Issue - meetings

The Climate Change Officer advised Members that currently the Council had no Carbon Reduction Plan and that monitoring and activity on the former plan had stopped in 2022.  However, a viable Carbon Reduction plan would be looked at following recommendations further to an internal audit.

Internal Audit had also identified the necessity to develop an internal working group to develop the Carbon Reduction Plan for the Council, and following a meeting held on 13^th October 2025, the Climate Resilience Working Group was formed. This group would enable greater ownership by multiple different departments.

The groups’ primary objective would be to develop an effective and implementable Carbon Reduction Plan. Further meetings would be held prior to the next scrutiny meeting where an of the plan would be provided on the progress of the plan.

The Council along with Nottinghamshire County Council were collectively working with the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) which was funded by the MCS Foundation (an energy advocacy charity aimed at accelerating the use of carbon free energy) on creating a new strategy that would be launched on 20^th October. The aim of the new strategy was focused on upskilling local green skills to enable retrofitting BDC homes to achieve lower emissions.

This was part of a larger strategy from East Midlands Retrofit Strategy (EMRS) a regional collaboration on the retrofit strategy to reduce fuel poverty and increase the sustainability of homes across the East Midlands.

It was incredibly positive for the residents of Bolsover and the Council.

The Green Skills Development Hub (located in Shirebrook) had a £250,000 grant approved through the UK Government Regeneration Fund and East Midlands Investment Zone. Multiple development proposals had been received from colleges and universities as well as private companies for the Hub and Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB) had been appointed as the consultant on this project.

An internal working group to facilitate and manage this project has been created and consists of the following: Interim Director of Planning, Devolution and Corporate Policy, Leaders Executive and Partnership Strategy Manager and the Climate Change Officer. All local stakeholders including colleges, universities and members of the Boslover Partnership have presented their input throughout and would continue going forward to ensure this project benefits the community as much as possible when completed in the academic year of 2027.

The Climate Change Officer then presented a Carbon Plan Update Regarding the Energy Plan developments. It was confirmed that work was ongoing with the Carbon Plan and Energy Plan Updates with Energy Performce Certificates (EPC’s) being collected to identify areas which required more attention.

In response to a question relating to older properties which may not have EPCs it was explained that when older properties were renovated with extensions or refurbished an EPC could be produced.

Only a very small percentage of older properties had never been improved and average EPC ratings for similar type properties could be used. Low EPC performing properties tended to be located in the same more than likely would require  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15