Call for greener and more dynamic Chichester recovery plan

Chichester District Council is currently working on a recovery plan to mitigate the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

Economic recovery is high on everybody’s priorities, but together with the other opposition parties the Liberal Democrats fear that CDC is missing an extraordinary and vital opportunity to put forward a green recovery plan with more innovative, dynamic, sustainable and community orientated ways of obtaining much needed financial revenue.

With Chichester District Council expected to lose some £8m of income in 2020/21, Liberal Democrats have requested that CDC look for more ways of generating income and not simply to rely upon collecting money from parking fees.

The Conservative administration has also been urged to implement greener policies in light of the council’s declaration of a climate emergency last July.

Liberal Democrat members have also pressed for mental health issues and provision to be specifically mentioned and addressed in the plan.

Adrian Moss, Lib Dem group leader, said: “One area the council must focus on in our recovery is developing more entrepreneurial commercial activities. Until recently the council has focused on income from car parking and commercial property letting but we need to look at more innovative ways forward.

“To ensure our residents are not penalised by ever increasing council taxes we need to look at other income streams.”

Kate O’Kelly, the Lib Dem group’s deputy leader, added: “Our feeling is that environment should be taken out where it sits with planning and health and needs to be a green thread running throughout the recovery plan and be part of our thinking everywhere.

“For example, as we focus on helping our local business, the plan should specify incentives for business with high environmental credentials to encourage sustainability.”

The Lib Dems suggested the council should also be creating opportunities for young people giving them a reason to stay, looking at greater mental health provision and providing best practice environmental guidance to assist developers in bringing forward genuinely environmentally-positive proposals.

They proposed an all-parties task force with experts from the business community, retail, hospitality, horticulture, tourism, culture, and education, as well as the city, town and parish councils.

But this motion was rejected by the council’s ruling Conservative group.

The Lib Dems said they are extremely grateful to CDC officers for their hard work and their efforts writing the recovery plan in very challenging circumstances, but they ‘lamented gthe lack of leadership shown by the Conservative administration, being unwilling to bring in outside expertise and to properly engage with local people’.

A Lib Dem spokesman said: “It is a real missed opportunity to utilise all the available talent and ideas. Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures – not doing business as usual.”

The recovery plan is set to be debated this afternoon (Tuesday July 21).

A message from the Editor, Gary Shipton:

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news, I am asking you to please purchase a copy of our newspapers.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspapers.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

Stay safe, and best wishes.