Plan Bee and No Mow May

KCC is promoting No Mow May, inviting residents to enter a pledge on our website to let flowers bloom and habitats that support pollinators develop. You can find our media release about No Mow May here.

We are applying this approach to parts of our own land, in particular to highway verges, where our programme of cuts (varied according to rural, urban and swathe cutting) is calibrated to assist biodiversity. All this is part of our pollinator action plan, also known as Plan Bee - and yes, that does mean that we have Bee Roads … 

You can find more about Plan Bee, and our approach to highway verges, here 

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.

A new (renewed) Environment Cabinet Member

At the County Council elections on 6 May, 80 out of 81 Divisions elected County Councillors. The exception was Elham Valley, where the election was delayed as a result of the death of one of the candidates early in the campaign. The special election for Elham Valley took place last Thursday, 17 June.

Since 2005 Elham Valley has been represented by Susan Carey (pictured with me during the campaign in Hawkinge) who has also held a number of posts in the KCC Cabinet, in the last eighteen months as Cabinet Member for Environment. However, with the delay to the Elham Valley election, she ceased to be a Member of the County Council in May and so for that period was unable to serve as a Cabinet Member either. The count for Elham Valley took place on Friday and Susan was re-elected with just over 50% of the vote - a richly deserved outcome, since she has not only made a significant contribution County-wide but has been a dedicated local Member (characteristically, after her re-election, she was out on a community litter-pick yesterday). 

I was delighted to reappoint Susan to her Environment role as soon as her re-election was confirmed. She had a strong and committed Deputy Cabinet Member in Tony Hills, and Tony did an excellent job standing in as Cabinet Member in the weeks between the County elections and Susan's return. Tony continues as Deputy Cabinet Member. He and Susan are a very strong team; I created a dedicated Environment portfolio when I became Leader to reinforce our commitment to addressing issues of climate change, biodiversity, environmental enhancement and resilience, and they have taken it forward with great energy and commitment. It is very good for Kent that they will continue to do so.

You can find KCC’s press release on the election result and Susan’s reappointment here.

A strategy for net zero

In May last year, the administration at Kent County Council committed to bring forward a strategy with a timeline for achieving net zero carbon emissions from our estate and operations. When I became Leader of the Council last autumn, I appointed a dedicated (in both senses of the term) Cabinet Member for Environment, Susan Carey, with a mandate to address this and other key environmental issues.

The plan was originally intended to be brought to our County Council meeting in the spring. Covid-19 brought a delay to that as to much else. Nonetheless, on Thursday County Council did receive and approve the plan to achieve net zero by 2030.

What is most striking about the plan is its detail and realism. KCC used detailed scenario planning developed by Laser Energy (an energy trading company, and hence source of considerable expertise, within Commercial Services Kent Ltd, which is in turn owned by KCC). This set out a variety of approaches - using investment in renewable energy, a shift to electric vehicles and reduction in emissions from the KCC estate - to achieving net zero, and projected a way forward that combined these different strands. The plan also sets out the sources for funding the £27 million in required investment to deliver net zero by 2030, albeit yielding returns of £96 million by 2050.

This is just one part of the County Council's approach to energy and climate change issues. On the day after the County Council meeting, the final draft of the Kent and Medway Energy and Low Emissions Strategy (ELES), which among other things sets out a path to net zero by 2050 for the county as a whole, was presented to a meeting of the Environment and Transport Cabinet Committee and hopefully should soon be adopted by KCC. Later in the year, we will also be bringing forward more proposals in the area of adaptation and resilience.

You can find the net zero paper for County Council here and the ELES papers to Cabinet Committee under item 9 in this agenda.