Highland Council has named climate change a critical risk, alongside Covid.
Members of the audit and scrutiny committee discussed a range of risks facing the council. Covid still remains the top risk, labelled ‘catastrophic’ for the region.
However, climate change has shot up the risk register, as waste and emissions deadlines loom.
By 2025, the council wants all of its light fleet to be low carbon. This is also the date when a national landfill ban goes live.
This means that council will need to find an alternative solution to all its residual waste.
While a new waste facility is planned for the Longman estate in Inverness, council officers still rate the non-compliance risk as ‘very high’.
All plans, no action?
Council leader Margaret Davidson took aim at the risk register, saying it’s heavy on strategy and light on action.
For instance, the council’s net zero strategy is not due for completition until March 2022. By September 2022, the council says it will have ‘agreed a date for net zero’. The Highland climate change action plan itself is not due until June 2023.
Can these various targets and strategies deliver meaningful change, in time? Mrs Davidson fears not.
“The plans are good, but action is what’s needed,” she said. “This is the biggest risk to the council and it needs spelling out.”
Mrs Davidson added that the localised nature of some of the work made it difficult to tease out, but council still needs to try.
“Action is where I’d like to see this risk register focus,” she said.
