Minutes of the previous meeting
The minutes of the previous meeting were agreed as an accurate record. The following actions were carried over:
ACTION: Emily to connect Mark Rice with Paula Hewitt, the Chair of the South West Infrastructure Partnership.
ACTION: Emily to plan an in-person meeting to explore collaboration, somewhere with public transport links.
It was suggested that Paignton or Newquay could be attractive locations to look at coastal adaptation projects.
Review of Risks CIG25 – CIG29
Five risks from the Infrastructure section of the regional Climate Adaptation Strategy were scheduled for review at today’s meeting. These are the risks with identification codes CIG25 – CIG29. [Every risk in the Strategy is scheduled for review once a year].
The meeting discussed the risks.
The Group felt that CIG25 should potentially be higher than magnitude 2.
ACTION: Emily to share CIG25 with National Grid Distribution for their input to preparedness commentary and scoring.
The Group agreed to leave a review of CIG27 until we can see the effect of the new South West Water Resources Management Plan. Cyclical funding means that infrastructure proposed in the plan won’t be delivered for a decade or more. Also SWW resources may be directed away from capacity issues due to the Brixham and Kingswear water quality issues.
ACTION: Emily to invite SWW to update on progress – potentially Mark Jacob.
The Group questioned the magnitude score for CIG29.
ACTION: Emily to engage National Grid and Wales & West to inform the magnitude score.
Review of Actions
Three actions in the Action Plan (Appendix 6) were reviewed at this meeting: NEA1, NEB1, NEC1. Ahead of the meeting, Emily circulated a table that has collated local activity that is helping to implement each action. Comments on this were requested.
NEA1 – Develop a collaborative regional water strategy to manage water availability and safe treatment and disposal of waste water, including aquifer recharge, control over-extraction, increase the use of rainwater harvesting, reduce effluent discharge etc.
The progress against this action was accepted.
NEB1 – Promote soil management techniques (Min-till cultivation, cover crops, ley-arable rotations) to protect and improve soil structure / nutrient levels and increase resilience to adverse weather / aridity impacts.
ACTION: Mark will speak to the Rural Payments Agency to ask if they have data to help with monitoring.
NEC1 – Provision of capacity building support and advice to community groups for taking action to support nature enhancement (e.g. Wild About Devon).
Actions should come out of the Local Nature Recovery Strategies to help deliver this. Need to get communities and land owners working together – Mevagissey is a good example. Others are:
- Devon Wildlife Trust Wild Gardens Scheme
- North Devon Biosphere Climate Action Fund project
- Seed funding for community projects offered by Cornwall Council (Phillipa Hoskins would be the contact).
Feedback from the Climate Impacts Group to Devon and Cornwall climate partnerships
The group agreed that the climate partnerships should be aware of the risk that South West Water’s resources are diverted away from water availability planning onto water quality issues given the ongoing situation in Brixham and Kingswear .
Opportunities for collaboration
The group recommended focussing on the opportunity for landscape recovery to help improve the resilience of infrastructure. The infrastructure providers could be invited to the in-person meeting to help brainstorm vulnerability hotspots.
