# Banter 82: Devolution and County Networks, with Andrew Maliphant {% embed url="" %} ### Video Timeline: (min:sec) 00:00 - 27:26 Presentation 27:26 - 60:32 (end) Q & A *** ### Presentation: {% file src="" %} You are welcome to download this slide deck; a markdown copy of the contents is at the bottom of this page for AI indexing purposes *** ### Meeting Summary: ### Quick recap The meeting began with discussions about attendance and technical setup, followed by conversations about English devolution's potential impact on Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, including the possibility of forming strategic authorities and the importance of proper local government reorganization. Andrew Maliphant presented on various aspects of local government and climate change, covering topics such as the role of town and parish councils, community initiatives, and the challenges of measuring and achieving net-zero targets at local levels. The group concluded by discussing practical approaches to retrofitting solar panels on listed buildings and addressing unique challenges for older homes, while emphasizing the importance of community engagement and collaboration in driving climate action at the local level. ### Next steps * Graham: Edit the recording of the meeting. * Andrew Maliphant: Resolve PowerPoint presentation sharing issues with Zoom for future meetings. * Andrew Maliphant: Share the presentation links with all attendees after the meeting. * Andrew Maliphant: Continue efforts to connect with Suffolk climate action representatives. * Great Collaboration Team: Support local projects with joint funding bids. * Great Collaboration Team: Work with organizations in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk to establish paid county advisors. * Great Collaboration Team: Continue partnership with Space Invaders regarding climate emergency centers. * Great Collaboration Team: Continue developing county-based networks for climate action initiatives. * Great Collaboration Team: Help local projects seek and apply for funding. * Great Collaboration Team: Develop interactive maps for community climate action groups. * Great Collaboration Team: Facilitate networking and clustering for town and parish councils. * Great Collaboration Team: Create forums for sharing good practices and advice at county level. * Stanway Parish Council clerk: Continue acting as the convener for the Green Essex Network and run the secretariat. * Essex Green Network: Establish a WhatsApp group for quick communication between members. * Great Collaboration Team: Apply to the Esme Fairbairn Foundation for funding a post in Essex with the Rural Community Council. * Great Collaboration volunteers: Help populate the knowledge base on the Hilo online platform. * Essex Green Network steering group: Meet again in September to determine who will lead specific parts of the plan. * Great Collaboration Team: Continue identifying and listing county-based climate action networks on their website. * Meeting attendees: Notify the Great Collaboration team of any climate networks not currently listed on their website. * County networks: Maintain communication with existing local authorities regarding devolution plans. * Andrew Maliphant: Connect with Rural Services Network through Amanda to establish partnership. * Great Collaboration Team: Explore measurement mechanisms for climate initiatives, potentially through Parish Online mapping. * Amanda: Facilitate connection between Great Collaboration and Rural Services Network, particularly leveraging RSN's bridge between LGA and NALC. * Andrew Maliphant: Follow up with RSN regarding appropriate membership options. * Garry: Share Corsham Town Council's updated Climate Action Plan with the group. * Jackie: Share Herefordshire's carbon descent program and roadmap with the group, particularly focusing on the built environment sector. * Great Collaboration Team: Explore Cornwall's detailed approach to listed buildings and conservation areas for potential best practices. * Jackie: Explore finding a suitable presenter from Herefordshire to share their approach to measuring carbon reduction actions at a future Wednesday meeting. * Andrew: Share Historic England resources regarding solar panels on historic buildings with the group. ### Summary #### Devolution Impact on Gloucestershire Counties Participants discussed the potential impact of English devolution on Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, with suggestions that the two counties might join Worcestershire in a strategic authority. Amanda emphasized the importance of getting the local government reorganization right, even if devolution does not materialize, and mentioned that Publica's services have been in-house transferred to districts. The conversation ended with a brief discussion about recording the session, but technical issues with slide show mode were encountered. #### Local Climate Action Challenges Andrew Maliphant discussed the English Devolution government's white paper, which proposed strategic authorities based on unitary councils, potentially leading to the demise of district councils while neglecting town and parish councils. He emphasized the need for local action on climate change and environmental issues, highlighting the impact of heatwaves, flooding, and biodiversity loss. Maliphant also addressed the lack of statutory duties and funding for local governments to tackle climate change, expressing concern about relying on 20th-century remedies for 21st-century problems. He concluded by noting the need for strategic authorities to take responsibility for climate change, which should ideally be addressed at the local level. #### Parish Councils and Devolution Roles Andrew Maliphant discussed the current status and potential roles of town and parish councils in the context of devolution and local government reforms. He noted that while parish councils are mentioned in the Devolution and Community Engagement Bill, they are not granted new functions. Maliphant highlighted the pilot of Neighbourhood Area Committees in some areas, which aim to enhance local connections, though their future implementation post-devolution remains uncertain. He also mentioned that parish and town councils are lobbying for changes, including easier formation of new councils and direct access to central government funding, though the latter idea faces concerns about additional burdens. Maliphant concluded by sharing examples of successful community initiatives led by parishes and towns, emphasizing existing powers they can use to support their communities. #### County Climate Action Initiatives Andrew Maliphant discussed the various community and local council initiatives across different counties in response to climate change, highlighting successful projects in Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Suffolk. He emphasized the importance of collaboration between local councils, community groups, and paid advisors to drive climate action at a county level. Maliphant also mentioned the launch of a Green Essex network and the need for local county-based projects, with Stanway Parish Council taking the lead in Essex. #### Great Collaboration Communication Strategies Andrew Maliphant discussed the Great Collaboration's use of WhatsApp groups and online forms for communication, emphasizing the importance of a knowledge base that signposts information effectively. He highlighted the need for volunteers to populate this knowledge base and mentioned various communication strategies, including newsletters, social media, and networks. Andrew also talked about the importance of engaging local partners and community groups, using Essex as an example of how to establish a steering group and plan future actions. Amanda mentioned the rural services network as a potential partner for the Great Collaboration, emphasizing its connection to NLK and LGA. #### Local Net-Zero Action Strategies The group discussed measuring and achieving net-zero targets at local levels, with Andrew Maliphant emphasizing the importance of engaging communities through visible actions like biodiversity projects and flood adaptation rather than solely focusing on renewable energy. They explored challenges in measuring carbon emissions, particularly how infrastructure like airports and motorways can skew statistics, and discussed various approaches including parish-level data collection and the use of carbon calculators. The conversation highlighted that while national targets like 2050 are ambitious, local councils should focus on measurable actions they can control, with Garry from Corsham Town Council noting they had achieved net-zero through their own actions at a cost of £30 per year for offsetting. #### Solar Retrofits in Heritage Buildings The group discussed challenges and best practices for retrofitting solar panels onto listed buildings, with Jackie noting that Cornwall's approach was impressive and suggesting focusing on easier interventions rather than attempting comprehensive carbon reduction. Andrew shared that Historic England provides guidance on this topic, though planning authorities can be resistant to such changes. The discussion also covered Herefordshire's carbon descent program, which focuses on minimal fabric retrofits combined with heat pumps for off-gas-grid properties, with Jackie emphasizing the need to address unique challenges for older and quirky homes. *** ### Chat: 00:09:24 Jenny Barna: Hello 00:13:13 Jacky Lawrence, Low Carbon Warwickshire Network, Napton PC CEWP: [Warwickshire Low Carbon Network – Harbury Energy Initiative](https://www.harburyenergy.co.uk/warwickshire-low-carbon-network/) 00:26:04 Amanda Davis: Devolution AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Bill.... the latter was added at the last minute by the Minister leading on devolution Jim McMahon, Labour and COOP party MP. I'm working to influence Coop Party re the first tier of LG closest to communities ie Parish and Town Councils 01:01:20 Jackie Jones: This is a link to the net zero initiative from Herefordshire Council . The Climate and Nature Partnership board is supported by the council sustainability team and has working groups on energy, built environment, land management etc. 01:01:58 Jackie Jones: This is a link to HGN's weekly newsletter, which goes to over a thousand people [https://us6.campaign-archive.com/?e=7d4ad6ab74\&u=2a1e7517c5401f6c31a730d6a\&id=9f3aaafab3 ](https://us6.campaign-archive.com/?e=7d4ad6ab74\&u=2a1e7517c5401f6c31a730d6a\&id=9f3aaafab3) 01:02:44 Jackie Jones: And here's a list of the organisations that are in our membership (we don't list our individual member online): [https://hgnetwork.org/directory/?\_gl=1*1ebh7fy*\_ga*MTc1MzYwNDE3OS4xNzQ0MjIzMDA5*\_ga\_2GPETZMBZQ\*czE3NTUwODMyNDEkbzY2JGcwJHQxNzU1MDgzMjQxJGo2MCRsMCRoMA..](https://hgnetwork.org/directory/?_gl=11ebh7fy_gaMTc1MzYwNDE3OS4xNzQ0MjIzMDA5_ga_2GPETZMBZQ*czE3NTUwODMyNDEkbzY2JGcwJHQxNzU1MDgzMjQxJGo2MCRsMCRoMA..) 01:04:29 Jackie Jones: Herefordshire carbon emissions data: [https://zerocarbon.herefordshire.gov.uk/the-situation-in-herefordshire/producing-the-emissions-figures/ ](https://zerocarbon.herefordshire.gov.uk/the-situation-in-herefordshire/producing-the-emissions-figures/) 01:14:51 Ken Huggins North Dorset Hazelbury Bryan PC: Many thanks all for good meeting, regret have to leave now 01:15:25 Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: [Adapting Historic Buildings for Energy and Carbon Efficiency | Historic England](https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/adapting-historic-buildings-energy-carbon-efficiency-advice-note-18/) 01:16:25 Andrew Clegg, Martock, Somerset: Here is the Historic England advice. Our problem is that the planning authority seems not to be disposed to follow it. 01:19:00 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Here is the governmenmt's view of putting solar PV on listed buildings: 01:19:29 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: A scientific approach would say the obvious place to build a house is underground, where there is little heat loss and a stable ground temperature that requires little heat input to keep the house comfortable……. 01:19:29 Jackie Jones: I'm looking forward to listening to your presentation from last week, Kirstin 01:20:01 Kirstin Rayner: Replying to "I'm looking forward ..." Thanks Jackie *** ### Speech-to-text for AI Search engine: 191\ 00:20:52.320 --> 00:20:54.859\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Good afternoon, everybody. 192\ 00:20:55.530 --> 00:21:04.049\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And now a word from our sponsor, County Based Networks. So, we'll be looking at each slide as we go through, but it won't be doing too much of the fancy stuff. However, that's not the end of the world. 193\ 00:21:05.470 --> 00:21:11.389\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: English Devolution, the government produced a white paper in December last year, saying that it was going to go everywhere to have 194\ 00:21:11.500 --> 00:21:18.589\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Strategic authorities based on unitary councils, and that, would mean, in effect, the demise of district councils. 195\ 00:21:18.940 --> 00:21:24.610\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: No mention at all of the town and parish councils, who are, and still will be, the nearest local government 196\ 00:21:24.720 --> 00:21:28.180\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: to the community. So, what we're talking about now is 197\ 00:21:28.540 --> 00:21:36.940\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Do we sit and wait and see what comes down at us, from on high, or do we actually think, actually, we need to… some things are more important to get on with. 198\ 00:21:37.120 --> 00:21:47.939\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And we need to crack on anyway and keep in touch with the devolution process so that something sensible comes out at the end of it. And there'll be different views and experiences around the room to talk about that there. 199\ 00:21:50.680 --> 00:22:04.719\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, what are the things? We're talking about local action. Obviously there are many things that we could be talking about under that very broad heading. What we're about with the Great Collaboration in particular is climate change, things to do with the environment. 200\ 00:22:05.230 --> 00:22:14.420\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So we've got here some pictures of the things that are affecting most people. Obviously, the heat waves, bottom left, we're all getting very sadly used to that. There's one on at the moment. 201\ 00:22:14.690 --> 00:22:28.090\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Top right is a picture from Autry St Mary in Devon. That is not near a river or anything that's overflowed. That is rain that has come down in a hurry a few years ago and didn't have enough space to get away, and there's a police lady up to her knees in it. 202\ 00:22:28.610 --> 00:22:41.559\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: In Silver Street in Autry St. Mary. Bottom right is some people studying some biodiversity studies. Biodiversity, of course, is currently a strategy duty on every local level of local government to at least consider biodiversity. 203\ 00:22:41.980 --> 00:22:59.140\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: You think, top left, what's the food bank got to do with, could do with people sharing things? What's that got to do with climate change? Well, it's certainly to do with, waste. We're not throwing away food, we're sharing it with other people, and help people who have, need some extra food for their family, which, for whatever reason. 204\ 00:22:59.320 --> 00:23:15.410\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The other thing is that we have experienced, thanks to climate change, I think it was it last year, that Spain, in particular, and North Africa, were very hard hit by heat, and the supply of salad cups completely diminished. 205\ 00:23:15.740 --> 00:23:31.870\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And so that is… so food banks, food security provision of food is affected by climate change in many, many ways. So those are sort of… the sort of things that we're talking about, the sort of things that we might be thinking about in terms of 206\ 00:23:32.210 --> 00:23:33.400\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: local action. 207\ 00:23:34.470 --> 00:23:36.609\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Okay, just a bit of background. 208\ 00:23:37.080 --> 00:23:55.120\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There's a nice graph in the middle from NASA, which explains… shows very clearly this sudden zoom upwards of carbon equivalent in the atmosphere. For millennia, atmospheric carbon arcs have never been above this line, so there it is, it's very clearly placed there. 209\ 00:23:55.580 --> 00:24:08.340\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, UK government, during the Boris Johnson government, declared a net zero target of 2050. As we speak, no branch of local government below central government has any statutory duty on climate change. 210\ 00:24:08.460 --> 00:24:26.629\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Local Government Association, which is sort of a partly centrally funded body between local councils and central government, carried out a survey earlier this year, and the conclusion of it, they've summarized as local authorities need strategy, duties and powers, sufficient funding, and robust support to lead on climate action. 211\ 00:24:27.120 --> 00:24:35.039\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Of course, what we're beginning to understand is that government don't have any more bottomless pockets than they might have had in the past. They certainly don't have any more. 212\ 00:24:35.480 --> 00:24:45.409\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I'm always slightly concerned if I discover that people are trying to solve 21st century problems using 20th century remedies. It's very easy to say we can do it if we're given more money. 213\ 00:24:45.810 --> 00:24:48.610\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That's a very simple thing to say. … 214\ 00:24:48.800 --> 00:25:01.150\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I was involved on behalf of town and parish councils with a local net zero form run by the Department of Energy, last year, and they were very clearly looking to find the ways to deliver change without any statutory funding. 215\ 00:25:01.360 --> 00:25:09.230\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: As we're familiar, any time that government puts a new statutory burden on local government, the hand goes out, palm upwards, and we need some money, please, to do that. 216\ 00:25:09.470 --> 00:25:20.489\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: But at the same time, they say, well, actually, we are the local factory, we know what's best, thank you for all that money, but we think, well, we need to spend it on adult social care, thank you very much. So there are all kinds of issues around statutory funding. 217\ 00:25:21.210 --> 00:25:32.419\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The white paper did suggest that climate change responsibility would be held at strategic authority level. In other words, it's at sort of mayoral level, all strategic authorities have an elected mayor. 218\ 00:25:32.580 --> 00:25:47.600\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Rather than local level, and of course, as we know in this room, hopefully, delivery of response to climate change happens at the local level, rather than at the top of the tree. So there is a bit of a disconnect there, or potential disconnect there, straight away. 219\ 00:25:48.020 --> 00:25:52.109\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So that's where we are at the moment. What about town and parish councils? 220\ 00:25:52.760 --> 00:25:54.960\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Not mentioned in the white paper at all. 221\ 00:25:55.660 --> 00:26:04.410\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There is some mention, and these links will be circled around everybody, and they'll be in the presentation that's shared at the end of the meeting, so I do have to make lots of notes. 222\ 00:26:04.410 --> 00:26:19.679\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, there are a few mentions of parish councils in the bill, but nothing about new functions. Neighbourhood area committees. Now, this is something I only heard about, last week, from, the chairman of Essex Association Local Councils. 223\ 00:26:19.910 --> 00:26:32.259\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There has been some experiments as to how people might maintain local connections, possibly in the shadow of the, you know, the previous district areas, and how that might work out. 224\ 00:26:32.510 --> 00:26:42.899\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, I don't know the… he didn't know the full value of that. Something called Neighbourne Area Committees is being piloted in a couple of places, and particularly in this particular link in Surrey. 225\ 00:26:43.180 --> 00:26:49.579\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Theoretically, it should be about local people, local parishes and towns, other local bodies getting together. 226\ 00:26:49.830 --> 00:27:05.120\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: But this is early days. Whether that is going to be, in somebody's mind, that that's something that gets rolled out post-devolution is an open question, but something to keep a mind on, because whether people are thinking, oh, we… parish and town councils have been, 227\ 00:27:05.260 --> 00:27:10.979\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: transparent to local central government for years. You know, it's not that they've been avoiding us, they just don't quite see us. 228\ 00:27:11.360 --> 00:27:30.750\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Nalc, National Association of Local Council, Society of Local Council Clarks, lobbying, been lobbying for changes for some time. One of the things is about making it easier for new councils to form. At the moment, the local planning authority, a district council, classically, has got a power of veto over any application to be a new parish or town council, calling them community councils. 229\ 00:27:31.020 --> 00:27:35.669\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There's a new one in Chelmsford. Chelmsford Garden Community Council's started quite recently. 230\ 00:27:36.170 --> 00:27:39.970\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Famously, of course, Queen's Park Community Council in London. 231\ 00:27:40.190 --> 00:27:59.299\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Some places are getting well ahead of this. When Taunton Dean Borough Council disappeared, when Somerset went unitary, Taunton Town Council reappeared the next day, so that's already… was already planned. Cheltenham Borough Council in Gloucestershire know that their days are numbered. They've already started working on how to develop parish… 232\ 00:27:59.390 --> 00:28:04.970\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: equivalent to local councils in the Cheltenham borough area, so that there is continuity there. 233\ 00:28:05.430 --> 00:28:08.249\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I don't know if that's happening in, in, … 234\ 00:28:08.780 --> 00:28:22.360\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: In Gloucester as well. I've been advised that in Canterbury, where there is a district council based around Canterbury City, they are busy spending a lot of time trying to work out what their unitary status is going to be, and there is no… 235\ 00:28:22.560 --> 00:28:38.630\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: movement, yet on a possible Canterbury, city council, the sort of parish council level. So, there's varying responses and various issues around the country, and certainly what the people that are currently district stroke County authorities have got a veto on new councils to form, so… 236\ 00:28:38.790 --> 00:28:53.169\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: We might anticipate we get more town and parish councils, particularly in urban areas, but that's not quite so clear, straightforward as it is at the moment. A lot of people, of course, concerned about unitary status and what that's going to mean. 237\ 00:28:53.500 --> 00:29:03.259\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The government had a fair funding review lately, and NALC has responded, saying that they'd ask for parish and Town Council to have the right to apply directly for central government funding. 238\ 00:29:03.370 --> 00:29:11.660\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Interesting idea. Of course, all local council funding at the moment, parish and town councils, come from the local parish precept, local rating. 239\ 00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:24.350\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: How that might work in practice, I don't know. I would hate to have to get to the situation where there are more burdens laid on town and parish councils, and then, 10,000 town and parish councils put their hands out farm upwards. 240\ 00:29:24.390 --> 00:29:34.019\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I doubt whether government's going to be quite keen on that idea, but I'm told there's a lot of thinking going on at the central government. There's the current Minister for Rural Affairs, Daniel Zeichner, MP, 241\ 00:29:34.050 --> 00:29:48.270\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Minister of Oral Affairs at DAFRA apparently is considering all this, thinking about this, but we don't know what conclusion's been come to yet. Meanwhile, local parishes and clusters of parishes are doing some great things, of course, as many of us know. We had a great talk 242\ 00:29:48.350 --> 00:29:59.759\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: from Kirsten about things that are happening, a gambling game, there's a link through to that session. Amazing things being done in that, in that parish. On the right, there's, the parish, Suffolk Green Cluster. There were… 243\ 00:29:59.760 --> 00:30:11.679\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Three parishes got together to work together on joint activity. I think there are up to 9 or 10 parishes now, and there they are meeting. And they've been successful in setting up their own 244\ 00:30:11.780 --> 00:30:23.890\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: community interest company, which then applied for funding, and they've won £40,000 for a feasibility study for a renewable energy product. So… project. So there it is. You know, there are ways in which things can go forward already. 245\ 00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:39.319\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: parishes and towns can already make a big difference to the futures of their communities. And there are existing powers they can use. My favorite is Section 101 of the good old 1972 Local Government Act, which says any local authorities can have their 246\ 00:30:39.360 --> 00:30:48.159\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: their responsibilities can help other local authorities with their responses, and have other local authorities help with their own responsibilities. In other words… 247\ 00:30:48.260 --> 00:31:04.529\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: If parish and town councils were wanting to take over things that… or support things that districts and counties currently do, the legal basis for that already exists. In some places, that's already happening, parishes and towns are taking over parking, markets, and toilets and things of that nature. 248\ 00:31:04.820 --> 00:31:15.059\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, there are powers there, there isn't the compulsion there yet, but if parishes and towns want to get going, then the opportunities do exist. 249\ 00:31:15.360 --> 00:31:26.510\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And it's not just about local councils, of course. A lot of places, in response to climate change, community involvement in response to climate change, it's the community groups and local voluntary groups that are leading the way. 250\ 00:31:27.360 --> 00:31:45.150\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Not least in some places where parish council chairmen think that climate change… still think climate change is all a con. There are still some. So there are national bodies that have local branches, Friends of the Earth and so forth, lots of individual projects as well. The conservation projects that local wildlife trusts tend to support. 251\ 00:31:45.290 --> 00:31:50.379\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Volunteer food banks, repair cafes, equipment libraries so people can borrow tools rather than having to buy them. 252\ 00:31:50.510 --> 00:32:00.759\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: all kinds of things going on. Of course, we had a lot of spontaneous community involvement in helping elderly housebound people get some shopping in during COVID, so… 253\ 00:32:00.790 --> 00:32:16.450\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: you know, that's all there happening. And of course, communities already get in touch with Token Parish and Town Councils over allotments. It's one of the very few statutory responsibilities on Town and Parish Councils, is to provide allotments, or seek to provide allotments, if people ask for them. 254\ 00:32:16.820 --> 00:32:23.330\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, there is something there about that. So, what we're talking about is Council and Community Climate Action. 255\ 00:32:23.480 --> 00:32:36.870\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And that's very much where the great collaboration is coming from. Going back to the early days, from days in Herefordshire, which we'll talk about in a bit. I'm very glad that Jackie, the original chairman of the Great Collaboration, is with us today. 256\ 00:32:37.010 --> 00:32:49.090\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That's where we're at. I say to them almost every week to parish clerks, don't try and do it on your own. Get your local people involved, counsellors for preference, get together local working groups or whatever. 257\ 00:32:49.320 --> 00:32:57.090\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Parish clerk, so I was a clerk for 8 years and got plenty to do, but it's not a single person's job. Get other people involved, get local people engaged. 258\ 00:32:57.200 --> 00:32:59.310\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That's the way to go forward. 259\ 00:33:00.190 --> 00:33:05.940\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So… Looking again, then. Counties. Counties may be a bit under threat at the moment. 260\ 00:33:06.090 --> 00:33:11.870\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: But traditional counties are still alive. Obviously, there's a picture of some agricultural shows still going very strong. 261\ 00:33:12.200 --> 00:33:22.880\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I used to think that, it was Alfred the Cake that started, the county and Shire processes in this country. I'm not entirely sure of that. Certainly, once the Normans got in charge, they were very clear on having 262\ 00:33:23.340 --> 00:33:34.220\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: county-based organisations, and had their Shire Reeves collecting funds for central government, and the Shire Reeve of Nottingham, or Shiree of Nottingham, of course, became notorious, but he was a bit too keen on his job. 263\ 00:33:34.260 --> 00:33:46.910\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: getting money out for the Crown out of his local people, but there it is. Counties are still going. Counties, all the discussions we've had in the last couple of years is that that's a… 264\ 00:33:47.150 --> 00:34:04.729\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: geography, an area of geography that people understand, that they're used to, that they're familiar with, and it seemed very sensible to actually, if we're looking at joining up local councils and people to do something together, that councils is a good sort of area to be doing that in. Little bit of personal anecdote, 2002, I was working with the 265\ 00:34:04.850 --> 00:34:10.600\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: countryside Agency on, During the foot and mouth epidemic, and lots of… … 266\ 00:34:10.940 --> 00:34:18.270\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: footpaths were closed, and various things were being sorted out. And I had a phone call from somebody saying, what's happening in Berkshire? 267\ 00:34:18.380 --> 00:34:36.580\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And I had to share that person that 10 years previously, Berkshire had disappeared in return for 6 unitary authorities. So, you know, the idea that Berkshire had survived that, sort of, even that local government reorganization. So counties do, on the whole, seem to be where it's at in terms of joining things up. 268\ 00:34:36.929 --> 00:34:40.019\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, here we go, the Herefordshire Green Network, … 269\ 00:34:40.139 --> 00:34:46.239\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: This is, something that's just, lifted some of this text from the, Hereford Degree Network's, 270\ 00:34:46.790 --> 00:34:53.830\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: website, bringing together local groups and individuals committed to a thriving Herefordshire working together to address the climate and ecological crisis. 271\ 00:34:53.969 --> 00:35:13.590\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Dedicated to supporting communities. There it is. Herefordshire Green Network Regional Developers, is a great collaboration website, had some charitable funding, and through the website, some 350 individuals recorded over 2,400, you know, climate and environmental actions within 3 years, and there was a paid advisor to support town and parish councils. 272\ 00:35:13.700 --> 00:35:22.099\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The idea was always to make that the Great Collaboration would go national. Hereford and Greek Network were pleased to pass the baton to 273\ 00:35:22.140 --> 00:35:38.200\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: ourselves, the place-based initiatives, in order to carry that forward. But that doesn't mean they're not still going. You may wish to say a bit more about what you're about, Jackie, later, if you would like, but obviously, we're publishing a fortnightly newsletter, which I'm still receiving, of course. 274\ 00:35:38.280 --> 00:35:48.559\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, Herefordshire, there we are. Save Our Shropshire. Shropshire's been doing things as well. They had a vision to achieve net zero by 3-0. 275\ 00:35:49.020 --> 00:35:56.319\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Very much looking at education through the Carbon Literacy Project, looking at, getting people engaged in real behaviour change. 276\ 00:35:56.360 --> 00:36:10.599\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The website there provides action ideas linking to eco-traders. I get calls, I work 5 hours a week for the Society of Local Council Partners. People say, can you recommend somebody that does installations of solar panels? Can you recommend people this, that, and the other? 277\ 00:36:10.620 --> 00:36:24.600\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And so a certain amount of recommendation is available in Shropshire through that website. They also have an annual Climate Action Award, and as we speak, that Save in Shropshire initiative is in the process of actually being passed to SLCC to carry forward. 278\ 00:36:24.710 --> 00:36:39.320\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So that's… that's interesting. So we've got a Herefordshire example, we've got a Shropshire example. Suffolk, the great collaboration in terms of expanding nationally, we've started in East Anglia because we had 3 very, 279\ 00:36:39.340 --> 00:36:45.960\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: three or four very, prominent volunteers, in East Anglia, including Kirsten, who's with us today. 280\ 00:36:47.370 --> 00:37:03.400\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The county council there has been ahead of the game in East Anga. They've had to sponsor something called Green Suffolk, supported through the Suffolk Climate Change Partnership. There's a brief summary of what they're doing. They had to clear us through a net-zero county where people and nature thrive. That sounds like a nice… a nice straight line there. 281\ 00:37:03.490 --> 00:37:19.349\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Focusing on home, school, and work, that's the way they've approached it. Again, guidance for action, publicity, interactive map for groups and a community network. Now, that's a great idea, and we've certainly been looking at doing that with Great Collaboration as well. Some links to funding through that website, and also links to training. 282\ 00:37:19.640 --> 00:37:28.850\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So that's where Suffolk is at at the moment. I've been trying to get through to the people involved in that to have a further chat, but they can run, but they can't hide. I haven't got them on their phone yet. 283\ 00:37:29.510 --> 00:37:32.519\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So… so there's those three counties, so… 284\ 00:37:32.660 --> 00:37:38.920\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Where we are with the great collaboration, we're looking to work together, let's go forward, working together at county level. 285\ 00:37:39.040 --> 00:37:51.169\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Climate action workshops, our partner body, the Community Club at Action UK, have been very heavily involved in that. Networking and clustering for town and parish councils, we found it's very useful at the local level to exchange information. 286\ 00:37:51.420 --> 00:37:58.610\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The National Association's got a climate emergency network with a WhatsApp group for people swapping ideas, which works very well. 287\ 00:37:58.620 --> 00:38:14.300\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: But again, people sharing things at a county-based level, within their immediate areas, it sounds good. People ring me up and say, where's my nearest parish to me that's doing a repair cafe, nearing that's doing, you know, new allotments, whatever it is, community composting. 288\ 00:38:14.380 --> 00:38:25.160\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, getting them to… having them to get together. Green Suffolk, for example, has got that sort of community network, but it doesn't actually have the actual active Town and Parish Council networking yet. 289\ 00:38:25.320 --> 00:38:29.709\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Though there has been some of that with the Suffolk Association Local Councils. 290\ 00:38:29.820 --> 00:38:49.070\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Forum to request good practice and request advice, again, very useful at a county basis. And we're planning to support, we are offering support, at the local level for joint funding bids. We will help local projects to seek and apply for funding. There's a bit of enlightened interest in that, because if we're wanting to get funds from 291\ 00:38:49.190 --> 00:39:02.840\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: community funds such as the National Lottery and so forth, they would like to see us actually doing some things on the ground, as well as just saying, we're planning to do things on the ground. So there's something in it for everybody, we can help local projects around the country doing that. 292\ 00:39:03.910 --> 00:39:11.140\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The paid county advisor that was operating in Herefordshire for a while, a good friend Claire, 293\ 00:39:11.640 --> 00:39:14.380\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And that seems also essential, because… 294\ 00:39:14.600 --> 00:39:28.059\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: the… most people don't want to just look up stuff on the website. We need to speak to a warm human being from time to time. So having a paid county advisor makes a lot of sense, as well as various online supports, various training events and such like. 295\ 00:39:28.340 --> 00:39:39.390\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: We have found four organisations in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk prepared to host a paid person. Obviously, we need to raise the money for it, but people are prepared to host it, and welfare that. 296\ 00:39:39.460 --> 00:39:49.209\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: those, people, so that they can then operate within those counties, so that's great. We're also parting with Space Invaders about climate emergency centers, which are long 297\ 00:39:49.620 --> 00:39:54.029\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Basically, looking into taking over buildings that are not being used, and, 298\ 00:39:54.450 --> 00:40:12.080\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Making them available for voluntary run advice centres, climate emergency centres. The one in Colchester has just celebrated its silver anniversary, by the way, going 25 years. So, it's all going forward. So, that's where we are in terms of how we're going to go for… how we're planning to go forward. 299\ 00:40:12.290 --> 00:40:18.390\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: with our county basis, we're not waiting for devolution to come forward, we're getting on with it. 300\ 00:40:18.540 --> 00:40:19.390\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: … 301\ 00:40:19.620 --> 00:40:33.710\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: We've just started, last week, a green… at the earliest meeting for a Green Essex network. This is the first one that we've got going. As you can see, there's lots of organizations there that are already in touch with that process, and we're busy adding some more. 302\ 00:40:34.750 --> 00:40:47.619\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: a key link there. You see I've got Stanway Parish Council in bold. This is because the clerk for Stanway Parish Council has, agreed to act as the convener for this, early process. 303\ 00:40:47.620 --> 00:40:59.380\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: and run the secretariat and so forth, because somebody needs to be doing that. In each case. Somebody has to be, the point of contact within each county. There's no point us aiming to do it centrally, that has to be, obviously, clearly 304\ 00:40:59.380 --> 00:41:16.869\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: a local county-based project, and in Essex, it's Stanway, which is brilliant. We had a meeting in Stanway Community center last week, Tuesday. So there's quite a lot of parishes in Essex. There's actually 14 planning authorities in Essex and one county council, so there's quite a lot of, merging going on there with, 305\ 00:41:17.530 --> 00:41:26.259\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: To produce a greater Essex. So we've been, keen, particularly the Essex Association of Local Councils, the chairman there, Mike Eldred, is keen to keep 306\ 00:41:26.310 --> 00:41:37.269\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: abreast of all that, and see if we can find out what's happening as that process goes forward. A couple of things I shared with, people last week, in terms of funding opportunities in Essex, 307\ 00:41:37.280 --> 00:41:55.130\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: again, which we've mentioned, Suffolk, Green Suffolk has got listing of those. Some counties have got listing of those. In Essex, it's not all in one place at the moment, but there are different sources of funding advice that we can find for Essex, and there it is. And that's local stuff, quite apart from, you know, the Lottery Community Fund and other 308\ 00:41:55.130 --> 00:42:03.490\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: national schemes, and we're busy. We're planning to apply to the Esme Fairbairn Foundation, for example, for the post in Essex that we're talking with. 309\ 00:42:03.660 --> 00:42:07.149\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Rural Community Council in Essex has a joint bid about that. 310\ 00:42:07.600 --> 00:42:12.290\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Okay, communication, we need to have communication. People need to join up. 311\ 00:42:12.470 --> 00:42:23.839\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yes, Zoom meetings. The WhatsApp group, use… works well nationally. Essex are taking that on, to start with, so they'll have WhatsApp group so they can quickly text each other. 312\ 00:42:23.840 --> 00:42:32.779\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There's a link there to the online form, which is a free service, software service, under the brand name of Hilo. This is something we're using within the Great Collaboration. We use it ourselves. 313\ 00:42:32.790 --> 00:42:43.830\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: We have some volunteers helping us develop the content and advise guidance from our knowledge base. Our idea of the knowledge base is people… we're not rewriting everything, we're signposting. 314\ 00:42:44.030 --> 00:42:52.120\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And hopefully people can use the knowledge base to find what they want within 3 clicks of a mouse. That's our golden standard we're going for. But we do need to have 315\ 00:42:52.140 --> 00:43:09.969\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: some pairs of hands to help us populate that knowledge base, and we have got half a dozen people in East Anglia who are going to help us with that, which is great. Obviously, popcers and newsletters. I've mentioned Herefordshire has their newsletters. Clearly, if there's going to be a website, which one is it? That's useful, and good old social media. 316\ 00:43:10.090 --> 00:43:10.980\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: … 317\ 00:43:11.240 --> 00:43:23.379\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: parish count… town councils, by and large, if they've got social media, they tend to use Facebook. Younger people, of course, are big on Instagram with its images and so forth, but Instagram and Facebook 318\ 00:43:23.450 --> 00:43:40.780\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Owned by the same company, and my wife has it both ring, and she posts something on Instagram, and it automatically appears on Facebook as well. So, those… that's a useful… another avenue, and we sort of… we need to find out what communication option is best for whom at which time. 319\ 00:43:42.030 --> 00:44:00.220\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Okay, there are other listening networks. We've listed them on the Great Collaboration website, there's a link to them there. If anybody wants to look on the website and know of a network that's not there yet, please let us know and we'll add it. But as you can see, there's quite a few around, and quite often already working at a county level. 320\ 00:44:00.350 --> 00:44:03.989\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Call is Leicester… and Leicestershire, if you can't quite read the small print there. 321\ 00:44:04.230 --> 00:44:16.130\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So there are some buddy networks around all… or buddy existing, I shouldn't say buddy, existing networks already around the place, and we're not here to, as a great collaboration, to, you know. 322\ 00:44:16.340 --> 00:44:19.200\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: replicate, or overseeing everything, we're here to join things up. 323\ 00:44:19.370 --> 00:44:27.739\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, we're there to support all these networks, and if there are other places where they haven't got a network, then we can like to help them see how they can go forward with that. 324\ 00:44:28.880 --> 00:44:43.350\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: early steps for a new network. I mean, this is also perhaps illustrated most recently with a discussion we're having in Essex. Get a broad base of local partners, organisations, and community groups. Let's get as many people engaged as we can to start with. 325\ 00:44:43.440 --> 00:44:50.160\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: First meeting, get a common ground, establish the agreement that we're going to go forward in a steering group. We did that in Essex last Tuesday. 326\ 00:44:50.550 --> 00:44:56.819\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The next meeting is going to be in September. We can work out who's going to be leading on which particular part of the plan. 327\ 00:44:56.870 --> 00:45:11.809\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: As I mentioned, the Parish Clark at Stenway's gonna lead on the Secretariat. We do need to do some fundraising and other things as well. I could give you a longer list of things that can be done, including things like influencing, obviously exchanging information and communication and so forth, but it's how… 328\ 00:45:11.950 --> 00:45:28.780\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: that it gets managed very much on a county basis, and I'm prepared to expect… in fact, I hope that each county does it differently, because if we can get four different examples from East Anglo, then we can say to the other 36 counties, well, look, guys, you know, you don't have to do it this way, you can do it that way, or the other way, and find your way forward. 329\ 00:45:28.870 --> 00:45:46.020\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Certainly, keeping in touch with existing local authorities to keep abreast of local devolution plans is important. Why not? We can have councillors and officers engaged in these networks anyway, so let's keep abreast of that. In terms of town and parish councils becoming more 330\ 00:45:46.560 --> 00:45:53.260\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: appreciated and welcomed. I think the more we can do… have local action on the ground that's visible, the better. I think that applies across the board. 331\ 00:45:53.280 --> 00:46:11.340\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: But let's keep in touch with the current local authorities as well. Regular meetings, clearly. I've put there, have an open-door policy, because everybody needs to be engaged. There's no point having a county-based network and saying, you're in and you're not in. There has to be room for everybody, one way, shape, or form. That's… 332\ 00:46:11.470 --> 00:46:19.400\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: It almost goes without saying. So that's a sort of rough thing about that. Little bit of, management theory, … 333\ 00:46:20.630 --> 00:46:38.500\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I did a… I was a training course on leadership many years ago, and a lot of us think, you know, leadership is about, well, you know, the Roman centurion in the Bible. I say, amen, go and you… go and you goeth. But there are other forms of leadership. There's things about encouraging people, there's things about delegating with people, there's things about partnering with people. 334\ 00:46:38.650 --> 00:46:48.149\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And there's Professor Belbin, who I believe is still alive, has done the work, did some analysis of what kinds of skills and attributes you could have within a team that… in order to 335\ 00:46:48.220 --> 00:47:00.469\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: make it really effective. And you can see here it says, types of behavior in which people engage are infinite. The range of useful behaviors which make an effective contribution to performance is finite. So, yes, there's a coordinator top left. 336\ 00:47:00.520 --> 00:47:16.749\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Shapers and the action stuff, evaluators, some of you may have already come across this. The teamworkers in the middle, keeping everybody connected and cheerful. Some researchers, some practical implementers, plants, which is about people who are thinking up new ideas and new solutions. 337\ 00:47:17.070 --> 00:47:20.570\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So if we're developing a new group of any kind for long term. 338\ 00:47:20.690 --> 00:47:26.790\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: It's, there are plenty of roles that people can have, and we can think about as well as, sort of, if you're like. 339\ 00:47:26.920 --> 00:47:28.859\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Portfolios, like fundraising. 340\ 00:47:29.090 --> 00:47:36.700\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: or communications, or influencing. There are other things that we can consider. So, open door policy, let's get people involved. 341\ 00:47:37.220 --> 00:47:42.609\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And let us go forward together! This is something I say on a regular basis, because… 342\ 00:47:42.660 --> 00:48:01.820\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: As my friend Jules would say, nobody's coming to save us. We need to work together to do it. There's a picture of people getting together in Home Valley, in West Yorkshire, to… local people to work out, you see the different tables for different topics, and they're working together to work out what was going to be best for their area. So… 343\ 00:48:01.830 --> 00:48:10.509\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That's, what I'm gonna… what we're suggesting that people get engaged in. We're starting a great collaboration in East Anglia, but looking forward to supporting people 344\ 00:48:10.600 --> 00:48:12.470\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Around the country as we go forward. 345\ 00:48:16.070 --> 00:48:17.090\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Whoa. 346\ 00:48:17.310 --> 00:48:18.770\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I've stopped speaking. 347\ 00:48:18.890 --> 00:48:22.489\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Hooray, they say. No more death by PowerPoint. 348\ 00:48:23.040 --> 00:48:29.440\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Those notes will be available to people after the occasion will be sent round. 349\ 00:48:30.270 --> 00:48:36.220\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Thank you, Amanda, for your note in the chat, and Community Engagement Bill. Yes, Jim McMahon, yeah. 350\ 00:48:36.570 --> 00:48:44.920\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So it'll be interesting to see how that goes. I don't know, I'm not up to date where the… whether that bill has got its… has it had its first reading yet, Amanda? 351\ 00:48:44.920 --> 00:48:56.869\ Amanda Davis: It had its first reading the last day, or the last week, before they broke up, and it's due to be revisited the second day back, so they're wanting to get going with it. 352\ 00:48:59.170 --> 00:49:05.749\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yes, the idea that devolution will actually save a lot of money because people in new entries, there'll be less officers paid and so forth. 353\ 00:49:06.070 --> 00:49:21.560\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: In actual fact, I think that the estimate was that it was only gonna… I say only. Across the nation, it might save something like £2 billion a year. When you think that our… the government's income is something like over a thousand billion a year, it doesn't sound like much. 354\ 00:49:21.790 --> 00:49:27.029\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: But, we understand where they're coming from, but, we'll see how it happens. 355\ 00:49:27.360 --> 00:49:38.229\ Amanda Davis: Angie, would it help if I say that from a, union perspective, we've been told that it's not about, cutting anything, it's just about reorganising the existing pot 356\ 00:49:38.230 --> 00:49:47.830\ Amanda Davis: So there's no more money, but there should be no aim to save money. It's really about being more efficient, more cost-effective with the resources in a geography. 357\ 00:49:48.200 --> 00:49:48.870\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Right. 358\ 00:49:49.070 --> 00:49:50.749\ Amanda Davis: Yeah, what that means, 359\ 00:49:50.750 --> 00:49:52.299\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? 360\ 00:49:55.780 --> 00:50:09.859\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yeah, okay. Well, again, it's, there's stuff that happens locally. People, I believe, by the end of September, each county area, or each current authority area has got to say to government what, what their proposal are. 361\ 00:50:10.050 --> 00:50:16.550\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: what their final proposal is, then that gets assessed, and we'll see where we go. But I think it's important that 362\ 00:50:16.720 --> 00:50:21.440\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: We keep in touch at the local level, not… well, keeping a BDO at national level. 363\ 00:50:21.610 --> 00:50:23.519\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Graham, you have your hand up, sir. 364\ 00:50:24.070 --> 00:50:26.810\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Just because, … 365\ 00:50:27.190 --> 00:50:42.430\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: One of the really, really crucial points that came out from Kirsten's presentation last week about why things are working so well in Gambling Gay was the relationship that she'd built up at district and county level. 366\ 00:50:42.760 --> 00:50:51.419\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: And I see lots of, or hear lots of words about talking to our new authorities, whatever they're going to be. 367\ 00:50:51.490 --> 00:51:10.189\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: But it's going to be very much a personal thing, isn't it? That you… somebody's going to have to drive this, and if you've got one of your people in charge who doesn't believe in climate change in the first place, and doesn't believe that you should be sharing information in the second place, because information is power, and the power should sit at his desk. 368\ 00:51:10.410 --> 00:51:19.479\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: How are we going to make sure that during the process of the devolution coming into force, or the reorganization, as Amanda would have it. 369\ 00:51:19.590 --> 00:51:25.169\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: We're going to really make sure that we are talking to the right people. 370\ 00:51:25.680 --> 00:51:26.330\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Okay. 371\ 00:51:26.510 --> 00:51:27.120\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: …. 372\ 00:51:27.290 --> 00:51:32.890\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Okay, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I would say now, yes, parishes need to… 373\ 00:51:32.940 --> 00:51:37.919\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: link upwards. You know, whether people like districts and counties are linking downwards or not, we need to link upwards. 374\ 00:51:37.940 --> 00:51:52.629\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Not always straightforward, because sometimes as parishes, we're fed up with our local planning authority, because they've approved something we didn't agree with. But we do need to do it, and some districts and counties have got approachable climate officers, and some haven't. You know, it does vary a lot. 375\ 00:51:52.630 --> 00:52:07.899\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: But yes, we need to be in touch with the people we have at the moment. Absolutely right, and certainly personal connections are certainly of value and importance. How we go forward, in Essex, as I say, one of the people involved in the… if you're going to have a steering group for joining things up. 376\ 00:52:08.080 --> 00:52:22.880\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Obviously, you're going to be mainlining it on the people who are up for it, and see the sense of it, and want to work forward for it. You're not going to get everybody to sign up straight away. So, 288 parishes in Essex, they're not all going to leap into this in a positive way, but somebody needs to be making sure 377\ 00:52:22.880 --> 00:52:36.349\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: that there are active connections with some of these other authorities. At the meeting, we did have somebody there from one of the districts, from Attlesford District. This is the district that Stuart lives within in Great Dunmo. 378\ 00:52:37.290 --> 00:52:56.189\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: very positive. They already have a climate officer, and they're very interested in what's going on, and very keen to be involved. So, we need to work with, the people who we're keen to work with, in terms of people who, for whatever reason, are not engaging, whether they're at a local parish or town level, or sometimes at the higher authority level. 379\ 00:52:56.340 --> 00:53:12.660\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: We need to show them that it works. And that's my concept, is that the more we can show we're effective at working together, we're doing good things, we're making a difference, and seeing things happening on the ground, then we'll get more traction, not only locally, but at higher levels. 380\ 00:53:13.080 --> 00:53:14.610\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: I like that, thank you very much, very good. 381\ 00:53:16.190 --> 00:53:17.140\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Okie dokie. 382\ 00:53:19.800 --> 00:53:23.950\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Stunned silence. It's okay. Amanda. 383\ 00:53:24.270 --> 00:53:36.350\ Amanda Davis: Yeah, slightly at a tangent, and I'm using that to fill the gap, so while other people are thinking about your topic, I'm… we've been communicating about the Rural Services Network. 384\ 00:53:36.350 --> 00:53:36.890\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yep. 385\ 00:53:37.170 --> 00:53:43.599\ Amanda Davis: And they are, they are linking in both to NALC and to LGA. 386\ 00:53:43.840 --> 00:53:55.009\ Amanda Davis: And hence, in terms of this, extra networking of oil in the works that could get out to all the places that we can't reach to use a beer advert…. 387\ 00:53:55.010 --> 00:53:56.430\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The bears don't reach, yeah. 388\ 00:53:56.430 --> 00:54:03.289\ Amanda Davis: Exactly. So that's really where I was recommending the RSN, because it's about rural. 389\ 00:54:03.290 --> 00:54:03.730\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yep. 390\ 00:54:03.730 --> 00:54:11.709\ Amanda Davis: going and up. It's often the hardest to reach places, and that's where I see the synergy, that we could work with them, but equally. 391\ 00:54:11.800 --> 00:54:26.089\ Amanda Davis: great collaboration would be a great, addition to RSN as well. So it's not so much about a membership one way or the other, it's more about working in partnership, because you've got, parallel aims, if you like, very similar 392\ 00:54:26.250 --> 00:54:31.080\ Amanda Davis: Well, I'll be very glad if you can… you've offered to be an intermediate to get us to talk to the right person. Absolutely. 393\ 00:54:31.080 --> 00:54:39.440\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I did get an email straight back from saying, oh, nice to meet you, Mr Malifant. We're not quite sure which form of membership you should be approaching for. Have a look, you know. 394\ 00:54:39.440 --> 00:54:40.170\ Amanda Davis: Yeah, yeah. 395\ 00:54:40.310 --> 00:54:42.220\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Okay. But it was…. 396\ 00:54:42.220 --> 00:54:55.089\ Amanda Davis: just to get this opportunity to sort of vocalize, because you said there about, forming networks whichever way you can, whatever feels right. And I think it's that bridge between LGA and NALC that's especially useful. 397\ 00:54:55.090 --> 00:55:11.599\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Right. I mean, we've made connections with Communities in Rural England, Acre, who are the parent body for the Rural Community Council, made that connection. Clearly, we're in touch with the county association local councils around the country, but certainly, RSN 398\ 00:55:11.600 --> 00:55:15.339\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Who knows, you know, friends of the Earth we've spoken to briefly, and so on. Absolutely. 399\ 00:55:15.740 --> 00:55:16.969\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That's do it. 400\ 00:55:16.970 --> 00:55:18.920\ Amanda Davis: It was the link up to the LGA, 401\ 00:55:19.830 --> 00:55:23.150\ Amanda Davis: So it's the first and the second tiers of government, if you like. 402\ 00:55:23.150 --> 00:55:23.720\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yeah. 403\ 00:55:23.720 --> 00:55:26.310\ Amanda Davis: That's where RSN bridges that gap. 404\ 00:55:26.310 --> 00:55:32.579\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That'll be good, yeah, no, LGA, I mean, Malk and SLCC are both members of LGA now. They said there's a… 405\ 00:55:32.840 --> 00:55:38.880\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: It's not quite a conspiracy, but people just don't… somehow don't take town and parishes seriously yet. We'll have to change that. 406\ 00:55:40.100 --> 00:55:40.950\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Let's do it. 407\ 00:55:41.550 --> 00:55:44.799\ Cllr. Stuart Withington Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Hi, it's just a general question. 408\ 00:55:44.920 --> 00:55:52.270\ Cllr. Stuart Withington Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Well, whilst I think everyone would agree that, a net zero by a date is a good… 409\ 00:55:52.790 --> 00:55:54.310\ Cllr. Stuart Withington Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: aim. 410\ 00:55:54.660 --> 00:55:57.810\ Cllr. Stuart Withington Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: But how are you actually going to measure it for a county? 411\ 00:55:57.810 --> 00:56:02.799\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Okay. I think that the thing about Net Zero is it's getting a lot of bad press at the moment. 412\ 00:56:02.970 --> 00:56:12.149\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: which doesn't help. You know, various right-wing, journals and parties are saying this is a load of old rubbish, and it's not a waste of money and all the rest of it. 413\ 00:56:12.340 --> 00:56:28.530\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Every time I see on the BBC somebody crying in their coffee cup about, oh, we've reached 1.5 degrees centigrade above past norms, and, you know, the sky is falling, that's not really very positive. What I strongly feel we need to do at local level is get 414\ 00:56:28.560 --> 00:56:43.789\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: people engaged in things that they can see makes a difference, whether it's about biodiversity, whether it's about dealing with floods, whether it's about dealing with other things. Yes, there are advantages, financial advantages, to a certain extent, in moving to renewable energy, but of course, there are capital costs. 415\ 00:56:44.030 --> 00:56:47.419\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So my personal inclination would not be to say. 416\ 00:56:47.570 --> 00:57:04.549\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: as, in fact, Safe and Shropshire have said, from their perspective, you know, net zero by three zero. There are people in the world, in England, whose opinions I respect, who are convinced that that's the way forward, but as I'm with the Irish comedian who used to say, it's the way you tell them. 417\ 00:57:04.910 --> 00:57:24.790\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: It's the way of doing it, and I think, we have to be careful with our communication, which is the most important thing. How we measure it, we are looking at that within the collaboration, because, if people are going to, a lot of parishes, Cameron Gay's one, installing renewable energy of different kind, and creating, you know, energy in terms of 418\ 00:57:24.910 --> 00:57:30.259\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Kilowatt hours, and other people are being more energy efficient, and saving costs, and so forth. 419\ 00:57:30.420 --> 00:57:34.180\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: We've been thinking about how we actually gather and record those. 420\ 00:57:34.340 --> 00:57:53.390\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There has been a suggestion, and we're still having discussions with Parish Online, the mapping service, whether they could be engaged in that. So, there needs to be a mechanism whereby, say, for example, at parish level, it doesn't have to be, the plant's probably very busy, but if there is somebody at parish level that's gathering that data. 421\ 00:57:53.750 --> 00:58:05.469\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: As we know, the impact carbon calculator, which can be used to produce a baseline at parish level, is… isn't about local measures, it's about extrapolating from national statistics. 422\ 00:58:05.810 --> 00:58:15.850\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, if we wanted to get really… it's good for priorities, but if you want to get really measurables against targets, we have to lose some of these other calculators and get a bit more careful at the local level. 423\ 00:58:15.870 --> 00:58:32.300\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: It's not going to be for everybody, but for the people that are up for that, maybe we start with biodiversity, maybe we start with adaptation for floods and heat waves, but when we get into that other thing, there needs to be somebody in each parish or town that is prepared to collect that data, and then we can find the mechanism 424\ 00:58:32.480 --> 00:58:35.860\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Potentially through parish online mapping or through other routes to do it. 425\ 00:58:35.970 --> 00:58:45.710\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: It is important, Stuart, I agree with you, and it needs to be done. Myself, I wouldn't… I'm not going to suggest that that's… we lead with that, but you're right, it does need to be done. 426\ 00:58:47.740 --> 00:58:55.700\ Cllr. Stuart Withington Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Thanks, I mean, just from Essex's point of view, I think they do have a net zero target of 2050, 427\ 00:58:56.210 --> 00:58:58.939\ Cllr. Stuart Withington Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: I think that would involve closing Stansted Airport. 428\ 00:58:59.490 --> 00:59:00.100\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Oh, right. 429\ 00:59:00.100 --> 00:59:02.689\ Cllr. Stuart Withington Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: And quite a few, sort of, mesaways and things. 430\ 00:59:02.690 --> 00:59:03.220\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Excellent. 431\ 00:59:03.330 --> 00:59:13.200\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Part of the thing also with the impact calculators, if you happen to have a motorway or an airport in your council area, completely skews the statistics. 432\ 00:59:13.270 --> 00:59:25.500\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yeah, so, yeah, that's what some of this stuff, motorways you mentioned, airports, not necessarily within a parish or town council's control, but can still skew the figures, you're right, you're right. 433\ 00:59:26.140 --> 00:59:26.730\ Cllr. Stuart Withington Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Thanks. 434\ 00:59:27.510 --> 00:59:28.369\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There we go. 435\ 00:59:31.020 --> 00:59:33.290\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: I think the national, 436\ 00:59:33.510 --> 00:59:46.390\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: push can be supplemented locally, though. I mean, yes, you're concerned about the motorways and the airports, but also, we are switching towards EVs, and we are switching towards much more efficient aircraft. 437\ 00:59:46.800 --> 00:59:58.300\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: aircraft and the use of different fuels to reduce… so I suspect they'll all come in tandem together. Whether anybody is actually measuring them, I think, is a very good point. 438\ 00:59:58.400 --> 01:00:05.799\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: It is a good point. There is a parish in Devon, I know, which is getting into some of this detail, but I think they're in a bit of a minority in terms of the measuring bit. 439\ 01:00:06.320 --> 01:00:21.009\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: I remember that when Gary Caution… sorry, Gary from Caution was telling us about some of their projects, they made measuring a major part of each one. And, so Stuart's absolutely right. I know that, Kirsten does a lot of measuring in her stuff. 440\ 01:00:21.010 --> 01:00:27.249\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: And she goes back each year to check whether each project is, in fact, generating still what it's supposed to do. 441\ 01:00:27.380 --> 01:00:32.129\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: So I really support the point that measuring is crucial. 442\ 01:00:32.180 --> 01:00:42.890\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: I think that there are going to be many, many ways. I mean, there's a little nature reserve that's been created in the little parish I came from in Somerset, and they've already started 443\ 01:00:42.890 --> 01:00:58.669\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Counting more bees and more, different varieties of plant that weren't there before, just from one small, you know, 3-acre field. And it's made a colossal difference locally, and if you multiply that by 10,000 parishes, then all of a sudden it does make a difference. 444\ 01:00:58.670 --> 01:00:59.180\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: suit. 445\ 01:00:59.290 --> 01:01:07.629\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yeah, we need to start somewhere, and certainly biodiversity can be a great place to start. I was given a phrase the other day called, psychological distance. 446\ 01:01:07.790 --> 01:01:20.410\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: there are people that can see what's happening to the weather and so forth, but they don't actually make the active connection between that and their own behavior and, you know, things about carbon emissions and so forth. So I think there are… 447\ 01:01:20.410 --> 01:01:28.779\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: you know, the changes are happening. Thank you for that, link for the, Jackie in the chat for the Zero Carbon Heritage upgrade. Kirsten. 448\ 01:01:29.890 --> 01:01:37.419\ Kirstin Rayner: Hi, thanks very much for all the mentions of my talk last week. Yeah, I mean, we do try and, 449\ 01:01:37.420 --> 01:02:00.159\ Kirstin Rayner: measure, carbon in Gammon Gay, but very rudiment… very, very sort of light touch, if you like. But we're just trying to get to grips with it. But Cambridgeshire as a whole has a problem, because a large proportion of carbon is through transport, through the roads that are going through it, basically, make a very high, contribution to carbon. 450\ 01:02:00.160 --> 01:02:06.629\ Kirstin Rayner: And also we have the… the… obviously the greatest depletion, county on… from our natural. 451\ 01:02:06.630 --> 01:02:10.060\ Kirstin Rayner: resources as well, a natural, environment. So. 452\ 01:02:10.060 --> 01:02:35.049\ Kirstin Rayner: Nature Recovery is also high on the agenda, so there's lots of different things with regards to Cambridgeshire and what needs to be done. It's quite clear, looking nationally, that we've got some specific targets and things that we need to do. So, it's not difficult to work out for Cambridgeshire, the direction of travel, but it's from our… from our own parish perspective, it's 453\ 01:02:35.050 --> 01:02:43.669\ Kirstin Rayner: important to try and think, well, how can we contribute to those things? How can we actually measure those things to show that we are moving in the right direction? 454\ 01:02:43.670 --> 01:03:08.229\ Kirstin Rayner: yes, initial attempts for carbon footprint for the parish council, but obviously that's not mapping the whole community. That's something that potentially could happen in the future, but it's quite a costly process, so we haven't gone down that route, but there are different ways of doing it, and also, obviously, introducing specific biodiversity projects and trying to create measurements 455\ 01:03:08.420 --> 01:03:26.279\ Kirstin Rayner: for trees planted, for example, or hedgerows, planted, means that we actually see that we are making a difference. So, I think it gives more power to the local people to know they're actually making a difference. So, I think that's… I think that's the main purpose of our approach, if you like. 456\ 01:03:26.280 --> 01:03:39.619\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Right. I've just… an image has just come in from mine. People raising money for their… to repair their parish churches. They tend to put a thermometer outside, isn't it? And the thing goes up when it would. So there's different ways of getting the messages across. There we go. 457\ 01:03:39.790 --> 01:03:46.340\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: In terms of… I mean, the thing that Save Our Shropshire we've been mainlining on, in terms of behaviour change. 458\ 01:03:46.400 --> 01:04:04.080\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Absolutely, there's a point there. One of the issues, of course, is that we all want better public transport so the roads are free, so that we can drive our cars. It's going to be a different world, it's becoming a different world. 459\ 01:04:04.240 --> 01:04:15.740\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There are a lot of people who would wish it would stay the same as before. What is it they're saying? Donald Trump saying in America, drill, baby, drill, you know. It's all very… people don't like change. 460\ 01:04:15.920 --> 01:04:30.960\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: A friend of mine said, you're a regeneration officer, why are you saying people don't like change? Well, they don't, you know. There has to be good reasons for it, they have to sometimes be working up to it. And so there will be all kinds of reluctance to make big changes to our personal and other lifestyles. 461\ 01:04:31.050 --> 01:04:38.669\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: But we need to, at the very least, have measures, approaches, actions, pathways for people to take 462\ 01:04:38.780 --> 01:04:44.419\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: As and when they come to it, and that's important, too. It's a good practice. 463\ 01:04:46.130 --> 01:04:55.899\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Was it Save Our Shropshire that said that one of their key points was education, that you've got to get the children young, and then start getting them to think in these new environments, and…. 464\ 01:04:55.900 --> 01:05:02.670\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Well, we'll be doing that… I didn't mention it when I was talking about Green Essex, but we're talking about… very much about getting involved with sports clubs. 465\ 01:05:02.870 --> 01:05:12.199\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Of course, if people can't use their pictures because they're flooded, they've got an interest, and of course, schools have been encouraged by government to produce each to produce their own climate action plan. 466\ 01:05:12.500 --> 01:05:29.120\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: So, schools is a bit of an open door. We're getting, without any particular effort on our part in East Anglia Green Collaboration, we've had great collaboration, we've had several schools get in touch with us. So, yeah, absolutely, go, go get schools engaged, by all means. I might have put that in the talk, I didn't, but yeah, sure. 467\ 01:05:29.770 --> 01:05:34.949\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And get the kids involved, yes, so the parents and grandparents get to know more about it. Brilliant. 468\ 01:05:36.690 --> 01:05:41.509\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Gary, I don't know if you wanted to say any more about measuring from your perspective, having been, been, … 469\ 01:05:42.240 --> 01:05:44.889\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Picked out by, by Graham. 470\ 01:05:47.110 --> 01:05:50.110\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: … Not really. 471\ 01:05:50.110 --> 01:05:55.190\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Well… We've just updated our, …. 472\ 01:05:55.750 --> 01:06:04.529\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: our Climate Action Plan, actually, so just updated… uploaded the latest version on our website. And again, we're still trying to look at… 473\ 01:06:05.140 --> 01:06:16.930\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: Ways to kind of really get the message across of what it is we're actually achieving, and what… and where we're not achieving things, and… and trying to really give that sense to people. 474\ 01:06:17.280 --> 01:06:18.110\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: of…. 475\ 01:06:18.140 --> 01:06:20.669\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: You know, where we are on this. 476\ 01:06:21.220 --> 01:06:23.199\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: Against our targets. 477\ 01:06:23.200 --> 01:06:25.989\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: To give them some kind of, …. 478\ 01:06:25.990 --> 01:06:29.230\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: Kind of, you know, just some kind of, like, … 479\ 01:06:30.420 --> 01:06:38.550\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: confidence in the numbers that we're looking at. And we do an annual report for the town council. 480\ 01:06:38.960 --> 01:06:52.769\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: But I just wanted to make… be absolutely clear about this, and I've said this loads of times before, that we're only looking at what we're doing as a town council. We're not looking at the parish of Corsium as a whole, because I don't believe… 481\ 01:06:53.070 --> 01:07:11.759\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: any of these targets that are before the UK target of 2050, or whatever it is these days, or 2045, I don't think any county council have got a hope in hell of achieving net zero before the UK government does, because of the reasons we've been saying, you know, like motorways and airports and stuff. 482\ 01:07:11.960 --> 01:07:17.500\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: We just don't have the control to stop people from buying petrol cars, or to… 483\ 01:07:17.780 --> 01:07:27.880\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: to make people have heat pumps and that kind of thing, to decarbonize the house. It's only the government that has that authority. So all these councils are saying, like, oh, we'll be net zero by 2030, 484\ 01:07:28.340 --> 01:07:38.629\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: I wish them all the best of luck, but I just do not see it happening, and that's why in Caution Town Council, we're just getting ourselves to net zero, and hopefully leading by example that way. 485\ 01:07:39.040 --> 01:07:46.660\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yeah, that sounds… was it last year, Kirsten, that GammaGave reached net zero with your own actions? Yep, so… it can be done, yes. 486\ 01:07:48.760 --> 01:07:54.769\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: Well, we can… we can pay £30 to offset our carbon each year to be net zero if we wanted to. 487\ 01:07:54.770 --> 01:07:55.530\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Right. 488\ 01:07:55.530 --> 01:07:57.500\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: That's how much we have to pay now to offset our…. 489\ 01:07:57.500 --> 01:08:01.129\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Well, that sounds like a great, great result to me. 490\ 01:08:01.130 --> 01:08:11.270\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: It doesn't help us to, like, you know, get rid of our gas boilers or anything if we have to… all we have to do is pay £30 to some organization to say, you know, here. 491\ 01:08:11.560 --> 01:08:17.750\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: So we're not going down that route just yet. We might do when we get to 2029 and we still haven't hit our targets, but…. 492\ 01:08:17.750 --> 01:08:25.140\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I've always been slightly cynical about offsetting, because I think it was… it was something that was, abused by people in the early days, but there we are. 493\ 01:08:25.149 --> 01:08:30.519\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: We're doing our own offsetting as well, so we're only counting offsetting for what we're actually doing ourselves in terms of. 494\ 01:08:30.520 --> 01:08:31.970\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yeah, no, no, that's fine. 495\ 01:08:31.979 --> 01:08:33.599\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: No, don't. 496\ 01:08:33.930 --> 01:08:38.520\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: The idea of buying offsetting credits in another country doesn't strike me as really…. 497\ 01:08:38.560 --> 01:08:39.729\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: What we're talking about. 498\ 01:08:40.180 --> 01:08:42.550\ Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: Not unless they're carbon neutral or negative. 499\ 01:08:42.750 --> 01:08:50.460\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I think the only… I think the only carbon-neutral country in the world is Bhutan. Anyway, there we go. 500\ 01:08:51.130 --> 01:08:52.590\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Jackie, you've got your hand up. 501\ 01:08:53.160 --> 01:08:53.970\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Jackie Jones. 502\ 01:08:53.970 --> 01:09:04.970\ Jackie Jones: Thank you. Just to say that, here in Herefordshire, and this isn't something that the organization that I co-chair, Herefordshire Green Network, is doing, but it's being done by the 503\ 01:09:05.160 --> 01:09:10.299\ Jackie Jones: Climate and Nature Partnership Board, and I've put a few links in the chat there. 504\ 01:09:10.600 --> 01:09:15.829\ Jackie Jones: And that was an initiative set up by Herefordshire Council 505\ 01:09:16.040 --> 01:09:35.670\ Jackie Jones: And I think there are 18 members. I'm a member of it, but it has all sorts of different types of members, some with a great deal of knowledge about their individual fields. Anyway, one of the things that we're doing in each of the working groups 506\ 01:09:36.100 --> 01:09:40.679\ Jackie Jones: Is to try to determine exactly what actions would 507\ 01:09:40.950 --> 01:09:45.640\ Jackie Jones: be needed in order to achieve the net zero goals. 508\ 01:09:45.649 --> 01:09:46.179\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Okay. 509\ 01:09:46.180 --> 01:10:05.439\ Jackie Jones: And, and to actually quantify those. And it's obviously very, very difficult to do, but it has been done, yippee, for the, built environment sector, or more properly, housing part of the built environment sector. Oh, wow. So to actually quantify 510\ 01:10:05.650 --> 01:10:11.620\ Jackie Jones: What actions would need to be taken in terms of retrofit, heat pump, … 511\ 01:10:13.020 --> 01:10:21.319\ Jackie Jones: That's most of what it is. And generally, electrification, so decarbonisation through electrification. 512\ 01:10:21.540 --> 01:10:32.169\ Jackie Jones: And so the council team have worked with us. I'm, the coordinator of that buildings subgroup. 513\ 01:10:32.460 --> 01:10:33.400\ Jackie Jones: … 514\ 01:10:33.920 --> 01:10:39.690\ Jackie Jones: But there are others who know more, a lot more about decarbonisation than I do. And we've been able to work 515\ 01:10:39.910 --> 01:10:48.330\ Jackie Jones: work through those numbers. And now they're to follow as much as is possible for transport, for, 516\ 01:10:49.080 --> 01:11:01.259\ Jackie Jones: land management, because obviously it's a largely agricultural county, so agricultural emissions are very substantial, as you would expect. 517\ 01:11:01.520 --> 01:11:07.680\ Jackie Jones: Et cetera, et cetera, and going through the different, … Sectors like that. 518\ 01:11:07.680 --> 01:11:08.450\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That's tremendous. 519\ 01:11:08.450 --> 01:11:14.070\ Jackie Jones: And I, you know, Herefordshire Council is… very, … 520\ 01:11:16.820 --> 01:11:20.319\ Jackie Jones: ambitious, it, you know, it… 521\ 01:11:20.710 --> 01:11:28.980\ Jackie Jones: It changes color as time goes on, but nonetheless has stuck with the ambitions to, … 522\ 01:11:30.400 --> 01:11:34.240\ Jackie Jones: Meet the carbon and sustainability goals, generally. 523\ 01:11:34.430 --> 01:11:34.930\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Great. 524\ 01:11:34.930 --> 01:11:36.389\ Jackie Jones: Yeah. 525\ 01:11:36.390 --> 01:11:37.050\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That's a good…. 526\ 01:11:37.050 --> 01:11:40.569\ Jackie Jones: And meanwhile, we've got an organization that is… 527\ 01:11:41.170 --> 01:11:43.680\ Jackie Jones: Essentially, just trying to link people up. 528\ 01:11:43.680 --> 01:11:44.290\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yeah. 529\ 01:11:44.290 --> 01:11:53.730\ Jackie Jones: … Now that we've very gladly handed over the great collaboration to Andrew Graham and Kurt. 530\ 01:11:53.730 --> 01:12:06.450\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: This is it, isn't it? It's joining things up, linking people up, it's giving people opportunities, all of those things that we've been talking about, and we're very proud and pleased to be able to take on the great collaboration from yourselves, and … 531\ 01:12:06.800 --> 01:12:08.140\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And to take it forward. 532\ 01:12:08.310 --> 01:12:11.880\ Jackie Jones: Yeah, it's great, and I just think, … 533\ 01:12:12.130 --> 01:12:15.179\ Jackie Jones: You know, just keep on bashing on, and the. 534\ 01:12:15.180 --> 01:12:15.550\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yes. 535\ 01:12:15.550 --> 01:12:22.570\ Jackie Jones: This need is for people to get uppity about, oh, they're not doing it my way, or, you know, it has to be done like this. 536\ 01:12:22.570 --> 01:12:27.829\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: No, I think that's a snaring delusion. It's keep calm and carry on, isn't it? 537\ 01:12:28.000 --> 01:12:31.880\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There are different strokes for different folks, and we will get there in the end. 538\ 01:12:32.060 --> 01:12:35.650\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Very well. Let's go for… oh, I've said that already. Kirsten! 539\ 01:12:36.670 --> 01:13:01.030\ Kirstin Rayner: Hi, just, to follow up on Jackie's comments there, really interesting to hear Jackie, built environment improvements that you've mentioned, but I know Stuart was also very concerned about, trying to retrofit, solar panels onto listed buildings. Obviously, in Herefordshire, you have a large proportion of listed buildings and, historic buildings. I'm just wondering whether or not 540\ 01:13:01.150 --> 01:13:13.690\ Kirstin Rayner: There's any best practice guidance that can be rolled out, sort of more nationally, the way that you've tried to approach it, whether or not that's something that, you can try and help, this group with in future? 541\ 01:13:13.690 --> 01:13:19.479\ Jackie Jones: I don't think we're particularly the best place to go, to be honest. We… 542\ 01:13:19.640 --> 01:13:33.259\ Jackie Jones: there is some supplementary planning guidance on it, but, if I remember rightly, we sort of borrowed that from South Gloucestershire. I think I'm right in saying that. 543\ 01:13:33.490 --> 01:13:43.700\ Jackie Jones: But there certainly are other counties which I think have got, exemplary guidelines in place for that. … 544\ 01:13:43.960 --> 01:13:48.480\ Jackie Jones: Yeah, it's… it's tricky. … it's tricky. 545\ 01:13:49.730 --> 01:13:56.529\ Jackie Jones: Historic England has actually got some… lots of things to say about this. I'll just put the link in the chat. 546\ 01:13:56.610 --> 01:13:57.950\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: … 547\ 01:13:58.130 --> 01:14:04.220\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I mean, if we… I say to people, if we can get solar panels on Gloucester Cathedral, I'm sure we can get it on other places as well. 548\ 01:14:04.220 --> 01:14:08.240\ Jackie Jones: Yeah, but I don't know, I tend to think myself, … 549\ 01:14:08.390 --> 01:14:22.590\ Jackie Jones: you know, there are plenty of other places to put them, so don't… you know, why cause a fight about it? Put them up, you know, all those warehouses, all those factory roofs, all those sheds, all those supermarkets. 550\ 01:14:22.880 --> 01:14:27.889\ Kirstin Rayner: So how… so you say you've met net zero with your buildings. 551\ 01:14:27.890 --> 01:14:34.950\ Jackie Jones: No, no, no, no, we haven't, not at all. We've got a… we now have a, sort of carbon descent program. 552\ 01:14:35.140 --> 01:14:47.009\ Jackie Jones: for that. So, no, we absolutely haven't got there yet. But we… we have a roadmap of how it could, in principle, be achieved. 553\ 01:14:47.280 --> 01:14:54.769\ Kirstin Rayner: Okay, do you have anything about listed buildings or areas in conservation, policy that you've identified? 554\ 01:14:54.770 --> 01:15:07.210\ Jackie Jones: Yeah, we haven't… we haven't looked at so much of policy, though, to be honest, when we were preparing it, I was really impressed by what I was reading from. Give me a moment. 555\ 01:15:08.080 --> 01:15:08.950\ Jackie Jones: Cornwall. 556\ 01:15:09.320 --> 01:15:12.269\ Jackie Jones: Cornwall had gone into a lot of detail. 557\ 01:15:12.660 --> 01:15:28.549\ Jackie Jones: Both in something that they've published themselves and that their consultants had prepared. Anyway, that's me speaking personally, I was impressed. But no, it's had to be done very much as a ready reckoner, and our… 558\ 01:15:28.580 --> 01:15:38.720\ Jackie Jones: assumptions were that we would do the easy stuff first. So, … It's, sort of… 559\ 01:15:39.590 --> 01:15:47.920\ Jackie Jones: upgrading, it's not trying to get the whole building stock of Hereford Shuffle from, as it were, F to A. It's… 560\ 01:15:48.020 --> 01:16:03.919\ Jackie Jones: much larger amounts of smaller interventions, so essentially, it's taking the approach promoted by the AUCB, the Association for Environment Conscious Building. 561\ 01:16:04.390 --> 01:16:11.090\ Jackie Jones: Which is looking at doing Initially. 562\ 01:16:11.550 --> 01:16:21.100\ Jackie Jones: Minimal fabric first retrofit, combined with heat pumps to get that Instant decarbon… carbonization. 563\ 01:16:22.340 --> 01:16:24.649\ Jackie Jones: Potentially to go further later. 564\ 01:16:25.010 --> 01:16:25.590\ Kirstin Rayner: Okay. 565\ 01:16:25.590 --> 01:16:31.030\ Jackie Jones: But what we are experiencing is a mismatch between the… the… the… 566\ 01:16:31.170 --> 01:16:34.780\ Jackie Jones: People, the home… homeowners or occupiers who 567\ 01:16:34.950 --> 01:16:38.549\ Jackie Jones: Are interested in retrofit and want to do it. 568\ 01:16:40.450 --> 01:16:51.850\ Jackie Jones: They tend to live in the hardest-to-treat homes, because they are older, quirky. It's much the same way you are, I bet. Older, quirky. 569\ 01:16:52.030 --> 01:17:00.880\ Jackie Jones: … Each one needs a unique… approach. 570\ 01:17:01.760 --> 01:17:08.390\ Jackie Jones: So this is much more about trying to get, ease to see. 571\ 01:17:09.000 --> 01:17:11.169\ Jackie Jones: Well, on EPCs. 572\ 01:17:11.630 --> 01:17:16.559\ Jackie Jones: Which we all know are not the best level, but… A way of measuring. 573\ 01:17:17.620 --> 01:17:20.040\ Jackie Jones: And putting in heat pumps. 574\ 01:17:20.040 --> 01:17:20.430\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Hmm. 575\ 01:17:20.430 --> 01:17:22.980\ Jackie Jones: Where… where possible. 576\ 01:17:23.370 --> 01:17:25.859\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: I'm trying to focus. 577\ 01:17:26.120 --> 01:17:29.799\ Jackie Jones: on that, the people are off the grid, and I think at the moment. 578\ 01:17:30.110 --> 01:17:35.799\ Jackie Jones: I think it's something like 45% of Herefordshire dwellings are off the gas grid. 579\ 01:17:36.120 --> 01:17:40.960\ Jackie Jones: So there's quite a… Lot of work to do there. 580\ 01:17:40.960 --> 01:17:41.360\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yeah. 581\ 01:17:41.360 --> 01:17:44.789\ Jackie Jones: In terms of getting off oil, largely. 582\ 01:17:44.900 --> 01:17:46.480\ Jackie Jones: And onto something else. 583\ 01:17:47.490 --> 01:18:02.059\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Andrew, thank you for that note in the chat. Yes, planning authorities vary a lot from town to town, place to place, and they're not always very helpful. We did a… a couple of years ago, we did a case study with Newark Town Hall, which is a Grade 1 listed building. 584\ 01:18:02.150 --> 01:18:09.949\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: And the planning officers in New York were dead set against anything, even if you couldn't see the solar panels on the roof. There was all kinds of grief about that. 585\ 01:18:10.190 --> 01:18:24.950\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Historic England has sort of, at least have accepted things like secondary glazing and so forth. Of course, if you've got a building where the, old-style radiators are part of the heritage description, then you've got another issue there, but, … 586\ 01:18:25.050 --> 01:18:30.379\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: We'd like to think common sense will go eventually, but yes, it is uphill in some places, you're absolutely right. 587\ 01:18:30.920 --> 01:18:31.610\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Yep. 588\ 01:18:33.870 --> 01:18:37.799\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: What I usually say on those occasions is, I've got the wax if you've got the pins, yes. 589\ 01:18:38.520 --> 01:18:39.679\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: There we go. 590\ 01:18:40.090 --> 01:18:43.149\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Not as strange as folk, aye, but … 591\ 01:18:44.010 --> 01:18:56.649\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: we've… if… what I also say to people, if we come across any kind of difficulty, somebody that is just blanking us for all the rest of it, it may be that we're not the right person to speak to that individual. Maybe we need to find 592\ 01:18:56.650 --> 01:19:05.990\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Not so much worried about, maybe somebody else has got the way of speaking to those people that we haven't got. We tend to… we get involved in a project, we're engaged, we're beavering away. 593\ 01:19:06.010 --> 01:19:10.979\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: we come across an obstacle. Maybe somebody else can help with that. 594\ 01:19:11.430 --> 01:19:12.629\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Just a thought, yeah. 595\ 01:19:13.470 --> 01:19:27.329\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: The times that I've joined to a new job, and they said, oh, we've had this problem from your previous day, we couldn't get it sorted. And I sort it quite readily, but then, of course, when I leave, I leave something I couldn't sort, and somebody else has to take it on, you know. Just a thought. 596\ 01:19:31.210 --> 01:19:33.690\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Thank you very much, Jackie. Good. 597\ 01:19:34.540 --> 01:19:38.740\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Graham, we haven't got any more thoughts today, but we've covered quite a lot of ground again, I think, yep. 598\ 01:19:39.310 --> 01:19:43.909\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Yep, I'd just suggest that the best thing to do is to move underground. 599\ 01:19:44.230 --> 01:19:52.829\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Well, of course, the most expensive people on the planet are trying to leave the planet, aren't they? Yeah. Makes you wonder a bit. There you go. 600\ 01:19:53.210 --> 01:19:55.259\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: It's their life on Mars? 601\ 01:19:56.760 --> 01:19:58.050\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Well, there we go. 602\ 01:19:58.680 --> 01:20:06.849\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: But, it's all been good. And, yeah, we're still looking for speakers for the next couple of weeks, aren't we, Graham? 603\ 01:20:07.400 --> 01:20:12.500\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Anybody present would like to say some more? I mean, Jackie, if you feel moved to say more about Herefordshire on your own 604\ 01:20:12.610 --> 01:20:23.279\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: event on a Wednesday midday, you would be very much welcome to do so. And certainly what you're saying about measuring would be 605\ 01:20:23.450 --> 01:20:25.799\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: a great topic, I think, for sharing with him. 606\ 01:20:25.870 --> 01:20:31.040\ Jackie Jones: Yeah, I don't think I'd necessarily be the best person to present it, but I could certainly see. 607\ 01:20:31.040 --> 01:20:34.320\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: See, find the person who is in, sort of…. 608\ 01:20:34.320 --> 01:20:34.860\ Jackie Jones: Yeah. 609\ 01:20:34.860 --> 01:20:38.569\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Induce them to, share… unburden their wisdom. 610\ 01:20:38.720 --> 01:20:39.210\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Zero. 611\ 01:20:39.210 --> 01:20:39.880\ Jackie Jones: Cool, thank you. 612\ 01:20:39.880 --> 01:20:55.440\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That'd be good, yeah. Yeah, no, as I say, we're… communication is great, but we're not… we can't all be good at everything, even though we're trying… we're brought up, you know, do what we say we're going to do, and be there on the dot, and eat everything on our plate, and so forth, but we need to work with other people, which is most important. 613\ 01:20:55.630 --> 01:20:57.120\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Getting them to do stuff as well. 614\ 01:20:57.890 --> 01:20:59.600\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Lovely. Cheers! 615\ 01:21:00.060 --> 01:21:04.929\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: And on behalf of everyone, thank you very much indeed for putting together this presentation, particularly 616\ 01:21:05.510 --> 01:21:08.900\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Short notice, great help, and, thank you. 617\ 01:21:09.540 --> 01:21:11.270\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Pleasure. And, … 618\ 01:21:11.820 --> 01:21:16.669\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: That's just… we will go forward together, and we'll do some more, and keep this code going. It's great. 619\ 01:21:17.960 --> 01:21:18.830\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Good stuff. 620\ 01:21:20.330 --> 01:21:21.140\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Take care. 621\ 01:21:21.140 --> 01:21:22.349\ Andrew Maliphant Great Collaboration: Good night, John Boy. 622\ 01:21:22.350 --> 01:21:23.429\ Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Oh, I am. *** ### Markdown file of Andrew's presentation: ### Purpose
The presentation outlines how county-level networks can support English devolution and local climate action, focusing on coordination between councils, voluntary groups, and community organisations. *** ### Key Themes 1. Climate Change Governance Gap * National net zero target (2050) exists. * No statutory duty for local government to act. * Local Government Association calls for powers, funding, and support. * Strategic authorities, not local councils, may hold climate responsibilities. 2. Town & Parish Council Roles * Limited recognition in current legislation. * NALC and SLCC lobbying for more direct funding and easier council formation. * Success stories (e.g., Gamlingay) using existing powers like LGA 1972 Section 101. 3. Voluntary & Community Engagement * Active presence of national branches (Friends of the Earth, Transition Network). * Local initiatives: food banks, repair cafés, allotments. * Strong history of county-level identity (e.g., agricultural shows). 4. Existing County Networks * Herefordshire Green Network: community collaboration, Great Collaboration project. * Save Our Shropshire: education-led Net Zero approach. * Green Suffolk: resource hub, event promotion, funding guidance. 5. East Anglia Initiatives * Paid county advisors. * Partnership with Space Generators for climate emergency centres. * Extensive early contact list for Green Essex. 6. Funding Sources * Essex Climate Action Commission. * Active Essex Foundation. * Essex County Council. * Essex Community Foundation (expired deadline, but contact available). 7. Operational Approach * Communication tools: Zoom, WhatsApp, Hylo, newsletters, social media. * Early steps: stakeholder mapping, forming steering groups, linking with authorities, open-door policy. * Team building: Belbin team roles framework. *** ### Strengths * Comprehensive stakeholder mapping — includes councils, voluntary groups, and existing networks. * Practical action steps — early steps guide and clear communication methods. * Real-world examples — case studies give credibility. *** ### Weaknesses / Gaps * No clear performance metrics or targets for success. * Funding section is Essex-specific — not generalised for other counties. * Limited risk assessment — barriers like political change, funding instability, or volunteer fatigue aren’t covered. * Lack of digital resource strategy beyond basic communication tools. *** ### Opportunities * Replicate Great Collaboration model in other counties. * Expand climate emergency centre network regionally. * Use county agricultural shows as outreach platforms. * Strengthen lobbying for statutory climate responsibilities at local level. *** ### Threats * Political shifts affecting devolution plans. * Over-reliance on volunteers without long-term funding. * Fragmentation if local groups operate in silos without county coordination.