ACTION FIVE: Quarterly progress reports to go to councillors and be prominently displayed on the City Council’s website, starting in June 2014
Situation
Unless you can attend the Environmental Strategy Programme Board (meetings not open to public), or are a member of the Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee, you can’t get hold of the quarterly progress reports already being produced by the Council.
Mission
Ensure that quarterly progress reports on the Climate Plan 2014-17 are presented to elected members, in all relevant scrutiny committees, and published prominently on the City Council’s website.
Execution
To establish goodwill, immediately publish all existing quarterly progress reports in a publicly accessible place, without waiting for someone to go to the effort (and bother to you) of using the Freedom of Information Act.
Commit to releasing all future progress reports before the meetings of the ESPB, so these can be analysed by interested parties and questions put to the ESBP in writing.
Administration
The reports already exist. It’s simply a question of publishing them.
Command & Control/unanswered questions
Whoever is currently charged with sending them to the ESPB members.
Financial implications
Nothing
Potential multiplier effects
What a great example! What an encouraging precedent!
Consequences of non-delivery of this action
Credibility blackhole of monumental proportions, as each year’s plan falls further and further behind schedule. Remember, until July 2013 councillors were being assured that the 20% reduction by 2014 was going to be delivered. It now emerges that the reduction will be – at absolute best – 13%. If quarterly progress reports using non-shifting baselines and plain English had been circulated widely, would we be in quite this mess? Possibly from a molecules-of-carbon-dioxide point of view, but not in a crisis-of-credibility way.
Next short-term action(s)
See Execution Plan above. Simples.
Medium-to-long term actions
See Execution Plan above. Simpleser.
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