Fears Hertfordshire won’t meet 2030 sustainability target and carbon neutral plans

Hertfordshire County Council’s commitment to its sustainability ambitions have been questioned as part of the budget-setting process.

Back in 2019, the county council declared a ‘climate emergency’ and drew up a number of ambitions as part of its ‘Sustainable Hertfordshire Strategy’ .

Those ambitions include being carbon neutral in its own operations, enhancing nature across land and water and sending nothing to landfill – all by 2030.

But at a budget scrutiny meeting on Friday (January 26) Liberal Democrat Cllr Sandy Walkington questioned the council’s commitment, citing the council’s 423-page budget document which contained ‘very few’ bids for new initiatives or capital programmes that ‘would have an impact on the county council’s ability to meet the ambitions of the Sustainable Hertfordshire Strategy’.

In addition, Cllr Walkington highlighted the length of the ‘sustainable Hertfordshire impact assessment’ of the whole budget – which, he said, was just over three pages long.

“We all thought it was really rather thin – only just over three pages to assess the sustainability impact for the whole IP, the whole budget for the county,” said Cllr Walkington.

He highlighted the ‘extraordinary quotation’ referring to the lack of new IP bids to meet the ambitions of the sustainable Hertfordshire strategy.

And he said: “Now we all know that there are tremendous financial pressures on the council – and we don’t criticise that in terms of the situation that we find ourselves in.

“But can we interpret this statement in the ‘sustainable Hertfordshire impact assessment’ as official confirmation that our ambitions are on the back burner for sustainability and that we won’t meet our 2030 target and overall carbon neutral plans.”

In response, executive member for the environment Cllr Eric Buckmaster said that this was ‘not correct’.

After referring to the ‘cross-cutting’ work across the council, he did accept that the impact assessment was ‘relatively short’.

But he stressed that there was no implication at all that they were ‘back-pedalling’ or ‘slowing down’ on their ambitions – which he said had not changed at all.

“I just think that maybe we could have expressed it a bit better – and you are right to point that out,” he said.

Meanwhile executive director for growth and environment Mark Doran said that the focus was on making sure ‘business as usual’ was more sustainable – not necessarily new measures.

“We are putting a lot of effort into embedding sustainability throughout the activity that the council does,” he said.

“So it’s not necessarily about doing new, additional things. It’s actually about making sure that the things we are doing are more sustainable – so that business as usual becomes more sustainable as a normal way of operating the council.

“That’s part of the reason that you don’t see lots of new bids – because it’s actually about using the money to do the activities in a more sustainable way.”

> The Climate Change Act commits the UK government by law to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100% of 1990 levels (net zero) by 2050.