Citizens’ assembly will be set up to give residents a voice in council carbon reduction plans
By Simon Allin, Local Democracy Reporter

The Barnet branch of Friends of the Earth have welcomed the council's recent climate emergency declaration — The Barnet branch of Friends of the Earth have welcomed the council’s recent climate emergency declaration

Councillors have agreed to set up a citizens’ assembly to help slash carbon emissions generated by Barnet Council and the wider borough.

The citizens’ assembly on climate change and biodiversity will allow residents to contribute to the council’s plan to make its own operations carbon neutral by 2030 and for the wider borough to reach net zero by 2042.

It comes after new council leader Barry Rawlings formally declared a climate and biodiversity emergency in Barnet last month.

Plans for the citizens’ assembly were presented in a report to the council’s environment and climate change committee on Thursday. The proposals also included the creation of a sustainability team and an assistant director for sustainability.

Committee chair Alan Schneiderman told the meeting the citizens’ assembly would be “really important to get real engagement with the community in the development of the sustainability strategy and climate action plan that goes beyond consultation and engages businesses, residents and other groups”.

But Conservative members called for more information on the proposals. David Longstaff asked for more detail on the costs to the council and how often the assembly would meet.

Cllr Schneiderman said £50,000 had been set aside in the alternative budget drawn up when the Labour group was in opposition, but the cost would depend on “exactly how it [the assembly] was organised”. He added: “It is the detail […] that needs to be worked out, and all of that will come to the next meeting.”

Laithe Jajeh, another Conservative member, said his group was not opposed to residents becoming more involved with the council’s decisions but asked how the committee could benchmark the success of the assembly.

Stephen McDonald, the council’s director of growth, said there would be “specific targets” in the sustainability strategy that would allow for benchmarking.

Conservative Rohit Grover said the committee was being asked to allow the committee chair and the council’s deputy chief executive to establish the assembly with “no further involvement of the committee”. He added: “This committee should […] have a role in understanding what the cost of these proposals will be”.

Cllr Grover proposed an amendment to the report’s recommendations calling for the details to come back to the committee for approval.

But Cllr Schneiderman said: “We don’t want to hold up the citizens’ assembly by making sure we can’t get started until all the details have come back to this committee.”

Labour’s Geof Cooke said he was “struggling to understand” what the Conservatives wanted, adding that a full update would come back to the environment committee and that the council’s policy and resources committee would handle the budgetary implications.

Labour committee members voted down Cllr Grover’s amendment. They then voted in favour of the report’s recommendations, including the creation of the assembly and the new assistant director post, while the Conservatives abstained.

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