Torridge Council faces £11m challenge to reach 2030 net zero target

Torridge Council has confirmed its commitment to being net zero by 2030, even though its chairman warned: “We are setting ourselves up to fail”.

A report to the council reveals that the authority needs to spend £11 million of capital, plus £1 million every year from its revenue budget, to reach its climate goals and adds: “The council does not have the funds or resources to meet either of these.”

Since 2019, when Torridge District Council declared a climate emergency, the report says the organisation has made little progress in decarbonising its operations, either from its estate or by transferring its vehicle fleet to electric.

Investment had focused on Holsworthy Leisure Centre, including solar panels, a heat pump and other energy-saving improvements, but a £1 million project using the government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme fund to fully decarbonise the leisure centre did not receive members’ approval due to a lack of council match-funding.

In addition, planning permission for solar panels and an air source heat pump to decarbonise Bideford Town Hall was not granted by TDC’s planning committee.

But Cllr Teresa Tinsley (Lib Dem, Bideford North) was “critical” of the officers’ gloomy report, which she described as “negative and defeatist”.

She said a chart showed the council’s footprint increasing, but it needed to be looked at in the context that carbon emission figures only started to be recorded in the Covid years, when people were working from home much more and non-essential services were scaled back.

She said: “Many positive things have happened in the last few years, the council has done some excellent work.”

She referred to the new operational services centre for the council at East-the-Water, which was “a shining example of what we have been able to achieve”. The facility is designed to be partially powered by on-site solar panels and includes a rainwater harvesting system for cleaning the fleet of 27 vehicles.

And the council had invested in leisure centres and some smaller electric vehicles, she said.

“There are genuine barriers why we have not been able to do more, and these wider reasons are not part of the report,” she said. “We are waiting on government grants and technological developments on hydrogen vehicles, for example, that we have no control over.”

The council says that electric HGV vehicles are not advanced enough yet to cope with the hills on its 380-mile network.

Cllr Tinsley also said that staff had a lot of major projects on the go relating to the £20 million of regeneration funding which had come to Torridge from the government and did not have lots of time to dedicate to the climate agenda.

Council chairman Cllr Doug Bushby (Ind, Bideford North) praised the input of the council’s climate change working group, without whom they would not have a fleet of smaller electric vehicles.

“There have been other significant improvements. Let’s not think the group is not important and has not done a good job,” he said.

“We should continue with 2030 as an objective, even though from a public point of view we are setting ourselves up to fail.”

Lead member for climate change Peter Hames (Green, Appledore) said the council would probably not reach the target, but dropping it would “slow our thinking and lead to inaction” and would be “a sign to the public that we are not serious in facing up to climate change”.

“Taking action is not just operating under a disaster-mode cloud. Electric vehicles lower running costs. Small electric vans can save £12,000 over three years compared to diesel, and we can have cheaper, cleaner electricity from solar power. Surely contributing to a cleaner, less polluted environment is what we all want.”

Researchers found Torridge District Council to be one of the worst-performing authorities in England in tackling climate change (149th out of 164).

The same year, the climate change action group proposed that a sum of £500,000 was allocated in TDC’s budget for 2025/26 to fund measures to reduce the council’s carbon emissions, but this was refused.