Attendees
| Mark Rice Doug Eltham Penny Tranter Sara Gibbs Emily Reed Paul Minshull Louise Sawyer Mike Waller Emmanuelle Marshall George Arnison Charles Ffoulkes Richard Saville Victoria Hatfield Paul Lunt | Environment Agency (Chair) Devon County Council (Environment) Met Office Public Health Devon Devon Climate Emergency Cornwall Council Devon and Cornwall Police Devon County Council (Environment) Plymouth City Council Environment Agency RSK ADAS Cornwall Council Exeter City Council University of Plymouth |
Apologies
| Maria Van Hove Alex Rainbow Stephen Swabey Laurence Couldrick Jacqui Warren Neil Hamlyn Tom Dauben Thomas Cunningham Ruth Rockley Rhys Hobbs Nick Paling Carolyn Cadman Andrew McArthur Hannah Oliver Dai Morriss Stacy Griffiths Anya Gopfert Lesley Newport James Cooper James Kershaw | Public Health, Exeter University and Torbay Council Cornwall Council Council of the Isles of Scilly Westcountry Rivers Trust Torbay Council Local Resilience Forum Environment Agency Devon and Cornwall Police Cornwall Council Cornwall Council South West Water South West Water RSK ADAS RSK ADAS Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service Wales & West Utilities Environment Agency / Torbay Council Environment Agency Environment Agency Devon County Council |
1. Minutes of the previous meeting
The minutes of the previous meeting were agreed as an accurate record.
No actions carried over.
2. Adaptation Plan Feedback
Doug thanked RSK for progressing the project and the document to its current iteration. Doug suggested that before the public consultation in May, the CIG should consider adding a lead organisation and a timescale to each of the actions in the Action Plan.
Emmanuelle thanked the Group for extending the timescale for this initial feedback period.
Mark clarified when organisations should be endorsing the Strategy. Doug said member organisations of the three climate partnerships would be encouraged to endorse the Strategy after the public consultation. This will be autumn 2023.
George asked if the Risk Register itself can be shared, too.
ACTION: Emily to share the latest version of the Risk Register. All to consider whether this document should form part of the public consultation, or just to rely on the summary of it in the Adaptation Strategy.
ACTION: All to feedback to Emily by the 8th March, ideally using the SharePoint version of the draft Strategy.
3. Public Consultation
The consultation is expected to start on the 8th May.
3.1Â Communications Materials
Emily reported that Devon County Council’s communications team will be happy to develop and share template press releases and social media collateral for other partners to personalise and distribute during the public consultation to their audiences.
Action: All to check with their comm’s teams that this approach will work.
Emily said that a Quick Read version of the Adaptation Strategy will be prepared for people who don’t want to read the whole report.
3.2 Presentation Online
Emily has been looking at how we can present the Strategy without the branding of any of the three climate partnerships, to keep it region-neutral.
Using the Microsoft Office 365 suite could work but will be very clunky. E.g. Microsoft Sway could be used but navigating such a large amount of information would not be user-friendly.
The preferred option is to prepare a small, dedicated website that all partners can direct consultation traffic towards. The website would be designed to be attractive but neutral in its branding. This would cost £1,500. Emily invited contributions from partners to help fund this.
Mark agreed that a neutral website would be the preferred option.
ACTION: All to consider whether they could contribute towards the £1,500 cost.
3.3Â Questionnaire
Emily advised the group that an electronic questionnaire will be prepared for the public to complete.
ACTION: Emily to share the draft of the questionnaire for comment.
4. Governance of the Adaptation Strategy
Doug presented proposals for governance, informed by the recommendations made by RSK in the draft Adaptation Strategy.
ACTION: Doug to circulate the governance proposals with the recommendations listed separately.
ACTION: All to feedback to Doug on the proposals before the 29th March (date of next CIG meeting) so that this conversation can be progressed.
To stimulate comments, George asked whether the councils should have the ownership and accountability for the Adaptation Strategy.
Paul said no, because councils don’t have all of the responsibilities necessary to address the issues. Paul agreed with Doug’s recommendation that the three climate partnerships should have the ownership, as it is those that can bring together all the parties responsible for delivery.
Sara said that clarification is required about exactly how quarterly progress reports will be delivered to the three climate partnerships from the CIG. Paul agreed and offered the comparison to the Coastal Advisory Group, which has a sub-group of officers that meet to collaboratively prepare progress reports so that this does not become the responsibility of one person. Doug said that one organisation is still needed to coordinate that process, which at the moment would be Devon County Council in its role as the secretariat for the CIG. Doug would expect lead organisations allocated to overseeing progress on each action in the Plan to complete a short highlight report on a quarterly basis and send that to Emily for collation into a programme report to send to the CIG and the three climate partnerships. Emily added that a similar process is being implemented for the oversight of the Devon Carbon Plan.
ACTION: Doug to prepare a proposal for oversight and reporting of each action.
ACTION: Emily to share the reporting tool that is being developed for the Devon Carbon Plan
George commented that some of the actions in the Action Plan are aspirations, which will be difficult to monitor. Paul said that a gap analysis will be needed for some of those actions to understand what aspects are not happening, or where aspects are not happening.
