Open letter to Councillor Okereke

Dear Cllr Okereke,

Your recent letter to residents subtitled, The Council’s Budget for 25 to 26, lists a sum of £4.5 million available for investment on schemes benefitting the local community. Congratulations are due for prudent management.

However, the figure belies the council’s standard response that investment in a small conservation unit cannot be afforded. To employ three people with conservation knowledge and skills would cost a mere 3% of the sum available. It seems the council’s decision remains one of priority rather than affordability.

You mention value for money for borough residents. Given today’s state of the planet, there can hardly be a matter more important for local people than support for the natural environment. The advantages of creating a conservation team are multiple:

• It would remove the anomaly of 55 Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINCs), mostly under council control, yet no one employed with appropriate conservation experience.

• Climate heating is among the greatest existential threats to humanity ever. Establishing habitats such as flower meadows, hedgerows, scrub and mini forests automatically adds to the borough’s carbon storage capacity above and below ground. The council’s Carbon Neutral Plan would benefit.

• Trees, hedgerows, and green spaces generally, mitigate the effects of the exceptionally high summer temperatures increasingly experienced in urban areas. Hedgerows additionally help protect park users from the noise and pollution of passing road traffic. 

• There is a biodiversity crisis in this country that urgently needs addressing. Leading environmental institutions and individuals demand action yet few  politicians recognise the seriousness of the situation. Leave it to others seems to be the attitude. The position of our wildlife continues to deteriorate.

• A Biodiversity Action Plan for Greenwich could be re-activated. The last council attempt appears to have stalled in March 2010.

• A knowledgeable unit would be available for Friends’ groups, Residents’ groups  and individuals to consult and work with. Currently there is no specialist knowledge available. As you pointed out as a panellist for Create Streets in October 2023, without advice, well-meaning environmental efforts by local people can be damaging.

• Local schools could benefit from advice and help. Of relevance – from September 2025 the Department of Education, from September, will require all schools to appoint a lead in sustainability and has confirmed plans for a GCSE qualification in Natural History. Neighbouring Lewisham's council-led Biodiversity Action Partnership currently runs educational events for 8,000 local children a year in addition to at least 60 conservation volunteer sessions for residents.

• A conservation unit could draw up management plans for the council’s numerous SINCs across the borough. Implementing them could be carried out by recruiting and leading  local volunteers on weekly projects as well as advising maintenance staff. Environmental work important for a sustainable future could be undertaken that otherwise would be claimed unaffordable. Currently, paying outside consultants and contractors means only limited progress is possible on a few selected sites.  

• For volunteers, purposeful environmental projects provide a venue for positive social interaction and cohesion – particularly beneficial for people unemployed or living in isolation. New skills and knowledge become available, and work undertaken offers cooperation with such initiatives as Social Prescribing – part of the NHS’s Long-Term Plan to help patients through non-medical sources of support.

• Environmental improvement means more attractive and vitalising surroundings. Scientific studies have established beyond doubt that our physical and mental health gains from exposure to the natural world. For children, there are many positive outcomes, from creative play to social and cognitive developments. All such benefits come free.

• Under the government’s Environmental Bill, its Local Nature Recovery Strategy requires local authorities to have competence in interpreting and improving a variety of environmental issues, necessarily working across borough boundaries, a situation made for in-house council ecologists working with local people.  Additionally, on residents’ behalf, the unit would be well-placed to communicate and cooperate with charitable organisations such as London Wildlife Trust, Buglife,  Froglife, RSPB, Woodlands Trust and locally, the Quaggy Waterways Action Group.

• As a panellist, you mentioned that maintenance costs inhibit council departments from engaging in environmental improvements. Monitoring and maintenance are automatically built into conservation management plans, so the problem doesn’t arise.

• Currently the council is paying a contractor over half a million pounds for a 5-year contact that has our streets sprayed with glyphosate, known to be harmful to wildlife and suspected of contributing to a range of human ailments. Given that most environmental work is carried out in the winter months, a conservation unit with a volunteer work force would be on available in the summer for a more enlightened (and cheaper) management of roadside plant – including helping residents set up pesticide-free streets. Rarely do roadside plants cause more harm than hurt sensibilities of citizens obsessed with tidiness. Hotspots not already visited by street cleaners, could be identified and acted on.

• A council recognising current existential threats to our world and locally taking practical action across the borough to restore the situation would be both reassuring and inspiring. We would be doing all we could to help.

  
  

When so much could be achieved with relatively small investment, it is difficult to understand why the council shows so little interest in supporting the natural environment. It seems fatuous to talk of a ‘Greener Greenwich’ without the practical wherewithal to bring it about.

Given the Cooperative Party’s expressed preference for working with local people, it seems strange that limited environmental work by outside agencies is preferred to a  permanent programme of projects carried out by local people guided by inhouse expertise.

We look forward to your response. 

ggcommunitynetwork@gmail.com