Attendees: Brian, Anne, Mary, Richard, Kim, Heather, John, Chris, Ann, Nigel, Josh, Kath, David, Valerie +1, Becky, Richard (FoE)
Apologies: Jackie
Chair: Mary, Notes: Becky
Updates
Meeting with NEDDC – Mary has re-emailed Councillor Kenyon and will put the proposed meeting date on Slack when it comes through.
Meeting with Lee Rowley MP – Decided to initiate when the group has a specific focus for discussion. Lee may have a stall at Wingerworth Fair which would be an opportunity to speak to him.
Community Energy Project – Would like to have a follow-up meeting with interested people to discuss in more detail with John Beardmore. Would be good to invite any interested people from CCA. Suggested Knowledge Transfer Network, Smart local energy system seminar 19th – 22nd July 10-2 each day, might be useful, free registration.
ACTION: Anne to set a meeting date with John.
Local Electricity Bill – Info available on the website. Everyone urged to write to their MP to ask them to support the Bill. Also would be useful to follow up on the last meeting and write to our MP as a group.
ACTION: Anne to draft letter.
New Agenda items
Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill – A motion was raised by Labour to ask North East Derbyshire District Council to support the CEE Bill, it was voted down. Would be useful for this group to write and ask NEDDC to support the Bill.
ACTION: Becky to draft letter.
Website feedback – Our group website is now live, please have a look and give feedback suggestions to Richard. It has been moved from Wix to WordPress. If anyone wants admin access DM Richard on Slack. There is an ‘Our members’ area that we would like to populate, please send a few lines and maybe a photo to Richard for this area. Would be good to have FoE training links. Many thanks from the group to Richard for all his work on the web.
ACTION: All.
Second anniversary of NEDDC declaring a climate emergency, 8th July 2021 – Would be good to mark the event and establish exactly what has been done in the last two years. Meeting is being arranged with NEDDC, and it may be useful to focus on three key points we would like to tackle. One would be community engagement. Josh will post on SM sites on the date. Richard suggested FoE training may be useful.
Climate survey of local residents – Derbyshire Dales ran an excellent survey, results here. It would be good to see the original survey and understand what the council have done with the results. Nigel explained if we want to go ahead we need to have a clear purpose. It’s a big piece of work and would need a big time commitment. It would be good to work with the council.
It was questioned if a local business would sponsor a survey?
ACTION: Anne to pass DD contact to Nigel who will request a survey and ask about the impact of outcomes.
Monthly poster campaign – Josh shared his idea with the group all happy to proceed.
Face to face meeting – Date set as third Wednesday in the month for future meetings. Becky suggested a F2F venue could be Monkey park cafe in Chesterfield, a community enterprise hub that rents out space in the evenings. The cost is £15 per hour so members would have to make a donation to cover the cost. Brian suggested a church in Clay Cross and Heather the rugby club at Tupton. All to check and report back.
ACTION: Becky put the F2F meeting on the July agenda.
AOB – Richard questioned in the meeting if the group wanted to register as a charity? It would mean we could take donations. FoE has advice on opening a bank account and writing a constitution. It was mentioned that banks are known to have a 3 months wait for account opening.
Richard (FoE) suggested we let our councillors know about FoE training running 17th June. FoE has a Groundswell event this weekend with free online talks and workshops.
Richard suggested we get T-shirts printed with our logo.
Mary asked if the group would like to be part of a local climate alliance group working towards COP 26 in Glasgow. All agreed.
Next meeting – Wednesday 21st July 2021, 7.00 p.m. via zoom