Agenda item

2.25

The Committee have requested to receive an update on what is happing in relation to school buildings in light of the Council’s agreed commitment to Climate Change, including the capital programme for new schools/retro fitting of existing schools and to receive an update on whether school transport vehicles are being looked at in terms of pollution.  Accordingly, the Head of Access to Learning, Allyson Milward will attend the meeting to give a verbal update on the current data available.

A briefing note form the Corporate Director Communities is attached (ESC9).

The Committee had requested to receive an update on what was happing in relation to school buildings in light of the Council’s agreed commitment to Climate Change, including the capital programme for new schools/retro fitting of existing schools and to receive an update on whether school transport vehicles are being looked at in terms of pollution.  Accordingly, the Head of Access to Learning, Allyson Milward was invited to attend the meeting to give a verbal update on the current data available. 

Before the Committee was also a briefing note form the Corporate Director Communities. It explained that when the council renewed its terms and conditions in 2019 for awarded contracts, it set a minimum standard of Euro 3 for its school buses and coaches, one of the first authorities to do this. In doing this, it was recognised that it wasn’t setting the bar particularly high but given where the market was, it was considered a good start to its longer-term ambitions of awarding carbon neutral contracts in 2031.

Working closely with the market and the council’s own climate change team, environmental standards would be raised every four years as the Dynamic Purchasing System (through which contracts are awarded) is renewed. This would be in 2023, 2027 and then with the carbon neutral target in 2031.

In 2018, surveys were carried out to assess the current carbon output from supported transport activities. This showed that each day some 50,000 miles were travelled performing this function accounting for around 3,800 tonne CO2e per year.

From September 2021 there was an ambition that tracking devices would be installed in all vehicles allowing detailed monitoring of emissions allowing a targeted action plan to be developed in 2022 on how it might meet its 2031 ambitions and the standards it would need to set when the dynamic Purchasing System was renewed in 2023.

Allyson Millward reported that the Council were looking at the Carbon Neutral response in relation to building works in their existing schools and new schools.  Carbon natural did mean more expensive generally, but funding had been added to the Capital Programme, which would be used to potentially top up and enhance some of the new build schemes that were subject to development agreements which had already been signed.  They could also use the fund to enhance expansion schemes and they were in the process of formulating a new policy for future negotiations on new schools which would be making its way through the governance structure in due course.

Councillor Ted Fenton queried why school buses and coaches were not electric vehicles given the fact that school buses were only used briefly for a period in the morning and at the end of the day and could be charged up over night and during the day.

Councillor Howson queried about cooking by gas and whether there was any knowledge about how many Oxfordshire schools still cooked by gas and if there were any plans for replacement with electricity?

In response, Councillor Milward reported that those kinds of issues were being looked at by a designated climate change team within the Council, but that she could find out and come back to Councillor Howson.