questions if anyone's got any. Okay, folks, any comments or questions? Yeah. Um, yeah. Yes, thank you. Um, right. So, um, weeds on the footpath. So I've got a lot of people saying, you know, leave the weeds, we need the bees and all that and I get that there is a serious shortage of bees, I've noticed that in my own garden. But then you get the other half say, what are all these weeds doing? Everything looks so untidy, etc, etc. So, how can we, what can we do about that? How can we sort of get rid of the weeds or lessen weeds without using harmful chemicals and sort of try and keep most people happy? Yeah, it's definitely, you know, a divisive point and one that we definitely need to look into. I know that discussions obviously, you know, with AES in terms of pesticide usage and also contracts with, for example, the County Council in relation to sort of spraying, you know, glyphosate and stuff on pavements are kind of ongoing. It's, it's kind of an ongoing sort of review really, because there's certain cases or trials elsewhere sort of across the UK that have actually shown that in, you know, certain scenarios, whether it be, you know, roads and pavements or in relation to invasive species that actually currently glyphosate is in those circumstances, the sort of best option, you know, in terms of cost and effectiveness and whatnot at this stage really, but obviously there are alternatives out there. So I think it's something that just needs to continue, you know, being at the forefront of those discussions really and not, I guess, not sort of forgotten about, you know, whilst these alternatives are actually developing. It's difficult to sort of keep everyone happy though, like you just said, it's quite a divisive point. Yeah. Can we have some sort of timeframe on this? Because obviously the green faction are getting more vocal and obviously the other side will too. So I think we need some sort of timeframe to get something sorted about this. I mean, even if you, stream the weeds or use one of those, what do you call it? Those burning gun things to keep them down. I can't remember what they're called, but you know what I mean, don't you? Or some other, I mean, there are things that can be used like vinegar or bicarbonate of soda with vinegar and things like that, you know. Yeah. If you could look into things like that, I think it would be helpful. Yeah, definitely. And I know that the declaration, the nature declaration itself does make a commitment to actually, you know, review existing kind of pesticide uses and sort of broaden, I guess that kind of, yeah, there's a point in the declaration about that. I think the next steps really from sort of our perspective internally is to, is to sort of set out once the plan for nature has been adopted, the, you know, next steps, I guess, and actions into a, into a proper strategy, you know, with timescales. So although the discussions in relation to pesticide usage are happening right now, like you say, it'd be good to put a timeframe on that. I think that's probably the next steps. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Kath. Just bring Jean in because you may want to say something around the work that AS are doing in terms of looking at the grass verges and mowing review. Yeah. If they are looking at the best ways to control verges, but obviously with pavements and roads, we still have a contract with DCC to clear the weeds because they disrupt the tarmac, et cetera. And with DCC at the moment, they are wanting us to use glyphosate that we get so much, a particular amount of money to deal with it in that way. But it is being looked at, and certainly we are looking at a more longterm way of dealing with, with verges and different open space areas. I haven't got a particular timeframe at the moment with they're supposed to be, there's a, we have a new employee who has been tasked with looking at that area. Okay. Thanks, Jean. We seriously do need to get the right balance with this and have a timeframe because things do go on. Not, not intentionally. It's just the way it is. Things do go on and on. So I, you know, a serious timeframe would be good. Yeah. And as Katie said, there are other measures that have been tested in lots of different authorities like steam methods and things like that. And of course they use a lot of energy as well. You know, it's a balancing act, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Jean. Thanks, Kath. Joanna, we'll bring you in next. Yes, I think, I mean, thank you, Jean. Cause I think that does clarify that the council doesn't have much power in this really. And also that Derbyshire is finally doing something about verges. And I think that suggests that with other, and I know other district councils have pushed on the verges as well. But I think that there's always two sides, but if we've made a nature declaration, if we care about nature and realise its importance, then we have to show some leadership and not simply think, well, you know, do we want weeds? Do we not want weeds? I wouldn't use the word weeds myself. They're just plants growing in somewhere where they're not wanted perhaps. But you know, we have to come down on one side or the other in accordance with what we've agreed as a council. So I think that, you know, it's something that this group probably needs to do. In other words, are we going to say, okay, glyphosate is most efficient, we haven't got very much money, let's just go with that. Or are we going to say, no, we're going to put some sort of effort into getting into working with other people, Derbyshire, Derbyshire Dales and so on, in trying to get rid of glyphosate. Okay, thanks, Joanna. I think as you, as you noted at the start of a lot of that, a lot of the work that we do, particularly done under the contract. So to a certain extent, there are some restrictions on what we may be able to change. But I know there has been some discussions around to a certain extent, does the contract bring in enough cash, essentially, for the agro that it brings? Because there are various, to a certain extent, realistically, there are various areas where we're either not getting enough cash to do the job well or enough. Yeah, or there's not enough flexibility in terms of what we're doing. So we can't move it to other methods or options. So at that point in time, so we come to, you know, will inevitably come to a point where we've got to take a review of is it worth continuing with the contract? I don't think quite there yet. But I know some of the work that they're looking at in terms of reviewing the mowing regimes will feed into this. Okay, thanks, Joanna. Gillian? Or Councillor Scott, because we've got a couple of Gillians on the board. Yeah, that's right. Confusing. Thanks, Jack. Thanks, Katie. I mean, I, I think that the I agree with Joanna, if we if we pass a nature recovery declaration, then we show leadership on it. And we go for it. But I do think conversations, you know, as Kat is saying, we've got people who've got different points of view, community conversations are absolutely key. And the community engagement day or days that we're going to have the consultations are really, really important. And I think it's important that when we have the consultations, very often, it will be the kind of transition groups, biodiversity groups that are possibly the most vocal, but we've got to make sure that we bring all groups in. So we look at the different, you know, the different points of view. So we can kind of understand how people are feeling. And I do think there's a kind of a mixed way of approaching things like as Katie knows, we've got this grass verge that the Borough Council have given over to community management in Hayfield, though it's just one grass verge. And there was quite an extensive consultation process with the community that went on there. And they were all in favour after discussion and know what it's going to be. So it's like trying out little bits, seeing how it goes, and talking to people all the time about the benefits because a lot of people won't realise that we live in such a nature depleted area because we're in just on the verge of a national park. And they think this great countryside. So why are we worried about these things? So I just think it is about talking to people. But also, we've passed this declaration. And so we show leadership on it. Thanks, Gillian. It's a bit of a mixed bag at the moment, there are some elements where we have various contractual requirements. And I suspect council colleagues in finance and other bits will say we've got to stick to some of those, some of those requirements. But as I flagged earlier, there are some bits of those that are under review. So we'll see what we get to when we get to that bit. If I take Gina's the last one on this bit, and then we'll move on. I just wanted to mention that it the grass verge is is a different situation to the edges of roads where I mean, everybody's complaining about potholes as well. So you don't want disruption of tarmac. So I think if we can use a mechanical route to getting rid of these weeds, that would be better. But that's often quite difficult, because there are you have parked cars that getting away and things like this. And there are all sorts of problems with these things. But I think on the edges of roads that we we still need to actually get rid of the weeds on those very edges, but verges, it's a different situation. Okay, thanks, Jean. I don't see any further hands. So thanks, Katie, for the update. And we'll move on to our next item, which as is looking at the annual climate change event, which as members will recall, we added in when we approve the new borough plan at the council meeting in October, a commitment to hold at least one event each year, reviewing sort of essentially what we've been doing in terms of the climate change action plan. And Gillian is going to talk to us. Hi, so Katie and I put this together, so Katie might chip in at some point, if that's okay. So we were just sort of thinking about how to format the day. So I'm just going to run through some ideas we've had just so that this group can maybe chip in some ideas so we can kind of work them up and maybe find partners to deliver that as well. So, oops, sorry. Why is it not moving? So as you just said, Anthony, it's obviously to share what we're up to and what we're planning to do, but we also want groups to understand how they can get involved with it or be empowered to set up their own groups and then we can obviously help them. So the ethos of the day is to empower groups to link up, learn from each other, gain tools to engage and to function better and think of new ways that we can engage collectively and be more in capacity build within the area. So if you can have a think as we're going through about the themes, who would invite, who could showcase what they're doing already. Organisations to invite them maybe aren't on that green agenda particularly. And we've got the CVS getting involved this time as well, so that should hopefully open out beyond the groups that maybe see themselves as green but are actually doing green things like your Men in Sheds would hate to be called environmentalists probably. And then also people who might want to be involved with organising it. When we did the Biodiversity Day, the Biodiversity Network were heavily involved, the Wildlife Trust as well. So it was, it made it a much better rounded day for people. So Katie mentioned this earlier, we're hoping to coincide this day with the Plan for Nature launch, so after the consultation. So this will end up, we reckon probably I think September Katie, I think that's what we said. I think about it, yeah, it kind of depends on the general election and then kicking off the consultation as soon as we can after that really. And then obviously time for finalising it. So we originally were expecting sort of summer but it probably is going to be late summer, early autumn I would expect now. Okay, that's cool. So probably September time then and obviously we'll invite the Wildlife Trust and other sort of larger partners to join. Maybe even get some some press coverage, might be quite nice to get some BBC Derby or something over if they come this far. So and these are just ideas, these aren't set in stone at all. The idea is to empower community groups but if individuals want to come along, that's fine. I just feel that if we can talk to groups to empower them to capacity build and take the message out, it saves Katie and I talking to lots and lots of individuals. So it's about that sort of community coming together. So under the energy theme, we've got March to the Energy Agency, who do you expect? And then all these projects kind of fall underneath that with the partner, the partner organisation. I'm not sure if everybody knows about the heat hub. This is a project that we're involved with through March's Energy Agency and Nottingham Energy Partnership and it's a demonstrator project to work with what are called able or willing to pay householders that want to retrofit but don't know where to start. They've either got the capital or they can get finance to do it because nobody's really looking at this and what that project is doing is looking at different archetypes, particularly hard to treat. So very much our areas, conservation areas, things like that and I'm sure you'll know about all of the other bits. This again is just a bit of a dump of ideas of what we could feature with nature. Katie's been working on nature walks along with Move More and Pickfoot with EEF, I think they're about to rebrand. We're looking at the calendar that we started making at last year's biodiversity event and trying to do some activities around that. There's a few bits of Swift pilots bubbling away that we're getting involved with that might be something that we can share. There's the Climate and Nature Fund, which you know about, we've got the funding for that again this year. We are putting it up to £600 per application, it was £500 before. There should be four applications per year per group but they have to be for different projects or phases of projects and the High Peak CVS run that on our path. I talked about this earlier, this is the Shared Prosperity Fund, so that's another strand for groups who might want to upgrade their buildings or obviously run that community engagement project. Refill, I know I've mentioned this several times and I mentioned it earlier. I do want to get this launched, I just have to find an afternoon to pull it all together. This will look at getting as a license for the refill platform and using all its tools to be able to showcase businesses that will happily, without question, refill your bottle of water for example. It also engages residents to know that that exists and then also helps businesses with getting rid of single-use plastic. Our Environmental Health Officers will be able to use that as part of their advisory visits. I'm getting in touch with United Utilities because they've obviously got a refill officer as well because they want you to be doing that. So yeah, it's quite a kind of cross-cutting project but I think it could be, it'll be quite nice once it's launched and then eventually as a sort of phase two, I'm going to see if we can get into our licensing for events to say that they have to have that or would really like it if they did, you know. And then we've talked a lot this evening on lots of different things to do with recycling because I'm not going to read all this out. But yeah, just some ideas. Jill Scott will be happy to put on her fashion show there as well because that was a lovely, fantastic evening where lots of people showcased what they made out of other things. So that's a really good example. And we're going to have the High Peak Community Voluntary Service. So they do lots of support work for community groups on the kind of boring stuff that you don't really think about when you set up initiatives like how to do social media, how to run a bank account, how to set up a constitution, how to run a meeting, for example. So they're there to help. They also have a massive network of groups which we can use this to tap into and hopefully make some nice new links for different groups. This one, we're not sure. David might not approve of this one. I think we should be doing more on wildfire prevention. So not just thinking about the enforcement, but actually going into schools and communities to explain why it's a really stupid idea to do that. So again, we don't have to have this. It's just an idea. I think for us on a climate change point of view, this is actually probably our biggest impact. If we have fires, it's the worst thing that can happen for us as an area. So anyway, it's all up for discussion. These are a few organisations that we thought might be involved. Again, it's just some ideas. This will get sent out afterwards. So yeah, just have a think about if there's any groups, initiatives, themes, organisations that you think you would like to see do something to help other groups or share. That's - I'm done. OK, thanks Gillian. Comments, questions? Joanna? Yeah, I think it all looks really good. I think you should invite the NFU. They might come. They're very anxious to sort of get their reputation a bit less. Oh, that's just farmers. And the WI. I think there's a sort of high peak WI grouping. Or the several? Oh yeah. No, but I mean, you know, I'd be happy to ask you to do the video group. I think there's an overarching one. It might even be Dalbyshire. So two different ones because, yeah, I mean, I think we've talked about this quite a lot, you know, sort of getting out to people who aren't usually involved in these things. I think the problem is what do you do to get action? But actually, but also there are an awful lot of ideas there. And there may be more, or people might want to throw them all out and just have it on, I don't know, energy. But assuming that, but if there were lots of ideas, I think we'd have to think quite carefully about how to organise it. So it wouldn't be like the last one we had, which was very much on the community groups coming together for nature, where there was a sort of central presentation and then there were activities, but it was all in one hall, everyone more or less doing the same thing. You know, so it might be, I can't remember what it's called, but the ones that gives ideas about setting up groups could sort of have a stall, for example, that anyone could go to throughout the day if they wanted advice. So, I mean, that's just an example off the top of my head, but I think, yeah, it may have to be very different. I'm sure you've thought of all this, Gillian, but. I'm well, I'm hearing as you're volunteering to help me, Joanna. That's what I'm hearing. Yes, not yet. I've minuted that. OK, fine. I'm joking, thank you. Thanks, Joanna. Just be cautious though on the WIs, because I know we do have the rebel WI operating up in Glossop. So you've got to be very careful with them because, you know, they're quite a feisty group, some of them. OK, David. Thanks, Anthony. I just felt compelled to respond to Gillian's point about wildfires. It's probably a timely reminder because we were approached by Derbyshire Dales who brought in a PSPO to tackle wildfires slightly after us and just focused on one particular area. Their members are now looking at extending or interested in extending the area beyond its current limits. So they asked for a meeting a week or two ago just to look at how we'd done it and what areas we'd included. And so it was a useful discussion. It involved us and others. And I then spoke to Councillor Clough afterwards because where we left it was it probably would make sense that if they're bringing a broader order in, that we perhaps do something together to get that publicity. So that is on the cards. The contact to Derbyshire Dales is on leave at the moment, but as soon as she comes back, we'll look for that joint meeting and the idea was to invite Councillor Clough as our representative to that. Just in terms of the publicity, one of the things that we've found is that it's quite difficult for us as a borough council or Derbyshire Dales as a district council to get that publicity out because by the time people have travelled into the area with their disposable barbecue, it's probably too late that they're going to cook the sausages and burgers no matter what. And so whether or not, and they're probably not going to look on our Twitter feed or our website et cetera beforehand. So it's how we get that message out. We had hoped when the countryside code was relaunched, was it last year, the year before, that that would have relaunched? I think David may have relaunched. Sorry, you just froze for a second there David. I froze, yeah. The countryside code relaunch didn't really give that opportunity. It was very, very low key. So by joining together, if we can involve the Peak Park as well, then it may give us more bang for our buck in terms of getting those messages out. So that is on the cards and what can we report back to the, this group what comes out to them now. Okay, thanks David. Is there any indications that our friends over the hill in the moorlands may have an interest? They did last time. Two could have some impact, three could have an even bigger impact. Yeah, I mean from the council side, yes. I think the difficulty that we had, and it's something that Councillor Clough has raised, was the enforcement of it that, if you remember the history last time, we were approached as was Staffordshire Moorland's history council by Peak Park and on the Derbyshire side by fire rescuing police at similar sort of time to introduce the order. The difficulty was that people then walk back a little bit on terms of the enforcement and then look to us to enforce, but we don't have the people out there in those areas. It's obviously a very large area to cover. So it's that enforceability is the difficult bit, particularly if the Peak Park rangers don't want to take on an enforcement function. Feedback from the NFU is that they found it useful in that it gave farmers something that they could point to. It wasn't just them being awkward that there was some something in place. There was positive publicity, but that was the issue. I think particularly Staffordshire police were more concerned about it being there than that it would generate jobs for them that they wouldn't necessarily be able to respond to. So that's part of the idea of us coming together. I think we probably should include Moorland's in that. So jointly, how can we look at a response? Is the PSPA the best way to go? Are the other things to do? The education side, signage, and I suppose if we do go down the PSPA route, what do we want to include in there? Because I think last time we included, well we did, we included possessing a portable barbecue as an offence. Is that the route we want to go down? Because these alternatives around contacting the likes of Morrisons etc. were quite receptive last time. So I think if we can have, yeah, we'll put together a bit of a plan and bring that back to you if that's OK. OK, thanks David. Are there any other comments in terms of putting together the annual event? May I suspect even though there's not comments, more comments this evening, if anyone does think of anything following the meeting, if you get in touch with Gillian and we can add them into the mix? OK, in that case then we'll move on then, sorry Kath? Yeah, if we could have some printed posters to put around the areas because not everybody sees Facebook, you know, to me. Thanks Kath. OK, we'll move on then to our final agenda item, which is the date of the next meeting, which is set for the 16th of July and it's your opportunity now for, if you want us to cover a particular theme at that meeting. We're bereft of hands at the moment. Gillian? Just to say that I'll be pulling together the annual report for a draft kind of mid July, so I don't know if that would be a suitable time for a first draft or not, it's up to you. Yep, if that's available. Jean? Sorry, we had a couple of things penciled in, like the quarry thing, what's it called? It's just gone out of my head. Peak cluster. And there was another one. We've got a few things on the work programme, we've got air quality, because there's a lot of synergies with the air quality plans and the climate change plan, so it's quite nice to see where those touch points are and with a bit of, you know, so we wondered if there would be an interest in having a brief from Alicia, who's head of environmental health. We had something else, wait, let's just get on there. Gillian, in response to your email you sent just before the meeting, the local area energy plan, is that something we just want to bring? Yeah, I can mention that, of course. I mentioned this some time ago about D2N2, we're wanting all of the boroughs, districts, cities, etc to have what's called a local area energy plan, where it maps out all the energy that's used now and then it helps you build scenarios of how to decarbonise area by area, and you can build in all different scenarios and you can build in, well we know we're going to build 100 houses over here, or we know the peak cluster are going to start dropping there, or using more energy over here because they've got these big bands to suck energy out of the carbon, out the waste stream. So they had asked, and somebody might remember this, I think it was 70 grand from each authority to which we went, well we'll see what it looks like first because we'll see if it's any good. However, the Mayoral Combined Authority has now agreed that they're going to pay for it, which is good, but it does mean that we need to make sure that we set up a good project team to make sure we get the most out of it and we embed it into all our decision making. But that is, on the surface, that's good news and I think it will be a really powerful tool. I have seen it in action and it is pretty awesome actually, and it also, which I hadn't realised, when you do your scenario planning it also links to other indicators locally, so particularly around fuel poverty, socio-economic health, all sorts of stuff. So I think it'd be quite a useful tool. It's very whizzy, it's very nice. Okay, thanks Gillian, Joanna? I'm just a bit concerned about how, I mean this is very, very complicated of course, the whole thing about taking action on climate change and nature, but it's the sort of direction of travel. So we've talked a lot about doing stuff with community groups and in fact I've argued, you know, we have to do stuff with community groups because we haven't got the resources to do stuff ourselves. But then there's also the internal working and keeping everybody internally on board, and although that has got much, much better I have to say, since we declared the climate emergency. Yeah, is there a kind of decision to be made at some point, perhaps after we've looked at the annual report, about how we're going to make sure that we meet some of our targets and therefore how we either concentrate on community groups, and that's sort of part two of the plan or part one of the plan, where we can say High Peak has reached net zero by 2030. I mean, I have to say it's impossible to say that's going to happen, but you know, so that we can showcase what High Peak has done, or are we going to concentrate on working with community groups, if you see what I mean. Because sometimes it's a bit difficult to follow what's actually happening. There's, as Gillian mentioned, there's a grander plan in terms of the work problem for the group, but obviously if we've got topics that members are particularly interested in, it can make it a better meeting. So we're just asking for this particular bit you want to focus on, but we can add that onto the list. Yes, yes. So it's a sort of where the focus is in terms of part one and part two of the plan. Yeah. Question. I think once we've got the annual report, I think that'd be an ideal time to, to do that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Any other comments or suggestions? I just wanted to, to mention that there's, we need the carbon literacy percentage to be increased. I think Gillian was going to mention that. Oh yeah. So we have been so close to getting silver on two occasions, but with the parameters previously, you needed to have an executive member, so we had enough staff, but then the little broad just left. So then Andrew Stokes had to get trained and just as he was getting trained, they changed the whole formula from just being staff numbers to being staff and counsellor numbers. And it went from 15% to 30%. So now going from there to where now 50, I think 40 for high peak is 40 something people that we would need to put through the training. So it's, it's just rubbish and there's nothing we could have done about it because they changed that just as Andrew Stokes was getting this accreditation. So it's, yeah, it's quite frustrating. So I think we need to decide if we want to pursue it, if it's important to us, there'll be a, there's a lot, that's a lot of people we can train them. We have the facilitator to train them, but it's a lot of staff time of a whole day. And how do we identify the staff and the counsellors, et cetera, because it's an eight hour training programme. How many people are we talking about? So we've got, we've got about 50 at the moment and we need about another 41, which can come from staff or counsellors, basically. Right. Yeah. For high peak. But if we do it as an alliance, it gives you more counsellors to pull in on and it's like 55 or something like that. So it's, it's kind of how do we do it? Yeah. So I just wanted to ask if our members of this committee wanted to do it as well. Any views, folks, before we move on to Joanna? You don't have to speak now, we will come back to folk later. Can I just say? Yeah, go on Gillian. The Common Literacy Training, there was some fairly recently, Gillian, wasn't there? But it was in Leek. Yeah. And so I wanted to do it, but actually I couldn't get to Leek. I don't have a car. You try getting to Leek by public transport, there's no train station, there's no bus. So I would have done it. But if we, if you want more people to do it, it's got to be somewhere where we can get to. So yeah, that's just a point. That's great. I didn't know you were interested. Otherwise I would have organised another, because we've got, we basically with our local area, local authority energy partnership, we get a trainer for two sessions a year. So I could have organised, but I didn't know, yeah, I didn't know you were interested. So otherwise I could, we could have, we can do it. We can still do that. That's not a problem. That's probably my fault. I didn't let you know, but we got the email from somebody in Staffordshire Moorlands, I think. So I was emailing that person. It might have been Sarah. It doesn't matter. It's not a problem. We can still run it again. But yeah, if anybody does want, maybe we should put a call out actually to see does anybody enter, like through all the councillors, if anybody's interested and we'll run another one. Yeah, we'll do that. Locally, kind of. It's the high peak. Yeah. No problem at all. Okay. Joanna? Yeah. I mean, Gillian, if you want to lift anywhere, let me know. No. I mean, Gillian Scott. Yeah, it is really, really good, really good. Oh, I don't know what's happening. I've turned my thing off because, oh, crikey. Can you hear me? A bit of an echo on the line, I think. I don't know how that's happened. We're getting an echo, but I can't see anyone. Okay, shall I try again? Yep. There's no echo this time. It's really good training, but, you know, Gillian was asking about getting some sort of certification and I just wondered, apart from people being trained and understanding the issues, what's in it for the council? Well, that's exactly it. It's the silver, having a silver badge, it doesn't... Does anyone know what it means? It's just a badge of recognition. It's something that we can wave our flag. And then that's exactly the point. I agree. I don't think it's, I'm not a badge collector. It's going to be useful. But like you say, it is great. This training, I think it's really good. It is very good training, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's a decision to have offline of whether we want to pursue that or not. Okay, David. I'm tempted to put my hand down because I think that's a good suggestion, Gillian. But I was going to say, if we've got the option of having two events a year, one way forward would be to run those two events a year if there's demand for them, not necessarily, you know, if it leads us to get to silver, so be it. But at least we will be meeting demand from workforce, from councillors and taking advantage of an offer that's there. The other thing just to say that we can do with those credits, if you like, we can either use them for this certified carbon literacy, or we could run a couple of half day, you know, the fresh, that first bit you do in the carbon literacy, which is like it teaches, which is still, it's good in itself. It teaches you the science of climate change, but it's much more manageable. We just don't get that certificate which would contribute to the silver. So it's whether it's the silver that's important or the learning about the climate science. So I'm agnostic to be honest, but it's really up to the leaders, I guess, to decide what is important to them with it. Okay. So we'll take that bit of the conversation offline. That sounds like one perhaps for David to have with Tanya in terms of sort of OD stuff around sort of how much more staffing we need to have had the training. So we'll come back to folk on that one. I can't see any further hands up. So we'll take away those comments in terms of putting together the next agenda, but we've got a couple of bits in terms of the energy plan, the pending consultation around the plan for nature and the annual report. We'll come back to folks with an agenda on that in July. So in that case, that brings us then to the end of our agenda for this evening. Thank you all for your attendance and input and enjoy the rest of your evening.