Manchester City Council, made up of 95 Labour councillors and 1 “Independent Labour” councillor, has a choice.
It can release a specific and detailed report about what it has – and has not achieved – over the last 12 months around reducing its carbon emissions. Or it can confirm what more and more people suspect – that it runs from transparency and scrutiny, and that the recent statements of its leader Richard Leese are just more spin. (Asked by a journalist about the consequences of Manchester City Council being entirely dominated by one party, he said “We have to ensure we hold ourselves to account within this chamber and we also need to ensure that citizens – and people that have voted for us – are able to hold us to account on an ongoing basis, not just once every 12 months.“)

The Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee is one of the six “scrutiny committees” that is supposed to keep tabs on what the Executive and the officers are doing.
It traditionally gets a report every July on the “Annual Carbon Reduction Plan.” Last July (2013) Council officers made a series of specific proposals about what the Council intended to do to reduce its emissions in the coming year. Aware that previous proposals had not necessarily been completed, two councillors – Kevin Peel (City Centre) and Fran Shone (Northenden) – specifically requested quarterly progress reports on the Carbon Plan. This request was “considered” (and not implemented).
At the July 2014 meeting of the committee a very brief “report for information” was tabled (see MCFly article “Council thinks a warm winter plus building sell-off equals success”). The chair of the committee, Cllr Basil Curley, said that a “more detailed” report would be brought to the Tuesday August 26th meeting.
MCFly wrote to the Executive Member for the Environment, ccing Councillor Curley.

Dear Councillor Chappell,

as you are no doubt aware, it was announced/agreed last Tuesday that “a more detailed report” on the 2013-4 performance of the Council against its carbon reduction plan would be brought to the next Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee on 26th August.

I’d like to clarify from you if that report is going to include an item-by-item breakdown of the 2013-4 plan,

e.g will there be a table with all items from 4.11 to 4.86 (pages 35 to 43 in the Annual Carbon Reduction Plan 2013-14) with a column for what was proposed, a column for what has actually been achieved and a third column to explain any discrepancy?

If the report is NOT going to include that, could you please let me know what format it will take, and why it won’t.

Yours sincerely

Marc Hudson

The Council officers and Executive member are now proposing NOT to present a detailed account of what has and has not been achieved in the last twelve months. How do we know? Well, Councillor Chappell, who earlier this year repeatedly promised to setting up a blog (she has since said – without explanation – that she will not do so), replied thus;

I’ve spoken to Basil and the officers involved.

Since adopting the new 3-Year Carbon Reduction Plan in February of this year, our intention has been to report on progress annually in March of each year. This is a change from the reporting cycle for previous 1-Year Plans where we provided annual reports in July.

Some data which is relevant to monitoring the Plan doesn’t get released until June of the following year so our intention is to issue this as soon as it becomes available. This was the content of the Report for Information at last Neighbourhoods Scrutiny.

As we are four months into a twelve month reporting cycle, we don’t have data or information to report against each element of the plan. We have set this up so it will be available and reported on in March 2015.

In order to provide some more detail, however, we have agreed with Cllr Curley that we extend the existing report to highlight to the committee any elements of the plan which we can already anticipate we may have problems
with by year-end, and similarly those where progress has exceeded our expectation.

Hope this helps

Members of the Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee were not consulted about this decision.

The reports for the 26th August meeting are due to be published on the Council’s website on August 19th. At that point we will see if the Council has had second thoughts and releases the information in a format that councillors on the committee can easily digest, or if the assurances of Richard Leese are maybe not entirely to be believed, and the current scrutiny system is just a meaningless ritual.

Marc Hudson
mcmontly@gmail.com

What you can do:
a) Save the Date – Tuesday 26th August, 7pm. Meeting of the People’s Environmental Scrutiny Committee at the Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount St, Manchester.  If you want to come to the Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee meeting; it’s at 2pm at the Town Hall. Some of us are meeting at the Waterhouse from 1pm to about 1.45 (just pop in when you can).

b) Send this blog post to any member of the Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee who you happen to know. (Here’s a list of the members. If you click on the names, you can get their email address). Perhaps ask them if they are happy with the quality, frequency and format of information that they are being given by officers and the Executive so that they can discharge their democratic responsibilities.

Manchester City Council will NOT be giving any detailed account about its climate change performance over the last year, despite repeated requests.

In July 2013 the “Annual Carbon Reduction Plan” was brought to the “Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee”  (this of the 6 scrutiny committees, made up of “back-bench” councillors, that are supposed to keep tabs on what the bureaucrats and elite councillors are up to.)  The spin was that there had been a 7% reduction in emissions in the previous year. The grubby reality, admitted after intense questioning, was that emissions had gone UP by 1.8%.

The 2013-4 plan listed a long series of actions that were scheduled for the coming year.  (1)  We – councillors and citizens of Manchester alike – are now not going to be able to easily find out which (if any) of these actions has been completed in the last year because, according to a letter sent to Manchester Climate Monthly, the Council doesn’t “have data or information to report against each element of the plan.”

The actions – which include items such as energy efficiency improvements in the Art Gallery, Leisure centre improvements and the like – are the sort of detailed steps that are needed not just to reduce carbon emissions, but also to create the often-talked about “low carbon culture.”  The fact that elected councillors, who last year called for quarterly progess reports, will not be able to find out what has and hasn’t been achieved in the last 12 months, reduces the existing scrutiny process to a comical farce.

The Council, in a very brief and initially buried report, claimed a seven percent reduction in its carbon emissions.  That brief report ignored the fact that the long-touted goal of a 20% reduction by 2014 had been missed. More seriously, it conceded that the very mild winter, and “building rationalisation” (i.e. the sell-off of surplus buildings) were responsible or the reduction in emissions.

What you can do:

You can write to Councillor Chappell explaining that this is not how an open and transparent Council behaves.  Her email is cllr.k.chappell@manchester.gov.uk    If you live within Manchester, please cc in your three ward councillors (you can find them via this page on council’s website).

You can contact Manchester Climate Monthly (mcmonthly@gmail.com) about further steps to take (here’s a chance for you to learn how to use the Freedom of Information Act!

Please “save the date” – Tuesday 26th August, 7pm. There’s a meeting at the Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount St in the City Centre

Below is the full text of the letter received by Manchester Climate Monthly from the Executive Member for the Environment Kate Chappell.  Perhaps she can give a further account on her blog, which she has repeatedly promised to set up.

Hi Marc,

I’ve spoken to Basil and the officers involved.

Since adopting the new 3-Year Carbon Reduction Plan in February of this year, our intention has been to report on progress annually in March of each year. This is a change from the reporting cycle for previous 1-Year Plans where we provided annual reports in July.

Some data which is relevant to monitoring the Plan doesn’t get released until June of the following year so our intention is to issue this as soon as it becomes available. This was the content of the Report for Information at last Neighbourhoods Scrutiny.

As we are four months into a twelve month reporting cycle, we don’t have data or information to report against each element of the plan. We have set this up so it will be available and reported on in March 2015.

In order to provide some more detail, however, we have agreed with Cllr Curley that we extend the existing report to highlight to the committee any elements of the plan which we can already anticipate we may have problems with by year-end, and similarly those where progress has exceeded our expectation.

Hope this helps,
 

Footnotes

(1) In all previous years the “Annual Carbon Reduction Plan” had then gone from the Scrutiny Committee to the Executive.  Last year – with no explanation – this did not happen.