Birmingham City Council’s environmental pledge ‘not good enough’, campaigners say

Birmingham City Council debated a report in which a consultancy firm stated it would be “very challenging” for the authority to hit its target of zero emissions by 2030.

The report followed on from the declaration of a "climate emergency" by the council last year, after which it was promised that an action plan would be produced by March 2020.

This action plan is still yet to be produced, with the council receiving criticism from some quarters for a perceived lack of action since the declaration last June – a claim the council denies.

Councillor Waseem Zaffar, cabinet member for transport and environment, said that both the Government’s target of 2050 and the West Midlands Combined Authority’s target of 2041 was "simply not good enough", with a motion for Birmingham to become ‘the first city region to become carbon neutral’ if it could not hit the 2030 target.

Maryam Patwa, from Birmingham Friends of the Earth, said: "It was encouraging to see a robust challenge to this watering down of the city council climate commitments from a cross party set of motions.

"While debated they were ultimately defeated although an internal Labour challenge to the executive was passed. This will ultimately drag the council to adopt an action plan by the end of the year but allows them off the hook on a definitive date by which the city council will be net zero nor allows the city council to recover the time that has been lost since June 2019.

"This is not good enough, from the largest local authority in England, which should be allocating its own resources, as well as securing much more from central Government to deliver net zero as soon as possible across the whole of the city. We need to get going now."

Green Party Councillor Julien Pritchard, who represents Druids Heath and Monyhull, said the council needed to take more responsibility to meet the target.