I took part today in a special Environment Scrutiny meeting today, reviewing proposals for Warwickshire CC to join Coventry CC and Solihull BC in the development of a major new “Energy from Waste” plant to replace the current Coventry residual waste incinerator. The decision as to whether to proceed with an application for goverment PFI funding for the project will be taken by the WCC Cabinet on Thursday and the Full Council next week.

The meeting, which I pushed for, was held in public, and with inputs from members of the public as well as officers and supporting consultants.

The outcome of the meeting was a unanimous recommendation to increase the underlying recycling and composting assumptions behind the plan, which should reduce the required size of any future residual waste facility. It’s up to the Cabinet and Full Council now to decide whether or not to accept this recommendation.

I have long been a supporter of the K2L cycle route between Kenilworth & Leamington, and have been frustrated that it has not yet been able to gain funding priority within the county’s Local Transport Plan - although it is highlighted as an opportunity to pursue if and when funding becomes available. My colleague Cllr. Eithne Goode (Liberal Democrat, Leamington North) is a long time advocate of the scheme on the county council, and has been instrumental in at least getting street lighting improvements over the Chesford Bridge along the route.

A plan came to the county council Cabinet today to install traffic signals on the Thickthorn Roundabout over the A46, one of the current obstacles to cyclists on the K2L route, and I was pleased to obtain assurances that provision for cyclists will be considered during the design phase of the project, and that any changes will not compromise future cycleway plans. I hope that in practice we can do better than this, as the signalisation project offers the opportunity to improve matters for cyclists seeking to negotiate this difficult roundabout.

Although I am a strong believer in the realities of global warming and its impact on our planet, the year to year vagaries of our British weather never fail to amaze.

This was the scene we woke up to this morning, a thick blanket of snow. On the equivalent Sunday last year, Easter Sunday as it happened, we had a family barbecue in the garden on a lovely warm day - not today I think!

Yesterday was the first day of British Summer Time and a lovely sunny day. I went for a walk with my wife along the newly-surfaced section of the Connect 2 Kenilworth Greenway route - from the Coventry Road nearly to Burton Green and back. Things still look a bit bare along the route with so much clearance of undergrowth having taken place, but things will quickly grow back. What was great was to be able to walk the whole route in normal shoes without getting our feet wet - the new walking and cycling surface is a major improvement on the previous muddy mess!

A lot of local people were out enjoying the new path as well - word is spreading quickly. We saw a lot of dog walkers of course, but also cyclists (adults and children), parents with buggies, and others like us just walking unencumbered. It was great to see that the new Greenway is proving a hit already.

I visited the Kenilworth Greenway yesterday to see how the works were progressing on the stretch between the Coventry Road and Hollis Lane. All of the encroaching undergrowth has been cleared and the track levelled, on which is to be constructed a 2.5 metre wide walking and cycling path with a grass verge alongside for horse riders.

This work is being funded by the County Council as part of its contribution to the overall Connect2 Kenilworth scheme, and is going ahead now while we wait for the release of the new funding from the Big Lottery Fund.

Right now it looks a bit of a mess, of course, but I am assured by the Countryside Rangers that it will soon regain its natural charm much loved of local people, but with the new path offering all year round and all-weather access.

Spotted in Burton Green during my ‘Focus’ delivery round today - lots of brand new green bins being delivered to householders ahead of the new recycling service which commences in April. This helps to address a long standing grievance of Burton Green residents, that they were left out when the original green bin scheme was rolled out to Kenilworth and other areas some years ago.

It will also help alleviate the problems experienced by a number of Burton Green residents who have contacted me, that they are banned from taking garden waste to the Kenilworth recycling centre because they drive the wrong sort of vehicle - namely a pick-up. In a quite arbitrary ruling, these are treated as “vans” (and therefore carrying chargeable trade waste), while a large closed-in 4×4 is treated as a car! I have tried my best to get this ruling overturned by the County Council, but officers and the Conservative Cabinet member for the Environment have refused to budge.

Although Warwickshire didn’t suffer as badly as our neighbours Gloucestershire in last Summer’s catastrophic floods, we had it pretty bad in parts of the county. Since then, a lot of effort has gone into analying what happened and why, what measures should be taken to prevent or mitigate flooding, and how the various agencies involved can work better together.

As part of this effort, the Environment Overview & Scrutiny Committee has been looking at the subject in depth, and yesterday I met with Severn Trent and county officers to understand in particular the issues around surface water and drainage.

Good news is that in Tuesday’s budget debate the County council voted for an extra £1 million spending over 2 years on highway drainage - the Liberal Democrats voted with the Conservatives to get this agreed in the face of Labour opposition. The additional funding is a big increase on current spending levels, and should both tackle the backlog of regular maintenance activities (gulley flushing etc) plus new measures to deal with known “hot spots” around the county.

It was also clear to me how much scope there is for better co-ordination of activities and communications between agencies. This was highlighted in the interim Pitt Report (commissioned by the government), and will be a major focus of the final report due this Summer.

The local Steering Group, set up as a result of a public meeting last month, held its first meeting this evening, to discuss the wide range of issues raised during that meeting and to start to formulate a local action plan.

We agreed on a snappy name - KICC - and some immediate tasks to pursue. We will meet again in three weeks time to push things along further.

One of my personal highlights last year was the opportunity to lead the Kenilworth Connect2 Steering Group, as we campaigned locally for public support and helped Sustrans Connect2 win an amazing £50 million prize from the Big Lottery Fund. The result was announced just before Christmas.

Today I met with Stuart Ikeringill (the county officer who will manage the local Connect2 project implementation) and Edward Healey of Sustrans to discuss next steps and the ongoing role of the Steering Group.

There’s a lot to be done, some of which will take some time to bring about, but some things can be started quite quickly. In fact, work to upgrade part of the existing Kenilworth Greenway started today!

At yesterday’s Environment Overview & Scrutiny Committee we reviewed progress made by Warwickshire County Council against its own Green Transport Plan originally produced in 1999 and updated in 2004.

The report made sorry reading! Lots of good intentions, but no real shift in the travel behaviour of council staff. Much ‘harder’ measures need to be taken, but will the Conservative administration and senior officers be prepared to show the leadership required? Watch this space ………..

Last night I was at a very well-attended public meeting called by the town mayor, fellow Liberal Democrat Cllr. Pat Ryan, on the subject of Climate Change and what we as a local community could do to address it. The main speaker was George Martin, a local resident, but also an expert on sustainable development in construction.

It was an excellent meeting with good participation from all those attending, and a shared determination that as a local community we could and must take action. I volunteered to join a steering group to carry the ideas forward and develop a local action plan.