Ealing Council has been recognised as one of the UK’s leading local authorities in tackling the climate emergency.
Climate Emergency UK assesses all councils in the country on their progress towards net zero, ranking the work they are doing across 7 categories. These categories are buildings and heating; transport; planning and land use; governance and finance; biodiversity; collaboration and engagement; and waste reduction and food.
Ealing Council came joint tenth out of 186 councils in the rankings and scored well above the average performance in almost all categories, including scoring 90% in the planning and land use category.
Councillor Deirdre Costigan, cabinet member for climate action, said: “It’s right that we are being recognised for our work on combatting the climate emergency, which we’ve done in partnership with residents through our community climate action group Act for Ealing. However, we know we all need to do more.
“The key to reaching our net zero goal is making sure every area of council activity is focused on climate action and that’s why we’re making big bold decisions such as creating a new regional park for Ealing. The regional park will be a real game changer, a green lung for London that will offer clean air, new habitats for wildlife, flood management and urban woodlands.”
Other key achievements:
• doubled the number of bike hangars in just 6 months and made our bike hangar permits the cheapest in London
• more than tripled the number of electric vehicle charging points in the last year in the borough to 670
• rolled out 24 school streets and ramped up fines for unnecessary idling to the maximum level
• started work on replacing fossil fuel heating systems in some of our schools and sheltered housing and on improving energy efficiency in our three main leisure centres in Northolt, Acton and Dormers Wells
• our in-house waste collection service is consistently in the top three in London for recycling
• announced a new circular economy site at Acton which will help avoid waste in the first place
• planted thousands of trees and opened three new community growing spaces, including the new Popesfield allotment
The council was awarded a total score of 55% by Climate Emergency UK, putting it in the top performance tier of councils.
Only 25 of the 186 single tier authorities in Britain scored above 50%, with the average score being just 35%.
Keep up to date with the latest news on tackling the climate emergency in Ealing in the climate section of AroundEaling.com.
