What to look out for at December’s Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee

A short preview of what’s on the agenda at the next meeting of Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee, Wednesday 8th December, 2pm

The co-opted member places are an important feature of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee (and could be rolled out to far more committees). But of the seven co-opted places available, December’s agenda suggests there are now five vacancies. Let us hope that there are some new post-holders coming through and that they have a commitment to the climate emergency. Could that, or undertaking carbon literacy training, become one of the criteria for co-option?

The minutes of the November meeting include a key point from the discussion of the draft budget “The likelihood of getting any government grants to assist with decarbonisation, to ask that the report on climate change and schools which had been requested for the January meeting include whether funding would be available to help schools with this and also a request for an update on retrofitting and solar panels”. Also noted in the minutes was thanks given by the chair to Mr Liam Duffy (who stood down in November following his many years of service as the co-opted member representing the secondary sector), and that elements in future reports relating to the city’s zero carbon ambitions should be indicated.

Not only was the last-mentioned suggestion from the minutes ignored in the papers for the December meeting, “increases in the liability of the City” persist, without any explanation of how these may be mitigated. It maybe that the Strategic Director of Children and Education Services was absent from the November meeting and had no chance to read the November minutes prior to submission of the Safe and Together paper. But hey, sloppy or what?

The agenda for the meeting on Wednesday 8 December 2021 comprises Safe and Together: Responding to and Managing Domestic Abuse in Manchester, Pupil Referral Unit and Alternative Provision, School Budgets 2022/23, a verbal update on COVID-19, and the Overview Report. At the time of writing the School Budgets were not yet released. However, in the other reports, no mention of the climate change was made, except for the reference in the Overview Report of the forthcoming paper on Climate Change and Schools. Roll on January.

If you’d have an interest in climate change and schools and would like to help us put together a report in advance of this meeting, please get in touch. There are plenty of jobs that you can do at a leisurely pace over the Christmas period! Get in touch contact@climateemergencymanchester.net

You can watch Wednesday’s meeting here

1 thought on “What to look out for at December’s Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.