THE CLIMATE was an important theme at yesterday’s meeting of the city council’s health scrutiny committee.

Carlisle City Council’s health and wellbeing scrutiny panel met at the Civic Centre on Thursday and members heard a report on the work of the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership.

The partnership is made up of 70 cross-sector organisations and was commissioned by The Cumbria Leaders Board and Chief Executives Group.

It’s ultimate goal is to see Cumbria reach net zero carbon for Cumbria by 2037. Partnership manager Tim Gale told councillors the work required to reach that goal.

He said: “The largest areas that emissions come from are things like vehicle fuel, household and domestic footprint but also the things we buy including food. The provision of services is not a small slice of that pie.

“Local Authority emissions account for about 2 per cent of emission nationally. Local Authorities are a key part of that partnership and making that happen is going to be crucial in achieving that target.”

Labour councillor for Currock and Upperby Colin Glover said: “There will be some partners I’m sure that will be really up for this and pressing.

“There will be reluctant partners and there’ll be those in the middle who would like to make a difference but aren’t quite sure how we can progress the target.

“That would probably apply to the general public as well there will be people who aren’t interested there will be people who are committed and there will be people in the middle who want to make a difference but aren’t sure how.”

“I just wondered what the connections are between partners to encourage others to follow best practice and to try to get other less willing partners up to speed on things that will make a huge difference.”

Mr Gale said: “That’s one of the critical things that the partnership can do that’s new. It’s rare I think to have such a mixture of types of organisation around one table.

“What we’ve got is an organisation called Climate Outreach. They’re speciality is working out and monitoring and measuring behavioural change in communities around climate.”

That work informs how the partnership get the word out about reduction of emissions.

Councillor Glover said: “The second question is on something that’s been quite extensive in the media of late, is about retrofitting of properties particularly for those who maybe would struggle to afford to do those things. I just wondered if there’s any indication yet how the process is happening across the county to make homes more energy efficient and make people aware of the various schemes.”

Mr Gale said: “Locally there’s only so much we can do on that with funding I think the national picture needs to change we’re expecting a couple of strategies from Government around the future of heating and energy in homes.

“At the moment we’re working very closely with Cumbria Action for Sustainability to claw down funding that is there to work with communities and carry out loft insulation, reducing the drafts in homes as well.”

He added that a lot more needed to be done to reduce the domestic carbon footprint, one of the areas contributing a lot of emissions.