Council wrong to reject fines for idling engines outside schools

South Gloucestershire Liberal Democrats have condemned the decision of the Council’s Cabinet yesterday not to adopt rules to allow the Council to fine people leaving their car engines running unnecessarily outside schools.

A member of the Yate Sodbury Liberal Democrat  Focus team who is Shadow Cabinet Member for the Environment, Cllr Louise Harris said:

“It is deeply disappointing that the administration is unwilling to take this necessary action to clean up the air quality around our schools. In many other areas these powers have been used to bring about significant changes in behaviour.

 “Whilst South Gloucestershire’s Cabinet believes that a small number of fines being issued in some of those areas of the country which have adopted these powers represents failure, we see it as a sign of success – because it means that people are switching off their engines when they are waiting outside schools.

 “If the council was prepared to adopt these regulations, enforce them and run a serious publicity campaign to help drive a change in people’s behaviour, I have no doubt that this would help bring about the change we need – I am disappointed that the Cabinet as decided to ignore this opportunity.

 “South Gloucestershire’s Tories seem to think that you measure how clean the air is by how much money you can make from it, we think you measure how clean the air is by how clean the air is.”

Image credit: Ruben de Rijcke

SUCCESS - Come and launch our first local Biomethane bus

As requested by school pupils in Yate. They asked Ruth Davis  to get them a 'poo bus' a biomethane bus. Ruth took it up with First Bus, who said they would investigate and hoped to get something live by April 2020. True to their word...... they are actually launching a whole fleet of them.

A brand new fleet of 13 biomethane buses is being launched. Come along if you can on Monday 16th March  at 3pm at Yate Bus Station or 4pm a Chipping Sodbury High Street to see one and take a first ride. It will be used on the Y1 service from Chipping Sodbury to Bristol.

A bus does c250 miles to a tank and its emissions are reduced by 85%.  They are also more comfortable, have USB charging points and much better disabled access.

Now we need to get the Wellington Rd service back.

(Photo from Focus Sept 2019 reporting the story! and below the Focus Team with First Bus managers at Yate Bus station)

Declaration of climate and ecological crisis

At its meeting on 25 Feb Yate Town Council adopted a "declaration of climate and ecological crisis and commitment to action" - and agreed its action plan. The action plan covers every aspect of council work to deliver net zero carbon by 2030 - but with an emphasis on doing as much as possible as soon as possible. As a very simple first step the Council is abolishing paper at meetings. Just by doing that a whole box of paper was saved by not printing papers for Tuesday's meeting - so as a symbol of the commitment councillors gathered round the box of paper that had been saved. Of course that is one small step on what is a very big scale of change. But building the future we want has to start somewhere.

Here is the text of the declaration: