-Good morning everybody. Thanks very much for taking your seats and coming in. Just a little bit late, but we just wanted to get as many of you in as possible. Welcome to the the third Stockport Climate Action Now summit. Thanks to everybody for coming today. Really great to see a good turnout. I'm just going to hand over to Liz because she knows what's happening with the house keeping. So a few bits of housekeeping before we start. We're not expecting a fire alarm today. So if you do hear a fire alarm, there's a fire exit here, and or you can head out through the front doors, and we will meet at the back of the car park. Um, if you have a mobile phone, would you please put that on to silent if you would. Um, there is a facilitator on every table, and they'll also always be someone out in the foyer. So if you need anything at any point, just give the facilitator a shout or head out to the foyer. Great. Thanks. I didn't introduce myself, did I? My name is Nick Leslie. I'm head of Climate Action Now. - I'm going to use the roving mic. And I'm Liz. I'm program manager for the climate action team at Stockport -Council. -Great. Well, we've got a really jam packed agenda for the day. And as you can see here on the screen, it's it's split into four different topics. Key topics. The first opening session that we're going to do now is about updating on what the council is up to to tackle climate, the climate crisis and how we're helping to influence positive change across the borough. At the end of this session, we're going to have some table based discussion which. Was alluding to there with our facilitators. So think we're calling it a bit of an ideas forum because we really want to hear from from you, from the audience, from the residents and businesses across Stockport. And the following sessions will be about energy and buildings. And we will have communities and young people session. But we're going to hear from some young people here, from some community groups, and then we'll finish the day with a session on nature and -biodiversity. -So this first session is going to run till about 11:10. You can see we start at 10:10. Perfect time. And then we're going to have a bit of a 20 minute 13 break. Tea and coffee break. There's going to be pastries out there. So chance just to do a bit more networking. Have a look at the stalls that that kind of thing. Um, and then we'll reconvene and do the session on renewable energy and buildings and hopefully break the lunch around about 1:00. And that'll be served out in the foyer. Uh, lunch today. The venue has kindly agreed for spring, an external caterer that really fits the aims of the event. So we've got Cracking Good food. Who are catering our lunch? There are a local community group who work with people teaching them to cook affordable, healthy, climate friendly food and reducing food waste so they'll be serving our lunch today when we break. Right? And so have the lunch, then two more sessions in the afternoon. And we're aiming to sort of conclude around about sort of 4:00. Um, but anyway, I'll stop chatting now. So without further ado, I'd love to hand over to Councillor Roberts, who is the portfolio lead for Climate Change and the Environment and is also Deputy Leader of the council. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you Nick, and thank you Liz. And it's great to be here and see so many of you able to attend. And hello to all of you that are logging on at home or at work and and joining in from there. And I'd like to first of all, start by thanking everybody that has been involved in making today possible, including all of the organisations at the back of the room who provided the stalls, the people from the council who are helping to facilitate the proceedings today. But frankly, those thanks especially go to you, the residents and the people and the businesses that are attending today, as we know. Climate change is arguably one of the biggest challenges facing society, and it will impact everybody. It also will require everybody to collaborate and work together. If we stand a chance of meeting the targets. Set in Paris back in 2015 at Cop 21. So quite remarkably, eight years on from the Paris summit at the end of this month, the next conference of parties, or Cop 28 will take place in Dubai. And by all accounts, it looks like the next six years of this decade will need to be followed. They'll need to be far more action and has been undertaken so far. If we're going to keep the average global temperature increase below one and a half degrees. Just this week, more depressing news from climate scientists indicated that the estimations of when we might breach the Paris targets has unfortunately gotten closer, and could possibly come by the end of this decade. Unless we undertake more dramatic action. It will be very interesting to see how Cop 28 progresses, and what further commitments those organisations will be able to make. Although a little smaller in scale. Today's Climate Action Now summit or as we could call in suppose, Can three is part of action being taken all over the planet to raise awareness about the need for climate action. People are coming together to help tackle this issue, and it's important that local government plays a significant part in this. What happens internationally affects what happens to us locally, and it's certainly our aspiration. But what happens here locally to influence others, not just in the borough but nationally and internationally. And it's through today. You will hear how we are doing that here at Stockport. A lot of the hard work has gone into our engagement programme and it's starting to pay off. For example, our schools Climate Assembly has been highlighted nationally as a great exemplar of how councils can engage and listen to future generations on climate action. And as part of the Climate Summit Week on Monday, we launched the third Schools Climate Assembly by holding a climate lesson attended by over 200 primary school students. Each year. The outcome from the schools Climate Assembly youth vote impacts the climate action that we take here in Stockport. From eco friendly period products being supplied in schools to our libraries, starting to plant wildflowers and create habitats. Young people's voices are not only heard but acted on through the school's climate assembly. And we're really proud of the project and the impact that our young people have had through it. The school's climate assembly concept is one that other councils across the UK are now adopting. And this is what I meant about our aspiration to take the right actions within the borough, but also to help shape how it's tackled nationally and who knows internationally too. We want Stockport to be a place that people are proud of and that others aspire to emulate. That's why we have a high ambition for the council's Climate Action Now programme, and it was highlighted by the leader of the council, councillor Hunter, at the last full council meeting, that we have a plan and a green print for the future. This year, we decided to hold a week of climate action events, culminating in today. And as I mentioned already, Monday saw the launch of the third school's climate assembly. On Tuesday, I attended an event at Bredbury Library where school pupils, residents, community groups and local businesses helped shape how a bookworms community garden can be started. It was great to see so many people offering their time, their skills, their knowledge to help get the idea off the ground. Wednesday this week was all about climate change education. We hosted a Community Leaders carbon literacy course at Stockport Art Gallery, where people from Stockport's Green Network got together to do a full day of climate change learning and action planning. Each person who did the training will become an advocate within their community and help share that climate change learning across Stockport. Also taking place on Wednesday at the Mersey Way Innovation Centre. Businesses joined with a pilot of a new joined us for a pilot of a new climate change training course for businesses that we've created in partnership with MMU, Litmus Sustainability, Music Magpie and One + All. Through the course. Businesses go from learning about climate change right through to creating a sustainability action plan for their businesses. And the course has been created to a carbon literacy standard. And after the pilot will become available to businesses across the borough. On Thursday, we kicked off a new climate resilience project, which puts Stockport on a global stage for innovative, community driven climate adaption planning. We're really pleased to be given the opportunity to take part in this really exciting global programme and to work with the residents of Edgeley to understand how Stockport communities can plan for future climate change in a just, fair and inclusive way. Another great achievement which demonstrates our commitment to tackling the climate crisis. At Stockport Council was our planning department of over 40 people undertaking carbon literacy training. They have now apparently become the first planning department in England to be officially recognised as carbon literate. And this is really important and it's as a first in the country, but also because planning is one of the key ways that we can help shape the future environment, ensuring our council officers understand the scale and the importance of how climate change will shape our future. And that's essential and will hopefully help us to make the right decisions moving forward. Now, I'm really delighted to have another colleague joining me on the stage today, Councillor Jilly Julian, who is also a key portfolio holder and a member of the cabinet with me. She is the Cabinet Member for Finance and she's another strong advocate for climate action now. And last year, together with other members and myself, helped to introduce climate awareness training for councillors. So before I go into more detail on what the council has been doing and what our future plans are, I'd like to welcome Councillor Julian to the stage. Thanks, Mark. It's absolute joy. To be here today. I'm incredibly passionate about this subject, as are my family, and have to share with you that my two small boys had to be crowbars to school this morning because when they heard where I was spending my Friday, they said they wanted to be here instead. Eventually, an acceptable solution was for me to tell you a bit more information about the finance and resources perspective on the climate emergency and some of the great things that are happening here too. So I hope that's acceptable. I have to start with the obvious. It's something of an understatement to say that local government funding across the country is not in a great place. The financial challenges posed many, many problems for the ongoing delivery of council services across the board, and it can hamper future resilience. Now, as Councillor Roberts said, climate change also poses an equally severe and long term impact on how the council and society can function in general. These challenges overlap significantly and we don't lose sight of that. It's clear that climate change is happening, and it's only going to continue to pose a greater threat. And that's why it's key that councils need to ensure that they're driving down their own greenhouse gas emissions and helping to create the conditions, as we say, at the back of the room, as well for residents and businesses to be able to do the same. But equally important is that we prepare for the future by building more climate resilience and looking ahead, and how we adapt to this more chaotic world that it can bring. So there are two ways to look at this. It sounds bleak, and it would be quite easy to become very fearful and depressed about the future. I like the fact that here we are feeling more positive about the opportunities that we have in front of us to influence that future. It's clear that society is going to change as a result of climate change. But if we can adapt and if we can be on the front foot of this change, we can use it to benefit Stockport and benefit local residents and businesses. The Braves hope for the best, but prepare for the worst is probably the one that fits this best. So I'll give you an example of how adopting different ways of working on climate change has really helped Stockport in the last couple of years. As a result of the Climate Action Now programme, the council, seen over £6.5 million worth of inward investment and grants awarded to the borough to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for climate change. This includes over £5 million won by the council to decarbonise our buildings and make them run more efficiently. Further green investment can be seen in over £100 million won by the council for electric buses. New public transport infrastructure such as the new Cheadle railway station. Active travel improvements across the borough and even a new park for the town centre. So in this way, it's great to see how climate related action can leverage investment. And clearly Stockport's delivering on this and its scale. Across the council works happening to ensure that Stockport is a great place to invest for the future, with a thriving green economy creating green jobs. We're working hard to attract this investment, and these are the opportunities that we need to be on the front foot for. So much of the work on climate action now not only secures investment into the borough, but also saves money by making things like buildings and infrastructure more energy efficient. Now, we all know that the energy crisis has affected budgets for everybody for the worse. However, we estimate that the funding that we've secured by the can work just this year will have saved the council £400,000 in energy bills. This is the kind of work that we need to undertake to reduce our impact on climate change, but also to transition to a more efficient and cost effective way of life. -With advances in. -Renewable energy technology and other exciting improvements in the way that we build homes and infrastructure, taking care to ensure we adopt climate change in the way we design and construct that future isn't just good for the planet, it's good for everybody's pockets, too. That's why the news about the planning team becoming the first carbon literate planning team was so exciting. This is what will pave the way for that. Ensuring we plan for the effects of climate change will also mean that we can be at the forefront of benefiting from the future green economy. Green jobs are high skilled and higher paying jobs, and we must do everything we can to make sure that Stockport's leading the way and attracting the people and investment to the borough. As will be highlighted later, there are huge opportunities for this kind of work through the Mayoral Development Corporation. Also in the next session. I know that James Kington, Assistant Director for estates, is going to talk more about how we recently installed solar power to many of our buildings. I'm not going to steal your thunder, James, but I can tell you that they have exceeded expectations in the energy generation capability that we're seeing, and we're already realising benefits and seeing those reductions in energy bills as a result. So the climate action work we do across our civic estate to decarbonise and become more energy efficient means that we can spend less money on energy and divert those funds to other areas of the council where nationally driven budget cuts to critical services make life hard. So because the way the estates team have recognised these opportunities and proactively organised to be in a position to apply for funding, having off the shelf projects that are ready to go, they've been ready and able to secure an extra £1.1 million of the funding for the installation of solar power this summer in our schools and council buildings across the borough. This will also help these schools to save money on their bills too. This is a win win. This will also help. Sorry. An example within that I'm particularly excited about is a plan for the first net zero school in the Borough, Park Primary. So we can see how climate action such as this can help the council save money and increase the investment that we have, in turn, to boost the local economy and get us into a better position to reap the benefits of being at the forefront of green technology revolution. Not unlike how this region benefited hundreds of years ago from the Industrial Revolution. But fingers crossed this time without the social and environmental downsides. I'm really excited about hearing from the sessions that we have today, and in particular for the session later on around communities and young people. And Councillor Roberts has alluded to the impact that those young people's voices has within our council's thinking on climate emergency. So enjoy the sessions, soak up as much information and inspiration as is available and I'll hand back to Councillor Roberts. -Thank you very much. -Thank you, Councillor Julian. Thank you very much. And. So although a lot of work has been gone, going on around climate change, we absolutely recognise the scale of the challenge. But we also realise that there is so much more that we need to be doing. However, as Councillor Julian has pointed out, we do have the ambition here in Stockport to lead the way and in turn to benefit from being at the forefront of climate action now. I mentioned Cop 28 earlier, and it's interesting to note the key themes they will be focusing on, which are technology and innovation, inclusion, front line communities and finance. We will also touch upon each of these things today, and they certainly form part of the strategy here in Stockport. There is a plan in place to significantly accelerate the amount of green infrastructure within the borough. The climate action now work is, in essence, our green print for the future. It is one that cuts across all aspects of the council's work, and it's integral to our aspiration to have a carbon neutral borough by 2038. Way ahead of the UK's national target. Examples of this can be seen in the work that we're doing to increase the amount of publicly accessible electric vehicle infrastructure for the borough, using private investment to cover the costs of installation. And the first wave of this new infrastructure should be coming online by the end of this year, with more to follow next year. And the ground has already been broken at a number of the sites. Electric. Electric buses are on the way with a state of the art electric bus depot planned for the town centre. There's also significant work being done to improve infrastructure for active travel, and to help encourage people to use public transport. With the cost of living crisis plus other negative impacts, compounding pressure on local authority budgets and our way of life here in Stockport is sometimes overwhelming to comprehend the impending climate crisis. It is clear there is work to do to help people understand the context and extent of how the climate change will shape our futures. And as part of our work, we recognise the need for engagement and collaboration, not only within our own political system and credit the work by the all party working group on Cam, but also the need for engagement and collaboration with our communities and the businesses based here in Stockport. We must ensure that communities and businesses can flourish and support. And by acting on climate change now, we can reap the benefits and ensure the people and businesses of Stockport can be prepared to adapt and meet the challenges and gain the rewards. I've already mentioned that the schools climate assembly is a good example of climate change engagement. We're also working with local businesses and have established a thriving Stockport Climate Action Business Forum, which is helping to bring businesses together to share best practice around becoming carbon neutral and enhancing Stockport's green economy. It was from this forum that idea for climate literacy for SMEs came about, and it was great to see the first of these sessions being delivered this week. Perhaps another idea that can lead to inspiring others. I hope so. In terms of community engagement. During the summer, over 400 people from across Stockport came together for a climate inspired community event in Woodbank Park. It was organised by around 20 odd Stockport based community groups via the Stockport Green Network. Another engagement programme inspired by CAN and Think. There's some unfortunate photos of me or video of me trying to use the cycle blender. And and yeah, getting very hot, as did it. And it's clear that the people of Stockport wanted to take action on climate. We must be ambitious for more action, which is why we have a plan to attract and deliver more climate action on a larger scale here in Stockport. By having this vision, it will help us to secure more investment for the borough. By having this green print for the future, it will mean more green jobs and skills making us fit for the future. And let me be clear. Climate change is a dangerous threat to our way of life. But if we can adapt and invest to meet this challenge. And seek to do positive action, we can also reap the rewards. We need more climate action now. And it's very much the intention of this council to lay out the green print, so to speak, for action on all fronts. A green print for Holmes. A green print for jobs. A green print for health. A green print for education, and a green print for transport. We must invest our future. We must invest in our future and ensure that climate action now is embedded across everything that we do. We want Stockport to be a climate friendly place to live, work and invest. And when it comes to tackling climate change, Stockport means business. Thank you again to everybody attending today's summit. We very much hope that it provides you with useful information that will help you to promote positive action to. We're really keen for the events like today to be activation events. So not just a case of sitting back and listening, but also participating and helping to increase engagement. So to that end, I'm going to hand back to Nick and Liz, who will explain how the ideas for them that were going into will work. Thank you everybody. -Thank you. -And you didn't think you were going to get away with just sitting there listening to you. But anyway, there's there's two parts to, uh, to what we're calling the Ideas forum. And the first is really to get your opinions on prioritisation of the strategies now. For those of you not familiar with the machinations of the strategy, there are six key workstreams that we're focusing as part of that approach at the council. And they are firstly what the council does itself, what we call council can. We're going to use a bit of wizardry and technology and Menti metre, and you're all going to get to vote on what you think are the best priorities. But what I want to do is I'll just explain what our six key workstreams are. So you have a bit of background understanding of what you're going to be voting on. So as I said, the first workstream is council can. That's all about how we operate as the council. So our buildings, our fleet, that kind of thing day to day. And that really concerns our main target around that, which is to be net zero by 2030. The second workstream is a thing called climate friendly borough, and that's essentially our engagement activities. So all the stuff that you've heard about today, like schools, Climate assembly, the Climate Action Business Forum, events like like today. Um, the third workstream is buildings because obviously that's key. We heard about the planning sort of achievements by our planning department. And really, as we know, about a third of all the emissions coming from Stockport come from our sort of buildings and housing. The fourth Workstream is around renewable energy. Obviously, we need far more than we have at the moment. We need the fifth Workstream is around transport and so we obviously want to have a greener transport and more public transport. And then finally the last workstream we have, the sixth Workstream is around the natural environment, which there's a heck of a lot of crossover between the biodiversity crisis and obviously frustration managed to say that of, of of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. So those are our six key priorities, key workstreams for the strategy. So I'm really keen to get what your opinion is on on that. So if you can think the idea here is you can scan the QR code or if on your phone you can go to Mint.com and if you enter in the code there. Then that should hopefully present you with the six can workstreams and you can all have a vote on that. On what you feel is the the priority to hopefully help us work out where we allocate our resources. Um, so whilst you're doing that, I'll tell you a little bit about the second part of the ideas forum. And that's going to be very much table based. Um, so each table has a facilitator. Um hope so actually. Facilitators, could you put your hand up to stand up there just so everyone knows on the table who to talk to, right. Yeah. Think we've got one at every table. Marvellous. Um, so the idea is after we've done this vote, which is happening in the atmosphere now, or the, um, think we get like a live update, are we some time? So if we can get the let's see if we can get the technology going. Oh, look at that. That's 6154541. Boat now. That's all I can see. Council can moving up the fourth place. They're always quite good this year. Oh, buildings have just dropped down right. Like a horse race. This coming up with the outside renewable energy. Right. Well, I'll keep that a couple more minutes to go. So don't feel pressured into having to get your votes in. But what I'm going to do now, once you've done your voting for the priorities, if I'm going to let the facilitators at each of the tables take over and this is really we we want your ideas. So this is going to be hopefully a process to get your ideas. And we'll then compile those together at the end of this. And hopefully that can shape the the strategy sort of moving forwards. But anyway I will hand over to the facilitators and let them take over now and I'll stop. All right. Thank you.