What do you think about our plans to tackle the climate and ecological emergency?

Dorset Council has launched a consultation, asking people to let them know what they think about their recently published draft Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy.

The strategy presents eight key areas for action to ensure that the Council’s services and estate become carbon neutral (i.e. they save more carbon than they produce) by 2040, and across the whole Dorset Council area by 2050.

We have also set out actions in our overall approach and how we intend to make it happen via leadership, funding, communications and progress reporting.

The Council wants to gather feedback from residents, organisations, and partners, in order to further develop our plans and initiatives to achieve a carbon neutral Dorset.

 

How to fill out the survey

We strongly recommend reading the strategy and action plan (or at least the parts you are interested in). This will provide important information that will enable you to better respond to the questions in the survey.

When you are ready, please visit www.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/climate-survey and follow the on-screen instructions.

The strategy is quite long and covers a lot of detail. You can save your survey responses online and return to them later if you want to take your time, or you can just comment on the sections that interest you.

Some questions must be answered before you can proceed, but most sections are optional.

Responses must be submitted by the end of Wednesday 20 January 2021 [updated] to be included in the consultation feedback. Make sure you click the Submit button when you are finished.

 

The survey can also be filled out online at all Dorset Libraries, and paper copies are available upon request.

There is also an additional shorter survey available,  which is aimed at younger people and optimised for use on a mobile phone.

The results of the consultation will be collated and considered by Dorset Council members and officers as they finalise the strategy and action plan, which will be taken back to Cabinet early next year for approval and implementation.

Cllr Ray Bryan, Dorset Council’s Portfolio Holder for Highways, Travel and Environment, said:

“We’ve done the research, listened to the ideas, had the discussions, and come up with a broad, ambitious and deliverable plan for how we propose to tackle the climate and ecological emergency. We now need to know what our residents think of it.

This consultation is vitally important, as the strategy will directly and indirectly affect virtually every service we deliver in the future. We want to hear from as many different people as possible, from students to retirees, working families to businesses, community groups, town and parish councils and everyone in-between.

We recommend taking the time to read the whole strategy before filling out the survey, but if it’s simply too unwieldy and/or you don’t have time, just read up on the sections you are interested in and only respond to the questions that cover those.

Dorset Council believes that this work is incredibly important. Just sitting by and letting others address this crisis is not an option. We need to work together to overcome this monumental challenge. What we all do – or don’t do – to address this climate and ecological emergency will impact our children, grandchildren and every other generation for centuries to come.”