The Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan came out almost three years ago now:
19 November 2019 – Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan is now officially ‘made’ – East Devon
And it included several ‘community actions’ on the environment:
community-actions-july-2019.pdf
Sidmouth Town Council was keen to follow these through – and so set up its environment committee to take the issues further:
Environment Working Group – Sidmouth Town Council
With the first meeting happening almost immediately:
The Committee’s is formed “to coordinate and improve the natural and built environment of the Sid Valley”.
Environment Committee (8 Jul 2019) – Sidmouth Town Council
It agreed to an action plan:
And to an environment policy in September 2019:
A key element of that policy has been ‘engagement’:
• Inform and engage Sidmouth’s residents and businesses, schools and event organisers of the Council’s environmental activities and respond and react to feedback.
Sidmouth-Town-Council-Environment-Policy.pdf
One example of that engagement being the publication of a regular, quarterly newsletter:
New – Sid Valley Environmental Newsletter – Sidmouth Town Council (July 21)
Sid Valley Environmental Newsletter – Sidmouth Town Council (July 22)
And there are several projects underway to get people involved in the issues – and it’s very much about ‘education for sustainability’ and ‘education for hope’:
Wild flower patch from last year which is popular with pollinators – Cllr Denise Bickley, chair of STC Environment Cttee
Set aside a wild patch in your garden for pollinators | Sidmouth Herald
The chair of Sidmouth Town Council’s environment committee, Denise Bickley, had contributed to EDDC’s ‘rewilding’ plans, and acknowledged that the management of cemeteries is ‘an emotive subject with no simple answer at the moment’. She said: “I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as to a lot of people the sounds of nature are very restful. It’s difficult because to me it (Sidmouth cemetery) looks utterly beautiful… It’s going to be a tricky subject to balance, but I’m sure we will manage it with some conversations over the next few months.”
Re-wilding of cemeteries – ‘an emotive subject’ | Sidmouth Herald
The town council has purchased a thermal imaging camera that takes pictures showing the warmest and coldest areas of buildings. The photos indicate where heat is escaping, pinpointing the places where better insulation is needed.
A spokesman for the council said: “As we all know, keeping a house warm is expensive, wasting heat is wasting money. Also, no matter how your home is heated, wasting heat causes extra CO2 emissions, and that is bad for our nature, our valley, and our world. Sidmouth Town Council has an environment policy that wants to make Sidmouth a low carbon town. We as a town can reduce our emissions if we all as residents work to reduce ours individually. We therefore want to help you reduce your carbon emissions, but we also want to help you save money.”
Sidmouth Town Council offers thermal images of homes | Sidmouth Herald