Chichester District Council (CDC) Climate Emergency Action Plan
Whose Plan? Our Plan!
CDC declared a Climate Emergency on 9 July 2019 and produced an initial Climate Emergency Action Plan 2020-2025 earlier this year. It is now working on a Climate Emergency Action Plan which a newly appointed Climate Change Officer will lead on. The CDC plan is “area wide” which means that it is looking not only to reduce carbon emissions from its own operations but also across the whole district.
This is good news, but to achieve the level of change needed everyone needs to be on board. That includes us, local residents, communities, businesses, hospitals, schools and other services etc. Post Covid-19 the council is facing huge pressures, including on funding, but also huge opportunities to rethink priorities and ways of working. Let’s make sure that addressing the climate emergency is its top priority and that the council works with us and the broader community to address it!
Can you contact your district councillor to get them to support the most ambitious and socially just climate emergency action plan possible for our district, and to ask for their support in ensuring making sure that we, the public and other key stakeholders are actively engaged in the process of designing and implementing the plan. Please ask your family and friends do likewise!
You can do this by:
- Writing to your district councillor using this template – please feel free to adapt/personalise it.
- Meeting with you councillor to let them know that the climate emergency should be the top priority for them and why public/stakeholder engagement is such an important part of tackling it. Here are some talking points that you could use for meetings. We are also happy to help you prepare for meetings if you want – we have been doing this by zoom but a phone or skype call would work just as well – just contact Lucia or Tom.
You can find the name of your councillor and contact details here: https://chichester.moderngov.co.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1
If you do write or meet with your councillor please let XR Chichester’s Political Engagement Group (PEG) know how it went at xrchipeg@gmail.com
Resources
Template letter/emails to councillors.
CDC Councillor contact details
Great video backgrounders on Climate Emergency Action Plans For 2 -Tier Local Authorities and Unitary and metropolitan local authorities from Climate Emergency UK. Each video 1 hour long.