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Cabinet
Tuesday, 18 April 2006

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ITEM CA7 - ANNEX 3

ITEM EN7(b)

ENVIRONMENT SCRUTINY – 22 FEBRUARY 2006

CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY - SCRUTINY REVIEW

Report by Director of Environment & Economy

Introduction

  1. This report presents an overview of progress on the (then) Executive’s decisions on 7 December 2004 in respect of the recommendations of the Corporate Environmental Policy Scrutiny Review and the Audit Commission Sustainable Development Inspection; these are set out in Annex 2 of the report EN7(a) circulated to this committee. The following review supplements the details supplied in Annex 3 of the same report.

    2. Future First Programme Board

  2. The Future First Programme Board was formed in December 2004, immediately after the decision of the Executive. It decided to adopt the name of the environment scrutiny review report, Future First, in recognition of the influence of the review in helping to launch and shape this new environmental programme for the Council. The Board, chaired by Richard Dudding, includes the Cabinet Member for Sustainable Development and senior representatives from all Directorates. The current Scrutiny representative on the Board was confirmed as Councillor Anne Purse following the 2005 elections. In addition, representatives from the two universities in Oxford attended the last Board meeting, and a representative from Oxford Brookes University has become a member. The last Board meeting was held at the new Environment Agency building in Wallingford; Board members are keen to share and develop experience and good practice with other local organisations and partners.

  3. The remit of the Programme Board is to consider the impact of the Council own activities on the environment – its direct environmental footprint, and to identify savings in the use of natural resources. It will not cover the wider aspects of sustainable development, which are being taken forward through other programme areas: social inclusion and the economic development action plan. Its terms of reference (Annex 1) include to:

    • recommend revisions to environmental policy, reflecting the findings of Audit Commission and Environment Scrutiny Review reports;

    • identify, and where possible quantify, main areas of environmental impact within the Council;

    • recommend targets for improvement and develop a robust monitoring framework;

    • building on the Council environmental programme and checklist, develop an action plan, and recommend how this should be resourced and implemented;

    • ensure environmental objectives and targets are incorporated in corporate performance management frameworks and Directorate service plans and monitoring;

    • promote culture change through championing, staff development, awareness and change management;

    • benchmark performance against experience of other local authorities/organisations;

    • identify good practice and celebrate achievements.

Future First Action Plan 2005-2006

  1. The first task of the Programme Board was to prepare an Action Plan for 2005-2006. The Executive agreed the Future First Action Plan 2005-2006 in April 2005, with the recommendation that a progress report and action plan for the following year would be submitted annually to Cabinet. The report recommended that the renewal of the Council environmental policy should be done on the basis of data and experience collected during the first year of the programme. The first report to Cabinet will be in April 2006, with a preliminary review of progress against targets, and proposed actions for 2006/07. The full report will be published in the summer once the data for the previous financial year has been collated.

  2. The current Future First action plan brings together actions contributed by all directorates. In addition there are a number of strategic actions and cross-cutting issues which are being tackled corporately. The action plan summary is presented in four sections:

    3. Cross-cutting actions: targets to save energy, water, and waste.

    Tools and levers: corporate actions needed to help improvements to environmental performance to happen eg procurement, communications strategies, and measurement.

    Services: specific actions by services, for example Fire Service environmental reviews.

    Schools: initiatives in schools such as recycling and eco-schools programmes.

    Overview of Progress to Date

  3. Having completed a 6-month review of progress in September 2005, the Future First Project team is now working with Board Members to prepare the first annual review. The six-month review met with a very encouraging response from all members of the Board, with measurable progress on a number of actions and targets in the action plan. For example:

Cross-cutting actions

    • Energy: new energy saving initiatives: see paragraphs 11-12 below.

    • Travel: take-up of staff travel loans on target, and carshare scheme now available for staff in Oxford, Witney, Abingdon and Banbury.

    • Waste: new recycling schemes at several sites – see paragraph 14, but more support and follow-up is needed for staff.

    • Water: an audit of County Hall water use has been undertaken.

Corporate tools and levers

    • Progress on procurement and communications: – see paragraphs 8-10 and 14 below.

Schools:

    • 8 schools in Oxfordshire now have Eco-schools green flag status, and recycling by Oxfordshire schools is on target to increase by another 20% (covering over one third of all schools).

  1. The review also identified areas where more work was needed to meet targets in the action plan by March 2006, in particular:

    • the need to review the cost implications for services seeking environmental accreditation;

    • the need to improve our collection and measurement of data, water and waste in particular, on which to base future targets.

However the remainder of this report focuses on the priority areas identified in the Environmental Policy Scrutiny Review.

Progress on Key Issues Identified in the Scrutiny Review

Procurement

  1. The Future First Action Plan has three targets for procurement:

    • to apply standard environmental procurement procedures to County Council purchasing activities;

    • to draw up a programme for greening all County Council contracts, starting with at least two major contracts in 2005-2006;

    • to monitor and report on the Council annual paper consumption.

  1. The Strategic Procurement Board approved an environmental policy in April 2005, and a database of Council contracts has been set up, which will help to improve environmental monitoring in the future. A useful recent development is the agreement by the Capital Steering Group to employ whole life costing techniques for decision-making on investments.

  2. The new stationery contract set up in 2005 has enabled improved monitoring of paper use; a saving of up to £230,000 is predicted in the first year of the contract. In addition the contract has made it possible to monitor implementation by directorates of the corporate recycled paper policy. Currently 80% of all paper purchased is made from 100% consumer waste, and action is being taken to redirect those services which are not purchasing 100% recycled.

    3. Property Design and Construction, and Energy

  3. There is a very strong emphasis in the Future First Action Plan on Energy and Climate change as a key issue for the Council; the Corporate Property Group is responsible for the largest proportion of targets and actions in the plan. Good progress has already been made with many of these, notably:

    • the new property consultant’s contract includes a number of sustainability/ environmental outputs and key performance indicators including BREEAM ratings which become increasingly more challenging each year.

    • the Council adopted a new energy and water policy for buildings in April 2005.

    • use of the Prudential funding mechanism to borrow £200,000 in 2005/06 for energy measures – which include for example cavity wall insulation, timeswitches, improved control of heating and ventilation systems as well as lighting. A further £250,000 has also been approved by the Capital Steering Group for 2006/07.

  1. Since 1990, CO2 emissions from Council buildings have decreased by 43.5% in total. A 12.4% reduction has occurred because of reduction in energy use whilst the remainder of the reduction has resulted from the purchase of renewable electricity.

    2. Minimising the Use of New Materials for Road Construction

  2. Despite some early delays, work by Environment & Economy to include environmental performance monitoring in the new Oxfordshire Highways partnership, and a requirement on developers to use recycled roads materials, is now under way. However practice is varied and there is some work still to be done to ensure more consistent standards are applied.

    3. Policy and Process Implementation

  3. Proposals for annual monitoring and reporting are covered in paragraph 3 of this report. In addition, as part of the communications strategy, the Future First Project Team has worked to engage staff and members by:

    • visiting directorate management teams, staff meetings and awaydays;

    • holding some very popular lunchtime drop-in sessions at Council offices;

    • developing an intranet site and e-newsletter, and placing regular articles in the "Post";

    • supporting staff by offering improved facilities such as better workplace recycling facilities, access to the car share scheme, and the opportunity to set up workplace organic vegetable box deliveries.

  1. This work will be stepped up in the coming months with the launch of multi-material recycling schemes at County Hall and Macclesfield House in February, accompanied by eye-catching new posters and publicity materials. There will also be articles be in the newsletter for Councillors.

    2. Working with Partners

  2. The County Council has continued to take a lead in the Oxfordshire Community Partnership Environment Group and the Oxford Sustainable Business Partnership, and is working with other local authorities through these groups and the Sustainable Institutions Group to share good practice and develop joint initiatives. For example the recent message from Joanna Simons urging all staff to reduce their energy use was part of a co-ordinated campaign with Oxford City Council and the two universities. Currently the County Council is working with a number of partners to develop a joint bid to the Defra fund launched this month for promotional campaigns to change attitudes to climate change.

  3. The Future First programme has also provided a focus for related initiatives such as the promotion of local and FairTrade products. The Future First Programme Board supported and helped to develop the proposal to Cabinet in September 2005 for Oxfordshire County Council to purchase FairTrade products and to increase its purchase of locally produced food (also covered in the winter issue of the Oxfordshire magazine). Subsequently Future First staff organised a popular local food fair in the common hall café in December in partnership with the Oxfordshire Food Group and County Facilities Management.

    4. Conclusion

  4. The publication of the Scrutiny Review, along with the Audit Commission report on sustainable development, undoubtedly helped to give new impetus to the work to strengthen corporate environmental policy. The Future First Programme Board is working well as a high-level strategic group which helps to ensure support and awareness of Future First across the Council. However much work remains to be done to ensure that environmental objectives are firmly embedded within the Council strategic objectives and performance monitoring. For this reason the Future First Programme Board would like to see more emphasis in next year’s programme on the work that needs to be done at strategic level, alongside the practical work to improve our environmental performance and implement resource efficiency targets.

RICHARD DUDDING
Director for Environment & Economy

Background papers: Nil

Contact officer: Susie Ohlenschlager, Policy Manager (Environment), Tel (01865) 810148

February 2006

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