Issue - items at meetings - Chair's Communications

5.1          The Chair conveyed the following Communication:

“I would like to welcome Members, Officers and the Public to this, the first meeting of our new Environment & Sustainability Committee.

The Committee brief covers many highly visible and important Council Services and areas of public interest.

We have a key role to play in delivering one of the Council’s top Corporate Priorities, of “Creating a more sustainable City” and we will be taking a presentation from Geoff Raw later that expands on that.

I hope that Members will find their experience of this Committee interesting and worthwhile and I will certainly seek to ensure all are enabled to make a positive contribution.

We face a challenging financial situation which is placing strain on services and staff. We have the challenge to see that we evolve and maintain good quality services that support the needs of the City, and that we continue to progress to making the City a sustainable, healthy and resilient city, living within our fair share of what the planet can afford.

I hope we will be able to enjoy working together and to share in ensuring the City, its residents, businesses and visitors and our shared natural and built environment are well served.

As part of my role of Committee Chair, I get to meet and learn of all manner of interesting people striving to make change in the City and I would like to use this Communication to regularly share with you some of the recent highlights.

I’m very glad to say, that recently the partners in the Harvest project succeeded in receiving an additional Big Lottery award for £235k. This is a great reflection on the success of the partnership of community food organisations locally and provides a strong platform for future work.

Harvest, have also been short-listed for a National Lottery Award for best Environment Project.  This has progressed to a public voting stage, so I’ll share the link, and ask that you encourage support. 

I think there is good deal to understand about the food partnerships work and the Harvest project, so I think it would be good to invite them to give a presentation at one of our future meetings.

Recently I was delighted to attend the 6^th Annual Moulsecoomb Environment & Heritage Festival at Moulsecoomb Primary School.  The school is an outstanding resource and pride of the local community and I thoroughly recommend members pay a visit to the festival next year, to see the wonderful gardens and heritage buildings that have been created.

A number of colleagues and I recently attended the first Eco Technology Show at the new Amex Stadium.  The show was a joint venture our officers helped to develop.  I was particularly impressed by the presentation given by Brighton University about the work they are doing to reduce their carbon footprint by 50% over 5 years.  This should stand as an inspiration to us all.

Finally, I’d like to mention, that this Friday sees the launch of the Big Sussex Butterfly count which begins with a mad day long rapid pursuit across the county for intriguingly named Yellow Clouds, Commas and Purple Hairstreaks, to name but a few”.