Response from Peter Underwood, (Green Party):

Dear Léonie,

Thanks for getting in touch.

As you would expect from the Green Party, we know that the climate and ecological crisis is an emergency and should be treated as an emergency.

Greens also believe that power should come from the bottom up, not the top down. That means that the Council should be there to serve the needs of residents, not the other way around. People should be able to have an ongoing input into how Council decisions are made. We can make things better by drawing on the knowledge and experience of all Croydon residents, including their differing social vulnerabilities to the climate and ecological crisis, to work together to improve our borough and the way the Council operates.

It has been nearly four years since the current administration was elected, and there is still no clear plan to tackle the climate crisis. The council scrutinises its financial budget in detail but has never set a carbon budget. We will change that. The carbon and financial budgets must be managed in parallel, so that every spending decision accounts for its climate impact, not just its cost. We will set a carbon budget for Croydon Council, reported alongside the financial budget each year.

The council has money from developers to spend on climate action; it should spend it. This should be spent on delivering the Climate Action Plan, investing in renewable energy infrastructure, tree planting, biodiversity corridors, green roofs, and green jobs training. We will also require developers to demonstrate both drainage and habitat improvements in their plans to reduce flooding and increase biodiversity.

Climate action should be council-wide action. Greens would require all council officers to access carbon literacy training, with time and resources provided to do so. Climate action cannot happen in isolation so all council departments should consider climate and environmental impacts in their work.

Greens will protect green spaces from development and encourage an increase in street greening and local food growing. We will improve the local plan prioritise the environment, introducing measures like prioritising refurbishment of buildings over demolition, and assessing embodied carbon in all new planning applications, not just whole-lifecycle carbon. We will also increase standards of insulation and energy efficiency and improve management of waste, like encouraging private blocks to introduce food waste recycling. We will support local community energy and launch an accessible design review panel of disabled residents.

Greens support the Right to Grow campaign and back community allotments and food growing networks. We will explore options to increase the number of allotment sites and encourage community food growing projects, like using land awaiting development for food growing on a temporary basis, rather than leaving it idle. We will support groups to set up, find funding, and share knowledge across the borough.

We will install rain gardens and support de-paving of front gardens to reduce flooding and increase biodiversity. We’ll require developers to install either bird, bee and bat boxes in new developments, and install and properly maintain green roofs and living walls.

Greens were key players in the Croydon Climate Crisis Commission that brought together residents and experts to develop solutions to help tackle the climate and ecological crisis. We intend to continue in this spirit to ensure that residents are part of the ongoing drive to tackle the problems we face.

We believe that the Green Party is the only party you can truly trust to tackle the climate and ecological crisis and we have a real opportunity to take that work forward. So we encourage everyone to vote Green in these elections for their local Councillors and for the Mayor of Croydon.

Thanks

Peter