Agenda item

To receive any comments from the Combined Authority’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee on the reports to be considered at this meeting.

The Chair advised that the Combined Authority’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee had submitted written comments following on from their meeting held on 20 September.  These comments had been circulated in advance of the meeting and were available to view on the Combined Authority web site.

Councillor Huw James presented the comments, highlighting the following points:

a. Metro Mayor’s attendance at Scrutiny:

The Metro Mayor’s attendance at the meeting was welcomed and scrutiny members looked forward to future positive and ongoing engagement with the Metro Mayor.

b. Principles for a refreshed climate emergency ambition (item 8):

Scrutiny members noted and welcomed the fact that tackling the climate emergency was a key priority for the Metro Mayor and strongly supported the revised principles as set out in the report, recognising also the public appetite for fast, urgent action.

The committee also supported the proposal to create an interim Environment Director to drive forward the refreshed ambition with a view to recruiting to this post on a permanent basis in the medium term.

Members welcomed the broad representation proposed in terms of the membership of the Climate Board and the collaborative partnership approach to be taken.  The committee also wished to strongly request that a scrutiny member was given observer status on this Board, in line with the arrangements being made for scrutiny member observers to attend the other Combined Authority Boards. 

Members particularly welcomed the clarity of the target that in order to meet the 2030 net zero carbon ambitions, a cut of 464kt of CO2 needs to be achieved each year (10% of today’s total) - this set the huge scale of the challenge ahead and demonstrates the region’s ambition.  It would be essential to continue collaborative work with the unitary authorities to establish clear, measurable targets within the Climate and Biodiversity strategy/action plan, which were agreed by all authorities and with robust progress checks and reporting in place; there must be clear lines of accountability for the delivery of each action.

Noting that the new Climate and Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan will be delivered in Spring 2022, members requested that a progress update is specifically brought to Scrutiny in January 2022 to allow an opportunity to comment and input to this critically important plan.  Members were particularly keen to see momentum build through urgently identifying and delivering tangible ‘quick wins’ in parallel with the development of the new strategy and action plan.

c. Green Recovery Fund (item 9):

Scrutiny members broadly welcomed and supported this report and the recommendation to earmark (from the existing Combined Authority Investment Fund) headroom of £20m for a Green Recovery Fund. This amount should be seen as a start and any avenues of increasing the amount through match funding or otherwise should be explored.  Scrutiny members would like to be kept fully informed as the detailed plans for the drawdown of this fund to support specific actions are developed and were also concerned that the appraisal methods used to guide investment decisions should be fit for purpose and would welcome an independent expert viability assessment.  

The Chair thanked Councillor James for presenting these comments.