Last Friday Manchester Evening News published this letter.

It’s great that the airport is booming  and that Councillor Kevin Peel is enthused about New York-style aerial walkways (Manchester Evening News, January 29^th).

Closer to earth, and with our feet on the ground, there are real problems with the Council’s “carbon literacy” training.  As part of the Council’s 2009 “Climate Change Action Plan” everyone who lives, works or studies in Manchester (roughly a million people) was supposed to have received a day’s training by 2013.  The training included an online component and a face-to-face session.

The council was reluctantly prodded by activists into setting a target for its own councillors last year. It said that 60 of its 96 councillors would have completed the training by the end of 2014.

The council comprehensively missed its target. Only 23 councillors have completed both aspects of the training. Fifty (over half of all councillors) have done neither.

Manchester Metropolitan University won a £13k contract to deliver this training.

This information had, of course, to be prised out of the Council using the Freedom of Information Act. This is despite the fact that the  Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee, which is nominally tasked with looking at all matters climate-related, had last year requested a report on the successes and failures of Carbon Literacy training be brought to its January meeting. It wasn’t.

Perhaps Councillor Peel, and other members of the Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee, would like to take it from here?

Marc Hudson

Editor Manchester Climate Monthly