Citizens’ Assembly to help create a greener, more sustainable Croydon

Residents are being given the chance to help shape Croydon’s response to the climate and ecological emergency by being asked to join a new citizens’ assembly.

The assembly will be focused specifically on climate change and residents will work alongside an independent consultant to recommend possible initiatives to the council that will make Croydon carbon neutral by 2030.

Residents will be recruited from across the borough by the independent contractor via face to face interviews, online engagement and telephone interviews, before being put into a pool. To represent Croydon’s diversity both in terms of gender, age, race, disability and being from different wards across the borough, 70 residents will then be selected from this pool to form the assembly.

They will then meet for three sessions, before producing a report outlining their recommendations to be taken to Cabinet.

A number of additional projects are under way to tackle the climate and ecological emergency, including increasing the borough’s recycling rate by around nine per cent, introducing significant discounts for parking permits for less polluting vehicles, the creation of a Green Croydon Fund to support environmental initiatives across the borough and a pledge to make the council carbon neutral by 2030 and plant 3,500 trees by 2023.

Councillor Tony Newman, leader of the council

The climate and ecological emergency is one of the most serious challenges we and future generations will face. We want to work with all our residents and especially young people to give them the power to shape how we work to make Croydon more sustainable.”

Alongside the citizens’ assembly Croydon Council is also working to establish a Sustainable Croydon Commission, which will work with a wide cross-section of the borough’s residents to create long-term goals to significantly reduce Croydon’s carbon emissions. More details on this will become available towards the end of the year.

2019-10-23T09:24:26+01:00 October 23rd, 2019|Recent news|