Agenda item

Report and verbal update from Officers on the Council’s own Action Plan.

Members received a verbal update from Officers on the Council’s own Action Plan.

The Council is the delivery partner of the Eastern New Energy ERDF project, and has a target to carry out 30 energy audits at SME premises.  The council had now received its 30th registration form so will meet the target and possibly exceed it as the scheme has been extended to May 2023 and was previously due to finish in December 2022.   Businesses can also apply for a grant of up to £5,000 to carry out recommended works from the energy audit. To date the council have paid out about 13 grants which total around £38,000.  The scheme will be promoted to businesses based in council owned commercial premises to see if they would like to change their lighting to LEDs which will greatly reduce their energy bills.  The businesses would still need to seek a licence from the Council to carry out the works, however they will not be charged the normal fee for doing so.

Officers stated that in regards to the Hertfordshire Solar Panel Bulk buy scheme, the council have had 662 residents who have expressed an interest in purchasing solar panels and of those 101 have accepted the quotes. Across Hertfordshire there were about 13,500 registrations and just under 1,500 were proceeding to the next stage and have paid a small deposit of £150.   For any reason the solar panels cannot be fitted or the resident changes their mind, the deposit will be refunded.

Officers stated that in regards to the ‘Your Tree, your future’ a county wide tree give away scheme, all 38,180 trees on offer in year one had been claimed and these were funded by Hertfordshire County Council. In addition to this, the Council funded a further 6,120 trees specifically for Welwyn and Hatfield residents and all of these have been claimed.  The collection date for the trees is likely to be Saturday 3 December 2022 and ties in nicely with National Tree Week. A link will be set up so that interested residents can join a waiting list to sign up for a tree in next year’s scheme.

Officers stated that in regards to the Electric Carpool Scheme, the contract is now with Enterprise.  They took over at the end of August 2022.  So far 21 members of staff have registered to be part of the scheme. 15 of those have made bookings, 3 have made more than 10 bookings and in total the council have had 84 bookings.  Also 34 virtual bookings had been made by 6 members of the public.  The residents can use the electric cars Monday to Friday during out of office hours and book them on the weekend too. Officers will be putting a message in TeamTalk to promote the Carpool Scheme with a link to sign up.  Enterprise will also be coming in to provide a demo of the cars.

The following points were noted:

·       Members asked what the timeframe was on the electric vehicles structure, it says March 2023 but is that installation or deciding where they should be placed. Members said that a strategy needs to be in place for EV charging.  Officers stated that the project EV 2 should be completed and installed by the end of the financial year. 

·       Officers said that these specific EV points were part of a grant and will be installed using a grant award from OLEV, so it is the terms of this grant which dictate the locations of the EV charging points.  Officers will be working towards a formal strategy to move this council forward in terms of future installations.  With this particular installation, the council are very limited in choices of location if they want to effectively have these free installs.  The award had been made and the Council were required to install these by 31 March 2023 in order to facilitate the grant.

RESOLVED:

That the update be noted.