Cllr Katherine Dunne
Deputy Leader of Hounslow Council and Cabinet Member for Climate, Environment and TransportCouncillor Katherine Dunne provides an insight into Hounslow’s environmental initiatives.
Hounslow Council is proud to be a leader in the UK’s climate action space, and is continuing to invest, and take bold steps towards our net zero by 2030 ambitions, both within council-controlled services and throughout the borough.
Decarbonising council-controlled buildings, numerous retrofit projects (including retrofitting 32 schools and 29 corporate buildings), greening our fleet of vehicles, and offering more sustainable recycling services are just some of the primary ways the Council and partners like Lampton Services are reducing carbon emissions from council operations.
We recently reported that the Council has recorded a 10% reduction in our Council carbon footprint, which is pleasing. However, we set a target of a 50% reduction by 2026, and we intend to achieve this.
Our carbon reduction projects go beyond decarbonising council-owned infrastructure, with initiatives introduced to help residents and businesses reduce energy consumption. Campaigns and projects to encourage residents to live more sustainably include No Time to Waste, and Heston in the Loop.
The Council’s Community Energy Fund also relaunched this year with £150,000 available to support community-based projects that cut carbon and improve energy efficiency.
To support the transition to electric vehicles, we’re delivering our Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy and will roll out an additional 2000 EV charge points across the borough by 2026. We are also working with public transport providers to improve and increase the availability of sustainable transport in the borough.
To develop healthier and more physically active communities, active travel (walking, wheeling, and cycling) continues to play a vital part in our borough’s pathway to a carbon-free borough. As part of this, our Dr Bike repair sessions have continued to prove popular with residents, and we’ve now expanded our dockless electric cycle hire trial scheme boroughwide (with our partner Lime). We are encouraging our residents to fill out our recently launched parking and kerbside strategy consultation to provide feedback on the scheme and help shape our vision to reimagine our streets.
It’s also wonderful to see more people taking up cycling because of initiatives such as Cycleway 9, and other cycle routes in the borough.
As part of our commitment to leading on the Green Economy expansion across London, the Council is hosting free-to-join four-week bootcamps, and upskilling residents into green sector employment. So far, we have successfully trained nine Hounslow residents in Land Management, with a further 11 Hounslow and Ealing residents currently enrolled on our ongoing second cohort throughout October.
I am very proud that Hounslow became the first London borough to join Making Cities Resilient 2030, a global network of cities and local authorities committed to climate resilience and sustainability. We were also one of three local authorities in the capital to sign the London Food Purchasing Commitment this summer, ensuring Council food supply decisions will consider the impact that any processes have on our climate and environment.
The climate crisis is the single largest threat to our natural environment and societies, with severe consequences already on display in London, and across the globe. As such, delivering a cleaner, greener, more sustainable borough will always be a top priority for Hounslow Council.
However, to effectively address the climate crisis, exemplary action is required at national level, underpinned by an ambitious delivery of projects and funding. We must move projects at pace if we are to reduce carbon emissions at the scale required and we need the funding to back these plans. We have called on Government before to take more incisive action, and each day the call becomes more urgent.
That’s why I was saddened by the Prime Minister’s recent announcement to weaken UK net zero targets, which jeopardises all climate action being delivered by local authorities.
Stuttering over our nation’s commitment to a more sustainable national and global system will have a longer-term detrimental impact on the UK economy, and ultimately will put at risk worldwide investment into green technologies.
Hounslow Council is committed to action; we must be doers, not delayers. We strongly urge the Prime Minister to reconsider his latest plans to backtrack on the UK’s climate pledges.
