Wrexham Council says “significant progress” has been made in improving the environment however work impacted by pandemic

Residents of Wrexham have been praised for their recycling efforts as Wrexham hit third place out of twenty two local authorities in Wales for the target.

Councillor David A Bithell, the Lead Member for Environment and Transport was talking about a report into the council’s performance due before the Executive Board next week.

The report itself is written by the council and assesses itself  against the priorities and targets set out in the overall Council Plan.

In the section of the report “Improving the Environment” priority outcome for 2019/20 was judged to be Amber overall on a traffic light rating system, with it noted: “Whilst significant progress has been made in all areas, the inevitable disruption and challenges following the impact of Covid-19 have resulted in the postponement of the completion of some areas of work.”

Cllr Bithell said: “One really, really good positive is that Wrexham currently stands third in Wales. Wales obviously has got an excellent track record of recycling.

“Our current recycling rates, although it hasn’t been confirmed nationally by Welsh Government is 69%. That is 5.66% more than the statutory targets. So you could say that we’ve stretched that somewhat this year.”

“That’s really good, so a big thank you to the residents of Wrexham who continue to support recycling and support our initiative.”

The report details some ‘highlights’ for the Environment Department and wider Council, that include “the percentage of Category 1 and Category 2 defects have improved from 40% in January 2019 to 87% in January 2020” and “the percentage of successfully defended highways insurance claims was 80.65% in 2019/20 and the percentage of claims settled 19.35%.”

Wrexham Council declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency on 25th September 2019 and the performance report says the local authority has “made good progress in our transition to become a net carbon zero and ecologically positive council by 2030” with the firm target date now under a decade away.

It is detailed as: “The development of a clear decarbonisation plan which will target the full decarbonisation of council operations. To ensure we have adopted the correct approach we are awaiting Welsh Government guidance although this has been delayed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

The pandemic is mentioned under ‘key issues’ with various decarbonisation and climate change initiatives being rescheduled for the new year,

The introduction of charges for green bins is seen as a possible bad thing in terms of year on year improvements for recycling figures, however as that has not been in place long enough, and itself impacted by the pandemic, there is no data as of yet.

Cllr Bithell also commented on LED lighting, stating: “On energy reduction the positive outcomes are we have reduced energy consumption by 20% with our LED streetlights roll out program.

“That’s a real good positive, and that continues now in the final stages of roll out.”

It is explained in the report, “Significant progress has been made on the conversion of the council’s existing street lighting assets to LED technology (Circa 11,000 units). The project is split into 6 programmes of work based on geographical areas. The first 2 phases are complete (albeit for some units being located along routes requiring additional traffic management ).”

“These will be completed within phase 3. Initially phase 3 commenced on schedule however, this has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic placing subsequent restrictions on working practises and has delayed the project. Monitoring and mitigation is in place to keep dialogue with the contractors open.”

Top pic: A delve into the Council’s Flickr for a recycling image.