Bovey Tracey Town Council – progress update on climate emergency declaration

We’re coming up to four years from the declaration of a climate emergency by Bovey Tracey Town Council. Two councillors, Dr Debbie Fletcher and Ollie Mills, who have been particularly involved in the follow-up to this declaration tell us about the Council’s remarkable achievements.

Download this article as a pdf Bovey Tracey Town Council Climate Emergency Declaration update

When we ran for election in 2019, we pledged to do what we could to help mitigate the impacts of climate change at a local level. Shortly after being elected, the Council declared a climate emergency and we set ourselves the objective of making the Council’s activities carbon neutral by 2025. As we come to the end of our four-year term, we wanted to give residents an update on the work that has subsequently been done by the Council towards that objective.

1. All the Council’s decision-making processes now require equal consideration of environmental impacts alongside social and financial impacts.

2. Starting from the beginning of this year, we now have 34 solar panels and battery storage installed at the back of the Riverside Community Centre. Our calculations show that this should make the building ‘carbon negative’ over the year, with excess power sent to the grid in the summer months.

3. We have ensured that the Riverside Community Centre is air-source heat pump ready, so that when the gas boiler reaches the end of its life, it will be replaced with a low carbon heating option.

4. All our energy supplies are now through Ecotricity, a green energy provider.

5. We recently agreed a £13k capital spend contribution to help Bovey Tracey Swimming Pool to make its energy supply more sustainable.

6. We are investigating options for a sustainable replacement of our van – last year there wasn’t anything electric on the market that was suitable; this year such vans are emerging, so we hope that we will have an electric vehicle by the end of March 2024.

7. In August, we introduced a dry recycling collection for the Riverside Community Centre. Our next step is to try and find a way of getting our small amount of food waste separately collected too.

8. We have handed out 500 trees over two free tree giveaway events (in partnership with Devon Wildlife Trust) – trees sequester more carbon as they grow, so the positive effects of these across the parish will increase over time.

9. We have finalised our own carbon model to show what our current carbon emissions are and to monitor how these change over time through the actions we take. In 2021/22, the Council emitted just over 11 tonnes of carbon through its activities. We expect this to reduce significantly over the coming year as the steps highlighted above take effect.

10. We are working with those who lease our green spaces to improve their environmental performance – whether its through asking them not to use weedkiller, to leave areas unmown, to install water butts or improve recycling at events.

11. Climate change threatens all species, not just humans. We have therefore reduced the number of mows on our verges and planted wildflowers on verges and in Mill Marsh Park to encourage nature. This in turn helps to protect our food sources which need pollinating insects to thrive. It may not look as neat and tidy, but nature isn’t supposed to be shaved into neat lines.

We are proud to have established and now to be working alongside the Climate Action: Bovey and Heathfield (CABH) group, supporting them to implement wider initiatives to reduce our carbon impacts across the parish. The group has helped deliver the repair café, community fridge, litter pick events, free environmentally friendly gardening consultations and clothes swaps. Look out for more initiatives in the following months, including free home efficiency consultations which, with the use of some clever technology, will highlight draughts or cold spots in your home and provide some ideas on how you might reduce them. The group also provides regular events to engage residents in the challenges we face through climate change, and how we can all help to reduce carbon emissions across the parish and beyond.

So a big thank you to all those who are involved in CABH and to everyone who has attended an event, volunteered at and/or visited the repair café or community fridge or made a positive environmental change to their own home or garden.