Council's Green Policies are Paying Off

Following the successful accolade earned by the Liberal Democrat Council Group winning "Council Group of the Year in 2004", another success has been achieved. The group put in an entry this year for "Liberal Democrat Green Council Group of the Year and have taken the national first place.

Cllr. Morgan reports a doubling of recycling rates in two years, a successful sustainability unit, the launch and ongoing work as a result of Chesterfield GreenPrint Bio-Diversity Plan and the policy of excluding all GM or GM related products from the Borough. The Council also has won the largest grant in the country, some £300,000 to install photovoltaic cells on Queen's Park Leisure Centre which will supply up to two thirds of the centres running costs, it has built a new coach station which will, it is hoped, encourage more tourism via an ecological method and photovoltaic cells have been designed into this building to provide the necessary electricity. The Council has also continues to heat its new public buildings by natural geothermal methods - which use heat taken from way down in the ground. The latest is a new £3million Office/ workshop block just being started in Staveley. In addition to all the "one-off" initiatives, the SpirePride policy has been extremely successful in lifting levels of satisfaction with tidiness and litter reduction in the town especially since fixed penalty fines were introduced. Of the success, Liberal Democrat Council Leader Ray Russell who headed up the application said,

"This is not only good news for Chesterfield but indicates that many of our developing policies are running along the right lines. We are not going to claim perfection, but we are pointing out significant improvement which we intend to build upon with developing policies Councils should set an example in encouraging more sustainability in energy, waste or financial terms - and we are trying to do this. We hope this award goes some way to recognising this and, hot on the heels of last year's award, gives us great encouragement.

For the future, the Council is implementing EMAS (a strict environmental management system across all departments) and this is one of its key targets over the next year. This will ensure that all the Council is working in an environmentally friendly manner, as far as this is possible within certain strict parameters.