Conservative Councillors' Commitment to Carbon Management a Sham!

4.00.00pm GMT Tue 19th Jan 2010

It was officially confirmed at the County Council's Scrutiny meeting recently that no money would be found from the next year's budget to meet the carbon reductions the Tories voted for last year.

Instead, they said they'd decided to go 'cap in hand' to whichever government department or environmental lobbying group was offering to give them a grant.

This is in direct contrast to the commitment they made in November 2009, just a few months after taking over control of the council, when they signed up to the10:10 Carbon Reduction Campaign put forward by the Liberal Democrat group. This campaign was tremendously successful country-wide in getting local authorities and communities to look at ways to reduce their carbon emissions during 2010 by up to 10%.

Under the Liberal Democrats, the council won awards for such initiatives as the 'Climate Change Café' which toured the county advising people of ways they could reduce their carbon footprint. The array of photovoltaic cells on the roof of County Hall was also the largest solar heating project of its kind in the South West when it was installed and now supplies all the council's off-peak electricity.

Cllr. John Bailey, Shadow Spokesman for Environment said of the decision to remove this funding:

"This is a very sad day for environmentalists across the county and for those communities who were inspired by this important issue. They were delighted when the council so willingly joined in and lead by example.

Even more short-sighted is the lost opportunity to 'invest to save' which I believe would have meant that a small investment could have reaped much larger savings in the longer term. As we all know, time is not on our side and action has to be taken now, not some time in the dim and distant future. This shows that the Tories' claim to be 'green' is a complete sham."