Hosting Lord Deben: Kent and Climate Change

Earlier in the week - and it has been a long and busy one - we at KCC hosted Lord Deben (formerly the Cabinet Minister John Gummer), chairman of the government’s Climate Change Committee, on a visit to Kent. 

The Climate Change Committee performs an advisory and monitoring role in relation to the government’s environmental mitigation and adaptation policies. Lord Deben, members of the Committee and their advisers wanted to see how different parts of the country are developing climate change policies (both to achieve net zero and to mitigate the effects of climate change) and Kent was high on their list. 

Lord Deben and his team spent a very long day in the county, starting with flood prevention and other adaptation initiatives in Margate (including the ‘Cool Towns’ project, which uses tree pits and tree planting to both manage flood risk and cool high temperatures), a discussion with students at Herne Bay High school, meeting local leaders in Kings Hill - and then, I’m pleased to say, a visit to Darent Valley itself. This was at Preston Farm in Shoreham, where with the support of the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, flood and drought management schemes on the Darent are also supporting better biodiversity. We ended the day with a discussion with many of the businesses, voluntary groups and others working to address environmental issues at Chatham Dockyard. 

The day was not simply a chance - important as it was - to showcase Kent’s environmental initiatives; a major focus of the day (and a key reason for the Climate Change Committee to get out of London and see work in localities across the country) was to highlight the obstacles to delivery. These included major gaps in the planning system (an important consideration in a county that has seen some of the fastest housing growth in the country), uncertainty over how future initiatives will be funded (an especially important consideration for the AONB, which has historically benefited from EU funding streams) and the challenges, highlighted in an important report for KCC and its partners by the expert consultants Anthesis, of delivering net zero in the household sector. 

The day seems to have been of great value to Lord Deben and his team, and gives us in Kent the chance to build a long-term and valuable working relationship with the Climate Change Committee.

KCC response to the Ukraine crisis

The last few days have seen strong interest in how councils respond to the horrendous events in Ukraine, and to President Putin’s aggression against that country. Over the last weekend, I asked our most senior officers to review all our operations and supply chain, both at the level of KCC and of our companies, to ensure that there was no exposure to Russian entities linked to the current regime. 

There is very little such linkage, but in the case of our energy buying company Laser (which acts on behalf of many public sector organisations) one framework does include the Russian energy giant Gazprom. This has now been suspended from the framework and will not be taking part in future  transactions. 

This review goes alongside a number of measures that we are taking to express our solidarity with Ukraine (the country’s flag now flies over County Hall) and to ensure that the County Council and its services are as protected as possible from the spillover effects of the conflict, ranging from potential cyber attacks to the financial impact of yet higher energy costs. You can find our press release about this here.