First report for Weds 27th May “scrutinising #Manchester council on #climate, taking action” meeting released.

Manchester City Council has suspended its scrutiny process because of the coronavirus lockdown.  The six meetings which were supposed to take place next week have all been cancelled. At the moment the plan is for scrutiny meetings to recommence at the end of June.

Climate Emergency Manchester(CEM) thinks that scrutiny is needed now.  We are inviting members of the public to join us, online, on Wednesday 27th May (the day that Neighbourhoods and Environment Scrutiny Committee should have met).  As well as scrutinising what the Council has (not) done, we are also going to talk about the various things that campaigners are doing and will be doing, as well as having a more general networking/discussion.

Our meeting will take place from 7pm to 8.30pm.  If you can’t make it, don’t worry, we’re recording it. If you want to attend, send us an email – contact@climateemergencymanchester.net and we will send you the password.

We have already put the agenda up here (see the image to the right)

This morning, the first report to be discussed at the meeting is being released. It is written by Chloe Jeffries, a core group member of CEM, and gives the background and highlights of the Hung Drawn and Quarterly 03 report released last week. It is short, and you can download it as either a pdf or a word document.  Its summary is as follows:

Ten months after it announced a “Climate Emergency” (July 2019), Manchester City Council has achieved very little of substance against its commitments. This was the case before coronavirus knocked everyone’s plans sideways (see Hung Drawn and Quarterly 2, published in January). The crisis has thrown the lack of action into starker relief (HDQ03)

The risk of a brown (i.e. non-green) “bounce back” rather than a progressive and genuinely sustainable “bounce forward” is extremely high.

This report lays out some of the history behind the Council’s ongoing failure to act. It then lists the findings of the HDQ 03 report released last week.

It makes a series of recommendations about future actions the Council and citizens can (must) take in the coming months.

Reports about the other agenda items – the petition, the Active Citizenship Toolkit and the ‘Overview Report’ – will be released in the next 48 hours. If you are aware of upcoming events that  are of importance to environmental and social justice campaigners in (Greater) Manchester, please get in touch with the details – contact@climateemergencymanchester.net

There is a Facebook event set up, please share, and please share the details of the meeting widely on social media and via your networks.

 

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