Kensington and Chelsea council accused of not taking climate crisis seriously enough

A town hall has warned its residents that tough decisions will have to be made to tackle the climate crisis

Kensington and Chelsea became the latest council to declare a climate emergency and addressed how Londoners might have to change how they choose to spend their cash, invest, heat their homes and travel.

But the Labour group wanted the council to set a carbon neutral target of 2025 for itself and its own buildings, instead of the Conservative majority amended a motion to 2030 – with the wider borough going carbon neutral by 2040.

Labour opposition leader, Pat Mason, said: “We have some of the worst polluted roads and motorways in the UK and high levels of asthma and respiratory disease, especially affecting schoolchildren, babies and the elderly.”

He said the council’s target dates and the government’s timeline of carbon neutrality by 2050 were too long.

He said 2050 was far too late and that “by this time the Houses of Parliament and the South East of England could be under water from rising sea levels”.

Catherine Faulks, the council’s lead member for skills and enterprise, said the issue was beyond party politics.

Cllr Faulks, who is a trustee of the Whitley Fund for Nature, said she predicted that the pressures mean “we will see the consequences on livelihood, well-being and health and on peace”.

She pointed out that the council was responsible for just one per cent of the borough’s carbon emissions.

“We have to do more to look at what else we can do in this borough. Every single one of us has power,” she said, highlighting the “make my money count” campaign to put the planet at the forefront of spending and investment decisions.

Deputy leader Kim Taylor-Smith, who has responsibility for housing, said greening measures were “going to come at a price”.

He welcomed Kensington and Chelsea Extinction Rebellion’s suggestions about ways to make the existing and the planned 600 new council-built homes greener.

But he cautioned that it would be essential to avoid unintended consequences such as fuel poverty, if people avoided using heating.

Labour councillors said they thought the time line was “kicking the problem down the road”.

Deputy Labour leader Mohammed Bahktiar said the council had a history of failing to produce action plans to clean up pollution, and feared kicking climate emergency action 20 years down the line was a signal they were “not taking the scale of the crisis seriously”.

Pictured top: An Extinction Rebellion protester is carried away during a demonstration in London last year (Picture: PA)