Agenda item

The Executive to respond to the following questions submitted by members of the public:

·         Question 1 – Food Waste Collections for Flats

·         Question 2 – Capitalising on Awareness of Climate Change

·         Question 3 – The Closure of Hammersmith Bridge

QUESTION NO. 1 – FOOD WASTE COLLECTIONS FOR FLATS

 

From: William Reynolds, Resident

To: Councillor Wesley Harcourt, Cabinet Member for the Environment

 

Question

 

“H&F Council have made clear their laudable intentions to make the borough cleaner, greener and more sustainable.

 

Like many others in the borough I live in a block of flats. We share communal rubbish and recycling bins with the rest of building and the estate. We are lucky enough to have a wonderful community garden in our estate, where we have a small compost bin - however we can only use this for uncooked, fruit and vegetable waste, and even the small commitment it takes to walk to the other side of the estate means the compost bin is barely used by any residents.

 

What are the councils plans to introduce food waste collections to flats in the borough to divert a useful resource from landfill or incineration?”

 

William Reynolds was unable to attend so the question was taken as read.

 

Response from Councillor Wesley Harcourt

“We continue to work on many initiatives which are aimed at making the borough cleaner, greener and more sustainable. To date we have invested in more street cleaning, removed the use of harmful chemicals on our streets and are working on improving transport infrastructure, reducing noise and light pollution and cleaning our air.

 

In respect of estates we have a high proportion of people (73%) who live in flats and maisonettes.

 

We are already working with tenants and residents’ associations to improve their amenities and green the estates, by identifying buildings to install green rooves and green walls on, which will help with insultation and roof integrity; we are also looking at large paved areas which can be converted to grass and for planting of trees and plants, which is not only more aesthetically pleasing but improves drainage and also air quality.

 

As part of the Mayor’s Environmental Strategy, all London Councils are required to identify and carry out food waste collections where appropriate and as an authority we want to work with residents to help meet their demands for improved services.

 

Some estates already have wonderful community gardens and residents who routinely compost their fruit and vegetable matter but would like to extend into other areas of food waste.

 

Food waste tends to be one of the highest items in the residual waste stream (some 35%) whether from the kerbside properties or from flats, so there’s a significant opportunity for recycling. This is something that as a Council we are currently reviewing as it offers both environmental and economic benefits. (Reduced residual disposal costs and increased recycling).

 

Western Riverside Waste Authority currently handles all of our collected materials. Ideally, we would like to remove food waste from this waste stream so that it can be recycled. However, waste which cannot be re-used or recycled, which includes food waste at present, is compacted into containers before being loaded onto barges for its onward river journey down to Belvedere. This is transported to Cory’s Riverside Resource Recovery, Energy from Waste Facility, where the waste is then used for energy recovery to generate electricity.”

 

QUESTION NO. 2 – CAPITALISING ON AWARENESS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

 

From: Pat Tookey, Resident

To: Councillor Wesley Harcourt, Cabinet Member for the Environment

 

Question

 

“Given the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (8th October 2018) on the imminent impacts of global warming and the need to take urgent action, how is the council planning to capitalise on the heightened awareness of the climate and ecological emergency, build on its current initiatives, and protect its residents?”

 

Response from Councillor Wesley Harcourt

“Thank you very much Mrs Tookey for coming along tonight and asking that particular question. It’s actually very timely, as you’ve said, there’s been a heightened awareness of the dangers of climatic change – people like Sir David Attenborough, the recent series of school protests, and the Climate Extinction demonstration – some of the people who are here today, who I spoke to outside not so very long ago.

 

In fact, just over a year ago I moved a motion in this chamber on the reality and dangers of climate change and global warming.

 

The IPCC report which you refer to in your question of 2018, I must admit I haven’t read it from start to finish but I have read the opening chapters which give a very good summary of what the issues are. The report draws attention to the impact of a one and a half degree Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels and the actions that are needed to limit warning to that one and a half degrees.

 

The report, interestingly, refers to the Anthropocene era as a new geological era affected by human beings and draws attention to the effects that the one percent rise in global temperatures we’re already experiencing is having. Things like the number of extreme climate related disasters which have doubled since the early 1990’s – we’ve recently seen temperatures 32 degrees in Alaska, there’s been floods, droughts, Cape Town was very nearly completely shut off with water last year, the same as one of the cities in India at the moment, wild fires, crop failures, desertification, and the report suggests things like that could possibly lead to conflict and even to war in the future.

 

I think we also need to make reference to the Union of Concerned Scientists who made a declaration in 1992 where they stated we’d reached the tipping point of irreversible damage to the biosphere. There’s a further statement by them in 2017 which refers to the pace of change – and it talks about things like 50 percent of the carbon dioxide that’s been added by human beings to the atmosphere has happened in the last 25 years. It suggests that heatwaves like last summer will soon be the norm and that species are becoming extinct at 100 times faster than the rate in the geological past. All of this is a threat to food, I hope I don’t need to continue with that series of information.

 

The United Nations has also stated that we have just 11 years to limit the climate change catastrophe and it talks about two aspects – the first one is reducing the emissions of the six greenhouse gases and the other one is about raising awareness. If not, they predict that there will be the sixth mass extinction event by the end of the Century, and that’s referring to human beings.

 

So what are we doing? Well, there’s a motion on tonight’s Council agenda to declare a climate emergency. 13 London boroughs have already done so and 104 across the country. We are stating in the motion that we will be carbon zero by 2030, ten years ahead of what the Government target is. We’re going to set up a cross-cutting climate change unit, there will be more of that – and I do hope you’ll be staying for the rest of the meeting to listen to that discussion – on how that’s going to be said. And we will be setting up a resident-led commission, and certainly if you were interested in that I would be encouraging you to apply to sit on that commission.

 

What have we done already – one of the decisions we took about a year ago was to disinvest in fossil fuel companies, so the pension fund and everything is no longer investing in that. We’ve been pushing the increase in electric vehicles – we have the largest number of electric vehicle charging points in London. The Bluecity car club, which is all electric, provides their electricity – it’s green electricity. We’re firmly against the expansion of Heathrow, we’ve said that many, many times – and this is one of the things that people are going to have to consider if we want to change and reduce the effects of climate change is instead of expanding the amount of air travel, actually reducing that. We don’t send any of our waste to landfill, it all goes to produce energy from waste as I said in my answer to the previous question. Green spaces, we’ve won any number of awards for our sustainable urban drainage schemes – not only do they sort out the increased risk of flooding, but also they green the area – greening increases the amount of absorption of carbon dioxide and reduces the amount of emissions and so on - so that greening is extremely important. Also in terms of reducing emissions we have two of the main bus corridors through the borough in the form of Uxbridge Road and King Street, both of which are low emission buses. And there’s also two bus routes which are fully electric – C1 and the 70 bus routes.

 

I’ve already mentioned what we’re doing about food waste. And the work we’ve talked about doing with Imperial College. Imperial College have developed a ‘bionic tree’ which is many times more effective at absorbing emissions than even ordinary green trees and vegetation, so we’re working with them to put that sort of thing up as well. So there’s an enormous amount we’ve done on this work already, there’s a lot more to do, and – as I think the Leader was saying outside to the demonstrators – we are absolutely committed to this process and will be taking it forward.”

 

Follow-up question from Pat Tookey

“Thank you Councillor Harcourt, that was really very helpful, your answer, and we’re really heartened to hear that you’re on top of what the scientists are telling us – that the time to act is now and that there’s no time to waste. And we’re also really encouraged to hear all the good things that the borough is already planning and implementing.

 

We’re also absolutely delighted that you’re going to discuss the climate and biodiversity emergency this evening and we hope that there will be support right across the Council for this motion and the associated commitments that you’ve put into it. We don’t feel this should be a party political issue – we all breathe the same air, we all rely on the same common local, national and global infrastructure – this is really important for every single one of us.

 

As you will have noted from our activities outside the Council earlier today, just now, we’re also very interested in other issues on your agenda – the plans for Hammersmith Bridge and supporting cycling in and throughout the borough. I’ll get on to a supplementary question now.

 

Declaring a climate emergency is the first step – we’d like to ask you – how will you measure our current carbon footprint and how will you monitor progress towards the target to make the whole of the borough carbon-neutral by 2030? (It’s a very long question with a lot of question marks in it.) We hope this isn’t a target just for the Council’s own buildings and infrastructure, but for the whole borough – residents, services and businesses.

 

Will your cross-cutting climate change emergency unit have scrutiny powers and Cabinet-level input? And will you commit to publishing annual reports on progress in all areas towards the 2030 target?

 

We are sure that all new build developments in the borough will be to high environmental standards but how are you going to improve the borough’s current housing stock (for example, in promoting energy efficiency, boiler replacement, and alleviating fuel poverty)? And will your efforts in these areas be directed not only to Council dwellings but also to private rental and owner occupied properties and businesses?

 

And we’d like to hear some practical proposals as soon as possible about how much quicker you’re going to work to improve air quality, reduce pollution, and reduce food waste (as you were just taking about).

 

And we’re really glad to hear you’re divesting from fossil fuels and we hope that that includes other high-carbon companies as well, not just the typical fossil fuel companies.

 

Finally, will you be working with other London boroughs and the GLA to set higher standards locally and across London, to take account of the climate emergency and your new goals – and will you work with them to promote the establishment of a London-wide citizens assembly?

 

We hear a lot about the massive costs of combating climate change, but climate catastrophe is going to be even more costly. Policies to combat climate change should improve people’s lives – cleaner air, safer water, employment opportunities in sustainable industries, better travel options, better homes, better health. So we want to be involved in things that you’re planning, we want to support your resident-led commission, we want to help to encourage resident input and buy-in into the wide range of innovative policies and actions that are needed for us to play our local part in averting climate and biodiversity catastrophe and we hope that many of our questions and ambitions can be addressed by you now, and in the debate later, and in ongoing discussions. We will be seeing a lot of you, we want to hold you to account and help you to live up to the high standards you’re setting.”

 

Response from Councillor Wesley Harcourt

“A lot of very interesting points there. I don’t know that I’m going to answer them all now, I’ll do my best as I can.

 

I think the first point you made, that climate extinction is not something that is going to be party-political, if we do have the climate catastrophe people on both this side and that side will be equally affected so it is not a party-political issue. Although there will be some party-political issues on how we actually go about achieving that.

 

I can certainly commit to the fact that there’s going to be the resident-led commission – more than happy for that to make annual reports. Setting very high standards for buildings – as you know this building is going to be refurbished and new Council buildings and bits and pieces added – they are already going to be of the highest quality and looking at how we can do things to make sure we don’t adversely affect heat, things like passive heat reduction and such like is obviously going to be part of that process, and indeed, that sort of passive work is something that we’re trying and get built in to new developments that are coming through our planning committee at the moment.

 

In terms of private rented, you mentioned, there is a scheme in Newham where they’ve managed to raise money which has paid for inspectors to go in and license every single private rented – and part of that business is making sure that they’re energy efficient. Whether we look at a similar scheme here I’m not so sure because we haven’t even started looking at that here yet but these ideas that have been done in other boroughs like community energy schemes and such like, these are all things that we’re going to have to look at – both as part of that commission and also for this cross-cutting climate change unit we’re setting up. The whole idea is, and it’s a big problem with many local authorities, that we all work in silos and don’t talk to each other. Whereas climate change affects everybody, therefore it’s going to affect the housing department – how do we make sure the homes that you talked about are energy efficient, that the boilers aren’t pumping out nasty amounts of NOx and such like as they are one of the key emitters – and how we get the money to replace those over the years with something more efficient.

 

So all of those things are going to be looked at – also there’s obviously the highways issues, electrification of vehicles (although, while that is very good in terms of gaseous emissions it doesn’t remove the particulate pollution, in terms of tires, brakes etc. etc.).

 

So there’s a whole range of things and it’s very, very difficult for me to answer every single one of those. Perhaps you could give me that list at some point and I’ll happily give you a more detailed written answer. I’m happy to talk to you and meet with you at any time you want to discuss this – and in fact when you say about commitment I think the Leader has already said, this is just such an important issue that he is actually personally going to take a lead on this issue as well. So while it’s in my Cabinet brief and I’ll be dealing with matters on a day-to-day basis the Leader will be taking the actual lead on this and that shows the level of commitment that we have to this in this Council.”

 

Response from the Leader of the Council

“Let’s just make a commitment now so we understand where we’re at – we’re setting up a cross-cutting climate change unit, climate emergency unit, and we’re bringing in people with a high degree of climate change expertise and they will be developing policies – but that will work in conjunction with the resident-led commission - and that will be up to the Chair and the Administration, but the Chair will really be quite independent in putting a number of people on there so many people in this room should seek to be on that.

 

What I think we should do is start with a hackathon. We’ve had a very successful number of hackathons where we’ve got sometimes up to 300 people in the room, and we’ve developed strategy and policy on that, it’s facilitated. So I think a very good thing for us to do would be for all the people who came today to get into a room the size of the Assembly Hall and to begin to accelerate the policy development with a hackathon as the launch of our climate change unit. The unit reports directly in to me because this is the priority of our times and that’s where I think we should move forward. But prior to that, if we aim to do that in September, come and see me as quickly as you can and maybe we can work together on how we get this thing to the next stage.

 

But thank you again for taking the trouble to organise today’s activity, to come to the Town Hall, and to commit to working with us to develop the best possible policies that begin to cut back the dreadful situation with climate change. And we aim to be the borough that not just does everything we can for our borough but to set a mark that we hope other boroughs might follow and, with your help, I think we’ll get there. So thank you.”

 

The Mayor extended the Public Question Time for 5 minutes.

 

QUESTION NO. 3 – THE CLOSURE OF HAMMERSMITH BRIDGE

 

From: Aliya Khan, Resident

To: Councillor Stephen Cowan, Leader of the Council

 

Question

 

“The emergency closure of Hammersmith Bridge has caused chaos for the residents of both Hammersmith and Fulham and Richmond, especially Barnes. Not only for those whose lives require regular crossing over the bridge, but for all of the residents of the borough who are suffering with the horrendous congestion and pollution as traffic is gridlocked both in Fulham on the route to Putney Bridge and in Hammersmith on the way to Chiswick Bridge.

 

Why has a plan still not been agreed between LBHF and TFL to repair our bridge and to get it safely reopened, as quickly as possible?”

 

Aliya Khan was unable to attend so the Leader of the Council read out the question.

 

Response from the Leader of the Council

“So, I think there’s two parts – the second paragraph is the question and the first part is the pre-amble. So, the pre-amble, we broadly recognise the problems of the closure of Hammersmith Bridge.

 

The second part of the question is completely wrong – the premise is wrong. It is nonsense to say that there has not been a plan agreed between LBHF and TfL to repair our bridge or get it safely opened.

 

And I suppose what we need to recognise is that the reason Hammersmith Bridge was closed was because we found two micro-fractures in the cast-iron pedestals that hold the suspension chains that suspend the bridge in place. This 1887 bridge, based on an 1824 structure that rests in the river, is indeed an amazing feat of engineering for its age, but it was unusual to make it out of cast-iron and wrought-iron and the modern day traffic is in no way similar to what it was designed for. And that traffic at one point was 20,000 vehicles a day and 1,800 buses a day – so tremendous amounts of traffic.

 

I like this bridge, I love the bridge, it’s in my ward. I walk past it every day, at least twice.

 

What was a surprise to me when I took on this job in 2014 and I said, “why is the bridge not being painted?”, which was the most obvious problem – and why has the bridge not had a replacement of all the wooden structures that all the traffic was driving over. And the answer came back very firmly, from the officers, that there was no plan of any sort to repair the bridge. And secondly there was no structural integrity review in modern post-war history. Now why would you do a structural integrity review? Well you do it to make sure the bridge is safe. You do it to make sure the bridge doesn’t collapse.

 

So successive administrations up until 2014 had been negligent, had failed in their duties to protect the safety of the people using the bridge, and had failed to commit the necessary resources and, indeed, had failed to have even the most basic of structural integrity reviews. We fixed that by asking for a restoration plan and a full structural integrity review – and that began in 2015. And I at this point want to say how absolutely grateful I am, throughout that period, to TfL and particularly in the recent months to Mayor Sadiq Khan and Deputy Mayor for Transport, Heidi Alexander, who have helicoptered in on this issue and got involved in this issue in a way that is indeed extremely impressive.

 

So what we have now is a thorough review of the structural integrity of the bridge. What’s interesting as we did this is very early on in that review we found that the bearings at the top of the two towers, which are the most beautiful part of the architectural structure, had seized up. Seized up. And what that meant, is that part of the bridge was meant to move, left and right, as the pressures of the traffic and other factors affected the wider structure. They seized up between 40 and 50 years ago, according to our engineers.

 

Now anyone who did a little bit of physics at school will tell you that energy doesn’t just evaporate, it goes somewhere else. And the energy that should have been released from the top of the two bridge bearings went down the chains into the cast-iron casings and caused micro-fractures. Now micro-fractures shouldn’t be a concern, but they should be if they’re in cast-iron – because cast-iron shatters. And it is that cast-iron, and the potential for it to shatter, that gave us two challenges. Firstly, a shock – and secondly it gave us the challenge of how do we fix it. So we closed the bridge immediately because this administration will never knowingly do anything to put anyone’s safety at risk.

 

And indeed, if it hadn’t been for the absolute thorough structural integrity review, undertaken in 2014 and begun in 2015 – and happened every week, slowly but surely working from one end of the bridge to the next, testing every aspect, getting permission from English Heritage to scrape off paint, to lift up parts of the bridge that hadn’t been touched and were considered sacred by English Heritage. We had to put people in special breathing equipment to climb down into the ballast of the bridge, where you can only remain for 20 minutes because of the pressure that’s in there, and you then need specialist training to work in that environment. And then they had to scrap the paint off, and then they had to use the ultra-sonic equipment. Slowly but surely working through the bridge, we found the micro-fractures. And if we hadn’t found that it begs the question, “what would have happened with such high levels of traffic using the bridge?”.

 

Now at that time, in April, when we discovered the micro-fractures – we did not know, and our specialist engineers did not know – how many more they were going to find. It could be twenty, a hundred, or hundreds. And so on that basis, we said the bridge was closed ‘indefinitely’. If there’s any good news in this, the specialist engineers who we’d flown in from California and who’d worked as specialists on oil-rigs, have now advised us that they’ve found just five. Five micro-fractures. So we know that at the longest, it will take three years. Now anyone who knows this administration will tell you of its impatience to get things done, so I can tell everybody that we have been pushing to have this bridge fixed as quickly as possible. And that is precisely what’s happening. Working very closely with TfL who, so far, of the £5.8m that’s been spent, have spent £5.3m just on the structural integrity review – that’s an astonishingly large amount of money – and that is the depth of our close working relationship.

 

But this is a problem that should be above politics. Because it would be very easy for us to attack every single former administration, and every single decision made by some of the people who are still elected to office in this Council, where they failed at a fundamental level to protect the integrity of our borough icon. It’d be very easy to do that, but I think, what we have to do is to come together and rise above politics. So at this point I would take a moment to thank the Liberal Democrat Administration in Richmond for doing precisely that. It was extremely heartening for me to be at the two public meetings they organised, and to set out these problems, and to talk about the solutions, and to hear from the residents, and to do that side-by-side with someone from a different party but who was mature and sensible enough to recognise that issues like this require people to step up.

 

So that’s the issue of Hammersmith Bridge, it’s a complex problem and we are working with the best possible people – and we will reopen it. And we will do that in the context of considering the wider transport issues, because what we need to do is to change the basis of how our citizenry moves around London. And that’s how we will work forward. So we began to look at the idea of having the ‘fly-under’ extend into Barnes. With all the complexities of that, that should require a united cross-party approach to whoever is in Government at the time. And that is the way you make the situation fit for purpose over the future.

 

And therefore, the premise that there has been no plan agreed with LBHF and TfL is completely false. And my only sympathy to the person who’s asked the question, who I understand may be a Conservative candidate at a former election… [disagreement from the Opposition] ...I thought they were…

 

So my only sympathy for that premise being quite so wrong is that there has been a tremendous amount of nonsense deliberately circulated, by people who should know better, about what’s gone wrong with the bridge. And I can tell you something, the reason people in Barnes were so understanding when I stood there with the Leader of the Liberal Democrats in Barnes – shoulder to shoulder, focused on the problem together – is the public has no appetite for that. What they want when big problems come together is unity. Now I think they want national unity on lots of issues as we’ll hear later tonight. But they want unity, they want the right thing done, and that’s what this administration is doing – and in part we’re fixing the wrongs of many former administrations over many decades.

 

Thank you very much.”