Council Leader Richard Leese told a committee of councillors that Manchester council collates monthly data on environmental performance.  MCFly asked to see it. After being forced to wait 20 working days, it emerges Manchester is NOT a monthly environmental dashboard.

At the August meeting of the Finance Scrutiny Committee, Councillor Leese was giving a verbal report about the “Manchester Strategy”. Starting at about 1 min 40 of the following video, he mentions three “dashboards” which monitor how things are going on the economy, social policy and the environment.  He says that these are updated monthly.

Intrigued, Manchester Climate Monthly editor Marc Hudson wrote to senior officers;

yesterday I attended Finance Scrutiny Committee. During the discussion of the Manchester Strategy, the Council Leader, Richard Leese, mentioned that there are three dashboards that are maintained, and that these are “an economic one, a social policy one and an environmental one” that are “updated on a monthly basis” and that these are “real-time” dashboards.

Where on the Manchester City Council website can I find the Environmental Dashboards for the months of May, June and July 2014?

I note that the Economy Scrutiny Committee receives Real Time Economy Dashboard in its Overview Reports.

I also wonder if the members of the Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee already receive the equivalent? From the discussions on Tuesday 26th and looking at the Overview Report for that committee, it seemed they do not.

Many thanks in advance for your reply

The Freedom of Information Act, not mentioned by MCFly, was invoked. So, it took 20 working days to get this answer;

In his response the Leader of the Council was referring to the   commitment to develop a set of indicators to monitor progress against the city’s environmental priorities. This commitment is set out in the  report titled ‘Environmental Sustainability Sub-group; work programme  for response to recommendations’ issued to Neighbourhoods Scrutiny on 10   June 2014 and Economy Scrutiny on 11 June 2014. Work is underway to  develop these indicators, as part of the development of the Manchester Strategy.

A set of environment and climate change indicators has also been  developed by the Council and the Manchester: A Certain Future (M:ACF)  Steering Group, as part of the M:ACF Annual Report 2014. The intention is for these indicators to be used to monitor progress against M:ACF on  an ongoing basis. A copy of the M:ACF Annual Report 2014 can be accessed  online at www.manchesterclimate.com.

A monthly environmental dashboard does not exist at the current time, but work is underway to develop this as part of the work described above  on the Manchester Strategy. Verbal clarification on this matter can be provided to the September meeting of the committee. All of the reports received by the Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee relating to environmental issues are however informed by performance data.  [Emphasis added]

So, hands up if you heard Richard Leese use the future tense in that video.

If there were a functioning political opposition in this City, something would be made of this.  But there isn’t, so it won’t.