Share your views and help fight climate change - engagement on Wiltshire Council's Climate Strategy begins today

Wiltshire Council has today (Wednesday 1 September) started an engagement exercise on its emerging Climate Strategy, which sets out how the council - and Wiltshire as a whole - can tackle climate change over the next five years.

The engagement runs from today until 11.59pm on Sunday 17 October, and people can comment on the draft strategy document, and attend a number of online and in-person engagement sessions to find out more.

At the same time, the council will also be consulting on Our Natural Environment Plan, a Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI) Strategy for Wiltshire, which looks at the future for Wiltshire's natural environmental assets and how the council, through partnership working, can help protect and enhancement these for the benefit of people and biodiversity.

In 2019, the council declared a climate emergency and committed to becoming carbon neutral as an organisation by 2030.

Cllr Nick Botterill, Cabinet Member for Climate Change, said: We all need to reduce our impact on the climate by cutting carbon dioxide emissions, and we also need to begin to adapt to a changed climate.

This means we will all have to make some changes to the way we all live our lives and use technology to help us, but we need to do this now, and that's where our Climate Strategy comes in.

The draft strategy sets out the next five years of our journey to becoming a carbon neutral county, and using seven delivery themes shows what we can all do to make a different and reduce our carbon emissions.

I'd urge everyone in Wiltshire to have their say on these two important documents so that we can all help to protect our beautiful county for future generations.

People can share their views on both draft strategies by taking the online surveys during the engagement period, and there will also be a series of online and in-person events that people can join to find out more and ask questions. To join these events, people must sign up online in advance. The full schedule of engagement events is as follows:

• 9 September, 6pm, online launch event with Claire Perry O'Neill
• 15 September, 10.30am to 11.30am, first engagement webinar
• 30 September, 7pm to 8pm, second engagement webinar.

Libraries drop-in sessions:

• 14 September, 10am to 12 noon, Salisbury Library
• 23 September, 10am to 12 noon, Devizes Library
• 27 September, 10am to 12 noon, Chippenham Library
• 7 October, 10am to 12 noon, Trowbridge Library.

For more information about the Climate Strategy, to take the survey and to sign up for the online events, people should see: Climate change.

For more information about the GBI Strategy, people should see: Green and blue infrastructure.