Meeting Shockat Adam MP about the Climate Plan

As part of our work on the Big Climate Plan campaign, we met Shockat Adam, the independent MP for Leicester South, to ask him to demonstrate his commitment to fair climate action. 

We explained that the government's new climate plan must set out how we will meet the UK's international commitment to cut carbon emissions by over two thirds by 2030. We're currently dangerously off track so we need to take urgent action. The plan therefore needs to be ambitious but we think it also needs to make sure that everyone can have lower energy bills, warm homes, clean air, better public transport and well paid green jobs. 

Many of the people hit hardest by the impacts of climate change, in the UK and worldwide, are those who have done the least to cause the problem. Fair climate action can bring benefits for everyone, not only those who can afford to buy a Tesla. With the backlash against net-zero in some quarters, it's vital that the government's plan is fair and seen to be fair. If it isn't, it risks being weaponised by climate sceptics and those seeking to delay climate action.

This week, Friends of the Earth published a new fairness focussed research report, highlighting the impact of climate policies on ordinary people. We gave Shockat a copy of the report and the petition that we had collected showing local support for fair climate action: 160 postcards and 227 digital signatures. We also presented him with the brainstorm of ideas for climate action, which people have been contributing to at our recent stalls. 

We discussed how fair climate action could make a difference locally, in improving cold and mouldy homes, reducing air pollution that affects the most deprived parts of Leicester most severely and in improving everyone's access to public transport. Shockat has agreed to present our petition to the Prime Minister and also to write to him to express his support for fair climate action. We were gratified to hear that he is very interested in these issues. 

Now all we can do is to wait and see what the new climate plan will bring! As this effectively marked the end of our work on this campaign, we went to the Phoenix for dinner to celebrate. Local groups across the UK are talking to their MPs about the need for fair climate action; we hope that together we will make a difference.

Calling for a Big Climate Plan on High Street

With one week to go until we meet one of our local MPs to talk about the Big Climate Plan, we had another stall to collect people's ideas for climate action and postcards to pass on to the prime minister. This time we were in the centre of Leicester, part way up High Street.

Street campaigning can be a challenge because people can be reluctant to stop and talk (especially if they think you're asking for money) and explaining campaigns very quickly is not always easy. We collected fewer postcards than the week before, perhaps because the weather was a lot colder. We noticed that people are feeling very disillusioned with the current government and are therefore unwilling to engage in anything 'political'. But we kept ourselves entertained with a friendly rivalry as to who was collecting the most signatures! Bruce beat everyone else hands down - we think it must have been his bobble hat. People gave us some odd excuses for not stopping to talk - the strangest being "I'm already married"! We're not sure what they thought we were asking!

Climate Emergency Action Plan consultation - respond now!

Leicester City Council are currently consulting on their new Climate Emergency Action Plan, which will cover the next five years until 2028. The consultation is open until Sunday 28^th January 2024 and you can read the consultation documents here. We are writing a detailed response from Leicester Friends of the Earth but it will have more impact if as many people and organisations as possible respond to the consultation. You can complete a survey at the link above or simply send an email to sustainability@leicester.gov.uk with your thoughts.

Here are our suggestions for the key points to include:

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Although there are many good actions included in the new plan, there are also too many points without any defined targets, so that there is no way of measuring whether the Council is making progress towards reaching net zero by 2030. There are also too many ‘actions’ listed which are in fact only plans to make plans. These are not actions and should not be listed as such.

The Council

The Council recognises that the most impactful actions they could take to reduce the carbon emissions of their own buildings are to retrofit insulation, install heat pumps and connect more buildings to the district heating networks. However, insulation and connections to district heating are not mentioned in the actions listed in this section. There is only a plan to make a plan! Why not start trying to fund those projects immediately, while creating the roadmap? When we are facing a climate emergency, we haven’t got two years to waste in only writing the plan.

Housing

The ongoing programme of insulating council homes is good but nowhere near ambitious enough. There needs to be a target to retrofit all council owned and managed homes, as well as a target to get all homes in the private rented sector up to standard. We would also like to understand what more will be done to encourage privately owned homes to retrofit, as they make up a significant proportion of the city’s housing stock.   

Business, public services and community

The tree planting and Tiny Forests projects happening on school grounds are excellent but they could be more ambitious; aiming to plant five more Tiny Forests by 2028 is only one per year! Could the Council aim to plant a Tiny Forest at every school that has sufficient green space within the next 5 years? That would be a significant number of trees and ensure that most children in Leicester had access to a Tiny Forest.

Transport

To make active travel more attractive we need to find ways of reducing traffic levels, so that it is safer to walk and cycle. One of the key factors driving increases in road traffic is light goods vehicles, driven by online shopping.  This is recognised in government statistics but not addressed in this plan (apart from with a plan to make a plan!). More urgent action is needed. For example, the Council could work with online retailers to install more parcel lockers around the city so that deliveries could be dropped at one point for people to collect.

Land and infrastructure

The glyphosate reduction trials in city parks are welcome but we would like to see this expanded. It is possible to manage parks and green spaces without using any chemical pesticides (herbicides, insecticides etc). Other local authorities are also managing their streets without using chemical pesticides and we would like to see the Council follow this best practice and phase out the use of all pesticides in the next five years.

Consumption and waste

The Council state that food waste is being separated from other household waste. How is this done? And is it as effective as a separate food waste collection would be? We are concerned that this is not the most effective way to manage household waste.

It is good to see that the Council intends to increase the choice of meals in schools, to address the climate impact of food. This should apply to all institutional settings, including hospitals, care homes and prisons, not only schools. Vegan options of similar nutritional value to other meal options should be made available for every meal.

Responding to the Campaign Against Leicester's Workplace Parking Levy

We support Leicester City Council’s proposal to introduce a workplace parking levy (WPL): a charge on employers who provide parking spaces for their employees. There is a detailed explanation of why we support this on Climate Action’s website. We know that there is now a campaign against the introduction of a WPL in Leicester and we would like to respond to some of the arguments being put forward.

“The WPL will have a disproportionate impact on the lowest paid workers”

The most economically disadvantaged people in Leicester (employed or not) suffer the most from low quality public transport and unhealthy levels of air pollution. 35% of households in the city do not have access to a car. Many, if not the majority, of people in those households will be reliant on public transport to get around. At the moment, many of the bus services are infrequent and poorly co-ordinated and all are too expensive. The number of bus passengers in Leicester has been declining for years as a result. This situation leaves already disadvantaged people further disadvantaged by the limited transport available to them.  

It is now well known that people who are economically disadvantaged are the most exposed to air pollution. This is all the more unfair because the same people are less likely to own a vehicle and be contributing to the pollution. They are also more likely to have existing health conditions that will be exacerbated by breathing polluted air. This spiral of inequality is visible in Leicester, for example, with the St Matthew’s housing estate being next to the congested ring road. Introducing clean (electric) buses, with more connected, more frequent services, would benefit people without access to a car and people living in polluted areas the most. It would finally address the current, doubly unfair situation.

As the WPL is levied on employers, they can choose whether to pass it on to their employees and how to do so. The City Council have said they would work with employers to ensure the charge is passed on fairly. The University of Nottingham’s scale of charges provide an example of how this can be done. This would need monitoring, of course, and any employers not using a scale of charges to protect their lowest paid employees would need to be challenged. But that could be done and, overall, the scheme promises to benefit the people who are struggling the most by improving the transport they rely on.

“The number of buses will reduce”

We contacted the City Council about this claim, to understand it better. Bus operators’ fleets in Leicester are currently artificially high, because they include vehicles for contract work outside Leicester. The competition between operators also means that we often see empty buses driving around. For example, I live on the route of the 22 in Evington and it is not unusual to see a First bus and a Centrebus pull up at stops at the same time or within a few minutes of each other. Inevitably, the second vehicle is then mostly empty. This pointless competition between operators adds to pollution and congestion in the city. The new Bus Partnership Plan promises to reduce competition between the operators, as well as improving the frequency of services and the connections between them.

One of the Council’s priorities with the revenue that could be generated by the WPL is to fund a new orbital bus service (i.e., a service that goes round the city rather than from the outskirts into the centre). This would run within 400 metres of 75% of the employers in the city. For people without cars, it would significantly increase their access to jobs and services. The electric buses will also cut the pollution caused by public transport. But this plan needs funding and the money provided by central government will not be enough. We need the WPL to fund better bus services.

“We need system-changing socialist solutions”

and “municipal ownership is better than commercial ownership”

We completely agree that bringing public transport back into public hands is the best way to provide an excellent bus service. And to give credit where it is due, Peter Soulsby has consistently said this too. But it isn’t going to happen with a Conservative government. It isn’t guaranteed even if we get a Labour government at the next election; they were in power for 12 years last time without fixing the public transport system. And we haven’t got time to wait for a revolution before we start acting on climate change. The latest IPCC report made it very clear that action is needed now to avert climate disaster. India is currently dealing with a heatwave that has been made 30 times more likely by the climate crisis. There are more severe heatwaves every year in countries where very few people have access to air-conditioning. There are more floods, more fires, more droughts. Left unchecked, it is only a matter of time before climate change starts killing people on a scale that we cannot bear to imagine. We need to start moving towards a more sustainable way of life now, even if the first steps are not perfect. In Leicester, a sensible next step would be to improve the bus service and start to encourage people to consider leaving their cars at home.

City Council should take back control of the buses

Alongside Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire, we have today written to the City Mayor urging him to take back control of the buses. You can read our letter below. We think we need a radical improvement in our public transport in the city and the bus companies are never going to provide it of their own accord. 

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Dear City Mayor, 

We are writing to you as transport activists. In some cases, we have spent many years campaigning for better public transport in Leicester. 

We have read the Draft Bus Plan and we are pleased to see the level of ambition for improving bus services and increasing patronage. When we are facing a climate emergency, we need a radical improvement in the bus services to persuade people to make the necessary change in their transport habits.

 

We know that you have decided to pursue an Enhanced Partnership. However, we have no faith that the Enhanced Partnership mechanism will enable these ambitions. It is our experience that the bus companies in Leicester are not really interested in improving their services as long as they maintain their profits. 

The National Bus Strategy states, ‘We will support any LTA which wishes to access franchising powers, and which has the capability and intention to use them at pace to deliver improvements for passengers’ (p.10). We understand that there are difficulties associated with franchising and finding the capacity within the Council to manage that system. However, we believe it is necessary for the Council to take that level of control if there is to be a significant improvement in the bus services. We know that you have always wanted better control of the city’s public transport and we hope that you will lead the way for UK cities in seeking this.

We urge you to work with other cities and the County to seek joint agreement that franchising is the only realistic means of achieving networks and services commensurate with the government’s decarbonisation requirements, and then to do everything you can together to win the government’s support for that approach. We would be happy to do whatever we can to help, and look forward to hearing your reaction to this proposal. 

Yours sincerely,

The members of:

Leicester Friends of the Earth 

Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire’s Transport Action Group

Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire’s Low Carbon Planning and Housing Group

Who pays for parking?

Many organisations in Leicester provide free car parking for their employees. Most do not provide a benefit of the same value for employees who do not drive to work (e.g., a free bus pass), so they effectively subsidise travel costs only for the car drivers[1]. The lowest-paid in any organisation are the least likely to own a car and benefit from this subsidy. One organisation I used to work for provided car parking spaces for the CEO and directors (who were of course paid the most) and everyone else had to choose another form of transport or pay for street parking. This just compounded the inequality created by free parking. And any incentive to drive has a cost for everyone in terms of air pollution and carbon emissions. 

There is a way to address this issue and it was introduced in Nottingham several years ago. Local authorities can charge a workplace parking levy (WPL) so that organisations have to pay for every parking space they provide. The levy is charged to employers but most pass it on to the employees who use the car parking spaces. The money generated can then be used to fund sustainable transport initiatives that benefit everyone. In Nottingham, it goes towards their tram system[2]. 

Leicester City Council are now considering introducing a WPL. They are meeting employers and working with De Montfort University to gauge whether it would work in Leicester. They are hoping to launch the public consultation later this year. If it goes ahead, they would have continuous funding for transport improvement works, instead of relying on government funding schemes as they do at the moment. 

The way that the government forces local authorities to bid for funding has always seemed ridiculous to me. Council officers spend enormous amounts of time preparing bids for specific funding schemes, in competition with other councils, only to be unsuccessful and have to shelve their plans on a regular basis. If the government funded local authorities properly, councillors and officers would be able to look at their area, decide what is most needed and make it happen. Instead, they are dependent on the vagaries of whatever the government feels like funding that week. This is just another way for the government to take away local control. Although the government has provided funding for various sustainable transport initiatives over the past few years (e.g., cycle lanes and electric buses), it is always piecemeal and never allows local authorities to confidently plan an ongoing strategy. The WPL could change all of that. 

In a pre-consultation meeting we had with Leicester City Council recently, they explained that they are planning to link all revenue to work on climate change action, with three investment priorities:

·       Rail station transformation - to allow for increased capacity

·       Rapid mass transit network - electric tram quality buses

·       Active travel everywhere - expanding the walking and cycling network

These all have the potential to make it easier for people to choose sustainable transport. 

In Nottingham, the WPL has also given the council an excuse to talk to employers about travel demand. These conversations have led to the adjustment of bus routes to better serve employment locations and created a scheme where employers can bulk buy bus season tickets at a discount. Along with the disincentive of paying for parking, these schemes will help to discourage people from driving to work. 

Although we will want to look at the details carefully, to make sure the proposals do not unfairly disadvantage the lowest-paid (as the current situation does), it is clear to me that environmental groups should support the introduction of a WPL in Leicester. We are looking forward to the consultation.

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[1] This point was recently made by Professor Donald Shoup in an online lecture called, ‘The High Cost of Free Parking’, hosted by Queens University Belfast.

[2] Nick Ruxton Boyle’s article in Air Quality News has more about Nottingham’s WPL scheme: Workplace Parking Levy - the second coming - Air Quality News