See answers to previous information requests

I am requesting information about employee representative bodies’ ability to inform and influence the development and delivery of the council’s Climate Action Plan. By employee representative bodies we include the council’s recognised trade unions as well as other forms of non-union employee representation (ex. staff associations and employee forums). In particular, please supply me with information relating to the following questions:

1. Does the council have any policies, procedures or agreements in place that enable employee representative bodies to influence the development and delivery of the council’s Climate Action Plan? If so, please share details of these policies, procedures or agreements.
As part of the councils standard thorough democratic process, the climate emergency action plan (CEAP) goes through multiple stages of consultation and scrutiny, both internally and externally. This is designed to enable council staff from across the organisation to submit feedback prior to each annual progress report being released. Some of these actions include:

- Articles in newsletters sent out to staff to inform them of updates and request feedback.
- A net zero heroes forum, composed of staff members from across the council asking for feedback on project actions. This has recently included highlighting of the need for additional internal recycling implementation.
- External overview and scrutiny meetings open to any questions.
- A climate emergency hub for showcasing reports, additional resources and links such as to internal intranet pages for useful policy documents, as well as a focal point for further queries.
- A climate emergency learning module being available for all staff to increase their background knowledge on the subject to help provide feedback which best supports their area.
- Showcasing the CEAP at the colleague conference, which all WBC staff were invited to and 1,057 attended, for awareness and feedback.
- Leadership meetings with senior representatives from each team.
- Internal working groups to ensure actions stay relevant and on track.

We are always looking to expand this consultation where possible, though direct consultation with all parties is a challenge given the extensive size of both the council and the report itself. Therefore, we are also working to develop a new snapshot version of the wider report, designed to support this further.

2. Have employee representative bodies contributed to any recent consultations related to the delivery of the council’s Climate Action Plan?
As part of the above mentioned democratic process, each of the above approaches has been followed as part of a thorough consultation process for the most recent CEAP.

3. If so, could you please share any relevant document, dated from 1 January 2023, including:
a) Meeting minutes; b) Reports; c) Invitations to events; d) Other relevant documents
Further detail and minutes from some of these above approaches can be found at the below links:

- https://wokingham.moderngov.co.uk/mgCommitteeDetails.aspx?ID=514
- https://www.wokingham.gov.uk/climate-emergency