Coventry Telegraph carries an extensive report on the Launch of the Coventry Shadow Climate Strategy event organised by Coventry Green New Deal on 21 May. The event launched an alternative to Coventry City Council’s Climate Strategy For Coventry.

As we have reported on this website, Coventry’s Climate Change Strategy ran out in 2020. In March 2023, only three years late, the city finally got round to publishing a draft of the replacement strategy which was supposed to cover the period from 2020 to 2030. For a highly critical article on this “strategy” see this article by David Ridley and Tom Maidment of Coventry Green New Deal. Read more about the draft strategy here or a summary version here. And in case that isn’t enough, there is more information here.

The Telegraph reported

The council said its plans lay out the “foundations for creating a sustainable zero carbon city” with 103 areas of activity across five key pathways. But Green New Deal members David Ridley and Tom Maidment said it lacks “long-term vision” or a “coherent roadmap” for the city to get to net zero.

Campaigners in Coventry have drawn up their own climate strategy after attacking existing council plans. Members of climate activist group Coventry Green New Deal instead want tougher action to clean up our air and make our city a better place to live.

It goes on to say

Overall, the Green New Deal’s strategy calls for the council to set “specific time-bound targets” on reducing emissions in line with the city’s carbon budget, and a clear roadmap to decarbonisation. This would go along with targets on the city’s key emissions sources – building, waste and transport – and policies in these areas suggested by the group.

The group is critical of how the council has set up feedback sessions and calls on them to engage more deeply with the city’s communities to make sure its policies are effective “in the long term. And their plan strongly recommends the council re-iterates its commitment to achieving the West Midlands regional goal of net zero by 2041, which has been set by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA.)

The report quotes Councillor Jim O’Boyle, who is responsible for finally publishing this strategy at least three years late, as saying

“We want to include as many ideas and thought processes as we can as part of our finalised climate change strategy,” he said. “But our climate change strategy by definition is not finalised because we’re going through consultation.

“And I want people to pick ours apart, and to poke holes in it, I have no problem with that. Because ultimately I want people to buy into what we try to do, not as a council necessarily but a city as a whole.

Read the full Telegraph report here

The council’s draft climate strategy is open for feedback until 7 July. Members of the public can give their thoughts here: https://letstalk.coventry.gov.uk/climate-change-strategy