Members of Warwickshire Wildlife Trust who live in and around the Coventry area may be interested to see Coventry’s draft climate change strategy which is out for public consultation until 7th July.
You can view the webpage and the strategy on the Coventry City Council website.
Question 5 of the response survey asks: ‘Is there anything else you think we should include?’
Our key concerns and comments are as below:
- The plan should be an official ‘Supplementary Planning Document’ and referenced in the statutory Local Plan review to give it more legal weight.
- The plan would benefit from a long term management plan for the strategy and a financial Strategy to actually deliver the necessary steps on the ground.
- The document would benefit from more information about how it will be achieved and delivered on the ground. It needs more specific targets and to set out how these will be regularly monitored and reviewed.
- We would like to see a clearer single objective. Page 4- it isn’t clear on reading the introduction if this strategy is to get Coventry to net zero, or make it a sustainable city, or something else. A single, clear objective is needed.
- 2.10 (and throughout) while COP27 is properly referenced throughout, the strategy makes no connections to the equivalent on biodiversity. We would like to see COP15 referenced just as prominently as COP27, along with the international and UK commitment to 30 by 30. The strategy could then indicate how Coventry will seek to deliver on 30 by 30.
- 2.12 the strategy would benefit from more focus on actually creating and delivering new green spaces and describing how this will be done. Despite creating new accessible open spaces being recognised as a challenge, the city has some of the lowest levels of access and use of open spaces, especially in relation to deprived areas. There may be alternative opportunities.
- 5.7 in relation to biodiversity Coventry City Council could do this straightaway for inclusion in the strategy. It could adopt the Government’s target of 30% more land in recovery by 2030 and acknowledge the current baseline of only 11% and then create an action plan detailing how it plans on progressing from 11% to 30% in the next seven years.
- 5.8 We would like to see the plan introduce the possibility of using a new land designation (Wildbelt) over the course of the next Local Plan, backed up by a new Supplementary Planning Document which goes further than the mandated 10% for Biodiversity Net Gain to 20% (as adopted by some Local Planning Authorities already).
However, we are pleased to see ‘loss of biodiversity’ as a key issue in the plan’s introduction.
We are also glad to see there is a specific section on nature based development section 9 page 44, which specifically references our Wildlife Trust work and the Sherbourne Project, as well as the Nature Recovery Network for which work has already started. We would like to see the document go further in reference to the points stated above.
Please take inspiration from our comments above when responding to the draft strategy, and add your own questions and concerns.
You can complete the survey on the strategy using the link below. The deadline for this survey is 7th July.