Wiltshire Council has published a draft Climate Strategy which will help them to shape the next five years of their action on climate change. You are invited to contribute by taking an online survey.
At the same time they are consulting on a document called the Green and Blue Infrastructure Strategy for Wiltshire. You are invited to contribute to this consultation by taking another online survey here.
These are clunky, badly presented and very wordy documents: the Climate Strategy is 21 pages long and the Green and Blue Infrastructure Strategy a compact 78 pages. However daunting it all looks, please read the Climate Strategy’s section called Natural Environment, Food and Farming on what the document labels as page 24 despite the fact that there seems to be only 21 pages altogether.
The Green and Blue Infrastructure Strategy, which they have tried to simplify by calling it the GBI, is so densely packed with pretty pictures, coloured graphics and odd layouts that it may take quite a while to pick apart. Begin on page 3 where there is a breakdown of goals and delivery themes and continue on page 39 where the issues of our failing biodiversity are reduced to a few buzzwords. We will return to this one in the next couple of days when we have worked out what it actually says.
There will be a period of consultation, seemingly on both of these documents, that will end on October 17th, during which there will be a series of online and in-person events covering both these strategies where people can find out more and ask questions. The full schedule of engagement events is as follows:
Online webinars: to join these events, you must sign up online in advance.
- 9 September, 6pm, online launch event with Claire Perry O’Neill.
- 15 September, 10.30am – 11.30am, first engagement webinar.
- 30 September, 7pm – 8pm, second engagement webinar.
Library drop-in sessions:
- 14 September, 10am – 12 noon, Salisbury Library
- 23 September, 10am – 12 noon, Devizes Library
- 27 September, 10am – 12 noon, Chippenham Library
- 7 October, 10am – 12 noon, Trowbridge Library
Please take part in these surveys and events. If we don’t make ourselves heard, Wiltshire Council may think that we have nothing to say.
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 
Are they trying to consult us or put us off? What a huge lump of information!!
It’s hard to tell. It might be strategic obfuscation or it could be plain old incompetence.
It’s an awful lot of work and expense for a draft if they really mean to include the survey results.
Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt; if we are to rescue anything out of this mess, we all have to work together.