A Climate NON-Emergency One Year On.

It’s one year since Sutton Council declared a climate and ecological emergency, at a chaotic meeting where Conservative and Lib Dem councillors played games rather than debate the motion seriously. If it wasn't tragic, it would have been rather hilarious - the meeting closed with many councillors not actually knowing what they'd signed up to, let alone the date!

Along with the UK government, a majority of local authorities have declared the need to protect our climate and environment for our benefit. However, one year on, and it still isn’t clear if Sutton Council has taken action on its declaration.

Despite a lack of central government funding and leadership, other local authorities, the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority have made best efforts to lead with positive actions such as low emission zones to improve air quality and segregated cycling to help traffic flow.

In Sutton, waste has been a huge political football for years. Recycling, waste collection and the incinerator are symptoms of a lack of joined up thinking, when the focus should've been to reduce, reuse and recycle, in a move towards zero waste.

Many residents have given over hundreds of volunteer hours to help Councillors make good on their promises, but their results have been few and their appetite for action is not shared among the current bunch of local politicians.

While councillors lack ambition or try to undermine ideas, residents have themselves taken action on a range of issues:

Monitoring air pollution - deemed so serious that the council itself has declared the whole borough an 'air quality action zone'. Yet in the same breath the Lib Dems gave the green light for an incinerator - Sutton's largest single source of carbon and pollution. While councillors protect it from scrutiny, even after a huge fire in 2019, others voices are calling for a clear pathway that will ultimately lead to its closure.

Another pollution indictment on the Council's conscience is their failure to work cross party to tackle idling vehicles and agree safe routes for schools - what could be a simple progressive move to benefit everyone has been used to score petty points!

Litter in Sutton, a political football, picture London Borough of Sutton

On biodiversity, having neglected Beddington Farmlands for many years, under the Council's watch, its contractor Viridor has mismanaged the site, leading to the local extinction of tree sparrows and deaths of lapwing.

Building development rather than enhancing biodiversity, the Council has risked reducing it. Its attempts to build over Sutton's green fields like Sheen Way, Rose Hill and BedZed seem to be regular resident led battles. Even more calamitous was the Councils woefully inadequate gesture of planting tiny tree whips, while cutting down several hundred mature trees next to Beddington Park to install the incinerator's non-functioning heat network SDEN.

Energy efficiency - The SDEN heat network, itself not viable in terms of the energy market, should never have been started if a proper environmental audit had been carried out - ironically two gas boilers are currently used in it’s place as the defunct heat network fails to work. It is a disaster in terms of efficiency and was built to justify building the incinerator, and perhaps an attempt to make money for the Council in the long term. The residents of New Mill Quarter have formed a large group to campaign against the high pricing they have been forced to accept.

Streets and roads - Sutton has one of the largest car use figures in London. The administration's failure to secure adequate funding for improvements to trams and busses or cycling and walking infrastructure compounds this, now more vital than ever. A lack of planning means that we are likely to end up with a new hospital in one of the least accessible places in the borough for walking or public transport, pushing people to use private cars or cabs.

The path from the incinerator - mature trees were cut down to lay down non-functioning pipes for hot water

The borough's current environment strategy needs to be rewritten to take into account the climate emergency, to include transport planning, local plans and development plans. There needs to be ambition among all councillors from all parties to reach zero carbon by bringing residents onside and taking effective decisions rather than procrastinate. We need to move towards making public buildings and housing stock zero carbon or closing some roads to rat-runs and excessive traffic.

The pandemic has given us an ideal opportunity to review business as usual and move towards a Green New Deal. Clearly many aspects of the economy will change, and this new reality must be within the context of the climate emergency. We cannot afford to waste even another year fighting over petty politics when we should be planning or taking actions that meaningfully address how climate change will affect us here, with the dangers of flooding, extreme heat and drought very real risks locally.

At the moment there is a total failure by the majority of councillors to realise the changes required, even in the face of a pandemic. The last few months have shown us that the current way we have been living is unsustainable and self defeating.

Now for the good news! We believe that change is happening, and the team at Sutton Insight, along with lots of other local groups are holding the Council to account on their pledges. Together we will strive to find solutions that are better, easier and more productive. Our young people are fully aware that they can change things through the choices we make, the technology we use and an open minded consensus for change. Many of us are buying wisely, eating differently and caring for nature. We need our decision makers to pull the levers, and change the things around us so that can truly live sustainably.

Article written by guest contributor Mark Webb & the Sutton Insight team.