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ITEM CA7

CABINET – 18 APRIL 2006

FUTURE FIRST ACTION PLAN 2006-2007

Report by Director for Environment & Economy

1. The Executive agreed the Future First Action Plan 2005-2006 in April 2005, with the rider that a progress report and action plan for the following year would be submitted annually to Cabinet. This report includes a preliminary review of progress in 2005-2006 (Annex 1), and proposes priorities and actions for 2006/07 (Annex 2). Further background information is contained in the more detailed report to the Environment & Economy Scrutiny Committee on 22 February 2006 (Annex 3) which evaluated progress since the publication of the Environment Policy Scrutiny Review "Future First" in 2004. The full Future First progress report will be published on the Council website in the summer once the data for the current financial year has been collated.

Future First Programme Board

2. The Board, chaired by Richard Dudding, includes the Cabinet Member for Sustainable Development and a representative from Scrutiny, Councillor Anne Purse. It has met quarterly over the past year to monitor progress of the Action Plan, and has demonstrated commitment and support for the implementation of Future First actions across the Council. The Board’s remit is to consider the impact of the Council own activities on the environment – our direct environmental footprint – and to identify savings in the use of natural resources. Board members recognize the importance of the increased operational efficiency and financial savings that can be achieved as the result of environmental good practice. In particular, rising energy prices mean that action to reduce energy consumption across the Council will result in significant financial savings, contributing to the Council priorities of real choice, lower taxes and value for money. Current savings identified include an estimated £230,000 in annual stationery costs through the new stationery contract that enables all paper consumption, as well as use of recycled paper across the Council to be monitored.

Future First Action Plan 2005-2006

3. All directorates contributed actions and targets to the 2005-2006 Future First Action Plan. In addition a number of strategic actions and cross-cutting issues are being tackled corporately. The Action Plan summary is in four sections:

• Cross-cutting actions: targets to save energy, water, and waste.
• Tools and levers: corporate actions needed to help improvements to environmental performance to happen e.g. 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.

4. Full data is not yet available to measure progress against targets relating to environmental impact, such as energy consumption. This will become available in summer 2006. However there has been good progress on the majority of actions and targets in the Action Plan, though a number of actions are yet to be completed. Many of these are carried forward into next year’s plan. In particular there has been some encouraging progress on strategic issues that will enable environmental improvements and savings in the future. Feedback from Board members highlighted in particular the following successes:

• A useful recent development is the agreement by the Capital Steering Group to employ whole life appraisal techniques for decision-making on investments.
  
  Procurement
  

• The pre-qualification tender questionnaire has been redesigned to include environmental criteria.
• The improved monitoring from the new stationery contract will enable targets to reduce paper use to be set; this should lead to further savings.
  
  Communications
  

• Board members have identified increased awareness amongst staff and Councillors, and some indications of increased willingness by staff to change their practices in order to make environmental improvements and savings; the Future First drop-in sessions and food fayre held last year were especially successful.
• The Future First Programme Board has also welcomed the participation of external agencies: Oxford Brookes University is now represented on the board, Brenda Boardman, leader of the UK Lower Carbon Futures team and lecturer at Environmental Change Institute, has contributed towards discussion around energy and carbon, and a recent Board meeting was held at the Environment Agency’s Red Kite House.

Further Work

5. The Board also identified areas where more work is needed to meet targets in the action plan in particular:

• There is a continued lack of facilities for multi-material recycling at many workplaces, due to the need for support and guidance for staff on-site. An action to be carried forward into next year’s plan is to develop a proposal for a Council-wide facilities management service which will support better management of Council properties and environmental improvements such as recycling and energy management. Currently the Future First team does not have the capacity to provide support for individual sites.
• The need to improve our collection and measurement of data concerning water and waste is critical, as this is needed to establish a baseline against which to set future targets.
• More work remains to be done to ensure that environmental objectives are integrated within the Council strategic objectives and performance monitoring.

6. The Draft Future First Action Plan for 2006-2007 has been developed around the following:

• the Board’s agreement to focus down on key issues;
• the Carbon Trust Local Authority Carbon Management Programme;
• the need to develop robust monitoring systems;
• the decision to include environmental work with schools within the Future First project.

7. Key issues are defined as those areas that have the most significance in terms of reducing our environmental footprint, contributing to local and national priorities or increasing financial efficiency. Actions from the 2005-2006 Action Plan that are still in progress have been included only where they align with the current Action Plan priorities and focus. The development of corporate tools and levers will continue into 2006-2007 as these provide the support and mechanisms required to achieve action on these key issues.
8. Key issues for the 2006-2007 Action Plan are as follows:

Carbon: Emissions of carbon dioxide are agreed to be responsible for this century’s most significant crisis: climate change. Reducing our own emissions of carbon dioxide, our own carbon footprint, through reducing energy consumption and increasing our capacity for renewable energy technology, will contribute to national and global targets to lower carbon emissions and inspire others to follow suit. In addition, rising energy prices mean that action to reduce energy consumption across the Council will result in significant financial savings, contributing to the Council priorities of real choice, lower taxes and value for money.

Waste: With the UK Landfill directive due to be implemented in 2010, the Council will be soon be facing large fines for excess waste sent to landfill. Actions to divert our own waste stream from landfill will not only contribute to a reduction in the county’s overall landfill requirement, but will reduce our own waste disposal costs and demonstrate leadership in this area to businesses, institutions and households across the County. Targets reflect the current Local Area Agreement target for diverting commercial waste from landfill.

Water: In response to the current drought in the South East region, the Council should lead by example in taking steps to reduce its own water consumption rate. Success in this area will have positive implications for our finances and carbon footprint, through reduced heating and pumping.

The Local Authority Carbon Management Programme

9. The Council has been successful in securing a partnership with the Carbon Trust to participate in their Local Authority Carbon Management (LACM) programme. The Carbon Trust is an independent company funded by the government to help the UK to move to a low carbon economy by helping businesses and the public sector to reduce carbon emissions now and capture commercial opportunities of low carbon technologies. Under the LACM programme, Carbon Trust consultants will work with the Council to apply a strategic and systematic approach to assessing the best and most cost effective ways for the Council to move forward in reducing its carbon footprint and will be addressing emissions from property, travel, street lighting and waste. The external support for the programme will commence in May 2006 and will run until March 2007. This will form the centrepiece of the Future First Action Plan in 2006-07 but identified and adopted processes and measures will be taken forward to future years.

Monitoring

10. Following the recommendations of the Board and with the support of the LACM programme, Future First will seek to set up robust monitoring systems essential for measuring our current impact, monitoring progress against actions and setting meaningful targets for the project.

Schools

11. All work with schools to improve their environmental performance and to develop the Oxfordshire Sustainable Schools Programme will be incorporated into the Future First project and actions against targets will appear in the 2006-2007 Action Plan.

Financial and Staff Implications

12. The Future First project is coordinated by a Future First Project Team. The team consists of the Head of the Sustainable Development Service and the Environment and Rural Programme Manager, who are involved in an advisory capacity, the Schools Sustainability Officer, responsible for delivering programmes and projects in schools, and the Environment Manager, who is responsible for supporting the delivery of actions by directorates and project managing Future First on a daily basis. The two full time staff members required are staffed from within the Strategic Policy and Economic Development unit and are expected to be cost neutral.
13. The project management and promotional costs of the Future First Project are currently met from existing resources within Environment & Economy. Where there are costs associated with projects outlined in the summary action plan, these are covered within existing budgets and work plans for whichever Directorate has lead responsibility for the project.
14. The aim of Future First is to incorporate actions into the mainstream activities of directorates. There should be few significant demands on staff time outside the project team other than that required by the Programme Board of its members in terms of quarterly meetings, six monthly monitoring interviews and chasing staff within their directorates to deliver on actions. There will be occasions, however, when delivery will require staff to put in considerable time and effort over a short period, for example in setting up a site recycling scheme.

RECOMMENDATION

15. The Cabinet is RECOMMENDED to approve the proposals for the Future First Action Plan 2006-2007 set out in this report and Annex 2.

RICHARD DUDDING
Director for Environment & Economy

Background papers: Nil

Contact Officer: Nita Robertson, Environment Manager (Environment), Tel (01865) 810148

April 2006

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