Yesterday I attended my first meeting of the Warwickshire Waste Partnership, which brings together elected members and officers from both the county council (the waste disposal authority) and the five districts and boroughs (the waste collection authorities). From first impressions the rate of progress towards real partnership working has been painfully slow! Liberal Democrat policy is for a single waste collection and disposal authority for Warwickshire, which would be a far more efficient structure in my view.

However, the rates of improvement in the waste management statistics (recycling rates etc) in 2008/09 were good, and improved targets for 2009/10 and 2010/11 were agreed at the meeting. This further reinforces the need to downsize the waste growth projections currently underpinning Project Transform (replacement of the Coventry incinerator in 2016).

I also attended my first meeting of the Project Transform Members Advisory Panel last Friday. Important undertakings were made that the ‘reference project’ (a 305,000 tonnes incinerator) is not a done deal in terms of either sizing or technology. I shall be playing an active role in overseeing this major project over the next 4 years.

Tonight I heard that Warwickshire County Council is to sign up to the national “10:10” climate change initiative launched at the Tate Modern in London last month.

As an individual I signed up on Day 1 of the campaign, and am committed to trying to reduce my personal carbon footprint by 10% by the end of 2010.

At last week’s full Council meeting I asked the Leader of the Council whether the council would sign up to the initiative. Today I heard that the decision had been taken to follow the example of other councils by joining in this nationwide campaign.

An initiative like 10:10 is an opportunity for public leadership, and momentum is all important. I’m very glad that my question has accelerated Warwickshire’s thinking and had a positive outcome. Now it needs to deliver the results!

Since June I’ve become Environment & Economy spokesperson for the Liberal Democrat group on the County Council. I still retain an interest in the children’s agenda, but a Stratford colleague Peter Balaam (an ex teacher) has taken on the spokesperson responsibility in this area.

I’m very excited by the challenge of my new role, because it encompasses many of the big issues and challenges facing the council. Not least of these is “Project Transform”, a joint project between the County Council and neighbouring authorities in Coventry and Solihull to build a major new facility to process residual municipal waste, to replace the current Coventry incinerator.

This is a huge project, costing over £1 billion over the lifetime of the proposed facility, and it is vital that the right decisions are taken on financial, technical and environmental grounds.

I have been appointed to a Members Advisory Panel for Project Transform, made up of three elected members from each of the three local authority partners, and our first meeting is next week on 25th September. Watch this space …..

Yesterday I met the Cycleways K2L action group, who are trying to raise the profile again of this long-running campaign for improvements for cyclists on the route between Kenilworth and Leamington. The route has a number of major obstacles and hazards for cyclists, including the Thickthorn Island over the A46, the Chesford cross roads and the narrow bridge over the Avon. The whole route lacks any cycle lane provision (on or off road) over its entire length.

The key problem is that while K2L is included in Warwickshire’s Local Transport Plan, it is an “aspiration” rather than a firm commitment. Funds are concentrated in the main on developing cycle routes in towns rather than between towns, unless they form part of the Sustrans Nation Cycle Network - which K2L doesn’t at present.

And yet, there is plenty of evidence as to how popular a safe K2L route would be. Petitions and surveys have been held in the past, plus rallies and mass cycle events on the route.

I’ve agreed to help the K2L group all I can, both as a local county councillor and also in my role as Warwick District cycle champion. Already I’ve got commitments from county council officers that the planned traffic signalisation of the Thickthorn Island (to meet increased traffic flows from Stoneleigh Park) will be adapted to help cyclists traverse in safety.

At the weekend I went to a very interesting meeting organised by Action21’s Renewable Energy Club in conjunction with KICC (Kenilworth Initiative for Climate Change). Two Kenilworth residents, David Searle and George Martin, gave talks about their recent experiences of building zero or low carbon homes.

David’s house was a new build, and he has succeeded in achieving the ultimate goal of a zero carbon home, through the use of the right materials and equipment and meticulous attention to detail. George’s project was the conversion of a Grade2-listed part 17th century cottage, and while it was impossible to get to a zero carbon home with this he succeeded in getting a very long way towards this.

Common to both their experiences was the difficulty in finding UK manufacturers of the materials or equipment needed for their projects, from insulation materials through to biomass boilers and rainwater harvesting equipment. Also they both found a general lack of knowledge in the building trade of the specialist techniques needed to construct zero or low carbon homes, although in both cases they found builders willing to learn with them.

What a massive opportunity for UK manufacturing is being thrown away at present! The materials and equipment required are not having to be imported from cheap sources in the Far East, but from hi-tech manufacturers in European countries such as Germany, Austria and Denmark. Why doesn’t the British government invest heavily in promoting UK manufacturing of products for the ‘green revolution’, as the Liberal Democrats have proposed? Far better than the temporary small VAT cut, which has cost billions and achieved very little.

For the fourth year running I’ve been successful in winning a share of the County Council’s Minor Works budget for 2009/10, a record I’m proud of.

£13,000 has been allocated to upgrade the lighting on the popular Blundells footway running betwwen Priory Road and Southbank Road, and between Southbank Road and Abbey End car park. This follows the work carried out at the St Nicholas School end of the Blundells in 2008/09.

I set a high priority on good street lighting, which brings benefits in terms of both community safety and road safety - and also modern lighting is more energy efficient than most of the old lighting stock.

Last Friday was the first anniversary of the Big Lottery Win by Sustrans Connect2, which secured £50 million of lottery funding (and at least the same again of matched funding) for 79 walking and cycling projects up and down the country. I was very pleased to have led the local Connect2 Kenilworth campaign, and have continued to chair the local Steering Group as we push forward our local project to link Kenilworth town centre with the Greenway and the University of Warwick.

On 4th November the Kenilworth scheme became only the second Connect2 project in the country to have its formal agreement signed, to allow the release of lottery funding as the various stages of work are completed over the next three years.

In April, surfacing and improvement work was completed on the first section of the Greenway route out of Kenilworth towards Burton Green, opening up this part of the route for all-year recreational use. Throughout the year, a lot of planning and preparation has gone involving Sustrans and the County Council, together with its partners Warwick District Council and the University of Warwick.

The original Steering Group for the project has been strengthened with additional representatives from the Town Council, the University and local resident groups. It meets every two months to ensure that the local community is involved in all stages of the project through to final completion.

Later this month, tree works will commence along the track of the old railway line at the rear of Woodland Road and on the edge of Kenilworth Common. This work will be guided by the results of a detailed ecological survey carried out earlier in the year, and will aim to preserve and enhance the natural habitat for reptiles and other wildlife. All residents in the immediate area were informed of these works by letter last week.

Other works due to start soon are to widen and resurface the existing walking/cycling path from Bridge Street to Manor Road, and to widen the existing footbridge leading from Forge Road on to the Common. Preliminary design options for a new bridge over the Coventry Road have been commissioned.

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.