Andy Durling, Author at Eastbourne ECO Action Network

Why do most councils fail to enforce energy standards in rental homes despite having the legal power to do so?

This blog post is by one of our members, Sam Powell, who is also one of our Eastbourne Energy Champions:

Why Do Councils Fail to Enforce Energy Standards in Rental Homes Despite Having the Power to Do So?

‘Understanding EPCs’ chart at an Energise Sussex Coast (ESC) training day. ESC actively partners with Eastbourne Borough Council (EBC), offering energy and retrofit advice to local households.

MEES and EPC Consultations: Change in the Rented Sector?

The UK government is consulting on significant MEES (Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard) and EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) changes, including new low-carbon EPC metrics, a proposed minimum rating of C for rented properties, and a higher landlord ‘cash cap’ for improvement costs. These reforms aim to raise energy standards in private and social rented housing, targeting fuel poverty and incentivising low-carbon energy efficient options.

The government ‘guidance’ on MEES states, “MEES Regulations are enforced by local authorities, who have a range of powers to check and ensure compliance.” The Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015 (PRP Regulations 2015 from now on) require a minimum rating of EPC E for the rented sector. However, according to Climate Emergency UK (CE UK), three-quarters of single-tier and district/borough councils were not actively enforcing MEES in 2021-2022.

Will these proposed reforms shift the dynamics between councils, landlords and tenants concerning energy efficiency and fuel poverty? And can tighter standards make a real difference in the rented sector?

EPCs, MEES, and the 2025 Reform Push

EPCs were introduced in 2007 as part of the now-defunct Home Information Packs (HIPs) under Part 5 of the Housing Act 2004. Initially required only for homes with four or more bedrooms being marketed for sale, the scheme was gradually extended to smaller properties and, from 1 October 2008, to all rental properties. This broader rollout drew from the EU’s 2002 (but published in 2003) Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), later transposed into UK law through the Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) Regulations 2012.

According to the Office for National Statistics, “just over 69% of all residential dwellings in England, and 66% in Wales, had at least one EPC registration since records began in 2007, as of March 2024.” They are currently valid for 10 years and rate a property’s energy efficiency from A (most efficient) to G (least). The measurement is, as a government guide states, “based on the performance potential of the building itself (the fabric) and its services (such as heating, insulation, ventilation and fuels used).” EPCs are designed to inform landlords and tenants about a home’s energy performance and how to improve it, tackling both emissions (as homes in 2022 produced roughly 20% of greenhouse gases according to a 2024 gov report) and fuel poverty.

MEES legislation, introduced via the PRP Regulations 2015, requires landlords in the Private Rented Sector (PRS) to meet a minimum EPC rating to let out a property legally. Since 2018, all new tenancies have required an EPC E rating or higher, and from April 2020, this rule has applied to all tenancies.

Yet, in practice, MEES enforcement from local authorities has been patchy since its introduction and the reliability of EPC ratings in both the domestic and non-domestic spheres has come under debate (Yuan and Choudhary, 2023 and recent debates).

MEES compliance is based heavily on the EPC’s Energy Efficiency Rating (EER) metric, “which grades buildings on the basis of running costs”, the consultation clarifies, as well as an Environment Impact Rating (EIR) measuring carbon dioxide emissions. However, this could change. As part of the government’s 2025 MEES consultation, ‘Improving the energy performance of privately rented homes’- closing on 2 May 2025 – there are proposals to overhaul the methodology utilising the policy consulted in the recently closed EPC consultation. The two consultations work in a policy synergy.

In the EPC consultation, amongst other aspects consulted, like reducing the validity period length of EPCs, the government proposed EPCs to reflect actual building low carbon performance more accurately. They propose new metrics measuring ‘energy cost’, ‘carbon’, ‘energy use’, ‘fabric performance’, ‘heating system’, and ‘smart readiness’, alongside possible ‘other metrics’ in the future. The new eco-performance-based metric system seeks to influence MEES compliance along low-carbon lines.

As the Climate Change Committee (CCC) have argued, “Currently the EER metric does not adequately incentivise homeowners to install fabric efficiency measures. The cheapest and easiest way to improve a home’s EER is often to fit a more efficient fossil fuel boiler (which reduces fuel consumption) or install solar PV (which reduces or offsets electricity consumption).” As the MEES consultation notes, “given the higher cost of electricity relative to gas, installing an electric heating component, such as a heat pump, may result in higher estimated running costs and a lower EPC rating, without additional cost-saving measures such as improved fabric and smart technologies.” The government hopes to replace the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) with a ‘Home Energy Model’ to encourage low-carbon energy efficiency.

The new MEES consultation also suggests a major tightening of standards:

All new tenancies would need to meet EPC C by 2028
All existing tenancies by 2030

This could affect a significant portion of the housing stock: Approximately 2.58 million (52%), half of all rental properties, have an EPC below C. According to CE UK’s 2023 scorecards, 71% of “council owned social housing” meets EPC C or above, but only 43% of UK homes overall. Yet, other reports, like the 2025 ‘Energy Efficiency of Homes’ document from the government, state that 52% of all homes do.

Government statistics also show that In Q1 of 2024, 36% of “existing dwellings” in England and Wales had an EER rated D and 8% rated E (figure 1). However, the proposed MEES legislation only applies to rented homes, either social or private, and the consultation states that EPCs rated C or above, issued before the future planned EPC reforms in 2026, will remain valid until they expire under existing rules.

To support compliance, and amongst other consulted issues, the MEES consultation proposes:

Raising the landlord’s “cash cap” for improvements from £3,500 to £15,000 (or £10,000 for “affordability exemptions”) to cover the ‘real costs’
Requiring updated EPCs when the current ones expire
New EPC methodology
Increasing fines from £5,000 to £30,000 per property

These proposed changes are part of a potential broader suite of reforms like 1) The Renters Rights Bill (currently at the committee stage in the House of Lords), outlined later in the article, and 2) the Environmental Targets (Public Authorities) Bill, attempting to make it a statutory requirement for “public bodies to contribute to [the] delivery of targets set under the Environment Act 2021 and Climate Change Act 2008.”

If passed, these MEES and EPC changes could represent a significant overhaul of rental energy standards, making enforcement and a council’s ability to act all the more critical. The previous Conservative government proposed these EPC C targets by 2025 for new tenancies and 2028 for existing in the now-shelved Minimum Energy Performance of Buildings (No. 2) Bill tabled in 2021 but benched in 2023. Similar ideas and more are currently on the table.

Conflict

On BBC Breakfast, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband defended the proposed amendments to PRP Regulations 2015 legislation provided power by the Energy Act 2011 (which included the Green Deal) that stated 1 April 2018 as the latest date for regulations (section 43). Miliband cites average upgrade costs of £6,000 (£6,100–£6,800, as stated in the consultation document) needed to bring rented properties up to the newly proposed standard.

However, the National Residential Landlords Association Chief Executive Ben Beadle argues that some landlords may leave the market or raise rent to pass the potential costs of upgrades onto the tenant, especially in low-yield areas. He stated it would take over 10 years, £20bn for the sector, with grants not covering. Critics say the reforms are overly burdensome and could shrink PRS supply.

Miliband countered these concerns, citing survey data suggesting tenant support and landlord willingness to upgrade. He said, “I believe, and organisations that represent renters believe, this will benefit renters.”

The Case for MEES Reform

‘Where the Heat Goes’ image from an Energise Sussex Coast training day.

According to Better Housing, Better Health, upgrading a home from EPC E to C could save the tenant £520 a year in energy costs. Homes rated E cost up to £1,208 more annually than the most efficient ones. C-rated homes cost £688 more. Insulation upgrades, double glazing and boiler upgrades can reduce energy bills and emissions, helping households cope with rising energy caps like the 6.4% increase from April–June 2025.

Poor housing efficiency is also a health issue. Cold homes worsen respiratory illness and place pressure on the NHS. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero says E–G rated homes are far more likely to result in cold-related illness or fuel poverty.

The Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) seventh carbon budget calls for an EPC C minimum to meet net zero and for heating systems like heat pumps to become more economically “attractive” than gas boilers. The government acknowledges MEES and enforcing landlord obligations as one of CCC’s “top 10 priority actions.” CCC has repeatedly called for governments to review EPC metrics so they are optimised for measuring emission reduction.

Groups like Friends of the Earth and the Centre for Sustainable Energy recommend councils appoint MEES officers to enforce rules and support landlords. These officers could issue notices and penalties, maintain compliance records, and publish data to hold landlords publicly accountable, but more importantly, work with landlords.

Why MEES Enforcement Lags

According to CE UK’s 2023 scorecards, only three district or borough councils out of the 164 asked, South Derbyshire, Thanet, and West Lindsey, enforced MEES in over 100 homes between 2021/22. 119 took no action, and 42 issued between “1-100 compliance or enforcement notices…”. In 2021–22, three-quarters of single-tier and district/borough councils were not actively enforcing MEES.

Although the forthcoming 2025 CE UK scorecards might paint a slightly improved picture regarding MEES enforcement, unsurprisingly, a key reason given by councils when CMS law did their research in 2023 appears to be resourcing. Due to budget constraints, Richmond and Wandsworth Councils said that MEES isn’t a priority. Merton Council, which shares regulatory services with these boroughs, only recently advertised for a MEES officer, showing a change. Worcestershire similarly cited cuts to its small trading standards team. As CMS law noted, there’s been a 25% decrease in trading standards inspectors from 2014 – 2024 and a 32% decrease in trading standards budgets from 2010 – 2019.

One way MEES enforcement costs could be countered is by recovering unpaid financial MEES penalties as debt owed to the enforcement authority, a process enabled by the PRP regulations 2015 (part 3, 45). Another is to recoup any penalties. However, many councils lack ringfenced funding or political will to set the project up to outline all properties EPC and hire an enforcer, keeping MEES low on the agenda.

How Eastbourne Borough Council Performs on MEES Enforcement

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a median EPC rating of C for Eastbourne. However, a closer look at the government’s EPC database reveals properties with expired or F-rated EPCs (although further clarification is needed to show if they are in the rented sector). Median figures can hide housing disparities – older buildings, HMOs, and low-income areas tend to have poorer energy standards.

CE UK gave Eastbourne Borough Council (EBC) zero points for MEES enforcement on the 2023 scorecards. Freedom of Information (FOI) data was used to answer Q1.8 of the scorecard’s “Buildings and Heating” section, asking whether councils actively enforce MEES, and showed no notices or penalties issued by EBC. The council also scored just 1 out of 3 points for EPC C coverage, suggesting only 50–60% of homes and buildings meet EPC C. Higher points were available for 60%+ and 90%+ coverage.

Other areas in which EBC were marked down on at the time of scoring (but has made some progress on since) included retrofit progress on council-owned buildings, fully costed council-housing retrofit plans, powering council operations by renewable energy and an increase in the efficiency of its council housing stock. EBC scored 64% overall in the Buildings and Heating section.

According to available data, EBC is the landlord of 3,441 council homes (Housing Ombudsman 2023-24). Out of the town’s roughly 45,609 homes, around 18,061 homes in Eastbourne are rented, according to the 2021 census. 13% are ‘social rented’, and 26.6% are ‘private rented’, totalling 39.6%. Based on the current EER ratings, 2.8% of all ‘existing and new’ properties in England and Wales (Q1 2024) fall below E. This potentially means 1277 properties in Eastbourne, and 39.6% of those (505) equating to the private rented sector. If approximately half the rented sector is currently below C, then that would possibly include roughly 9,030 properties potentially needing improvement in Eastbourne if the law changes. However, applying these national-based formulas likely obscures Eastbourne’s actual figure due to housing stock differences between national and local statistics – something a MEES officer could clarify.

In council documents, EBC and its councillors have stated that they wish to improve the private rented sector. Under the ‘Housing and Energy’ and ‘Energy Efficiency’ sections of their website, they list services, like the Warm Home Check Service (via East Sussex County Council (ESCC)) and the Home Upgrade Grant (phase 2), providing a consortium bid EBC was a part of with a ringfenced £2.9 million (announced 22 March 2023) a scheme which ended 31 March 2025. EBC acknowledges MEES on their website and talks about energy efficiency in their preparation documents for the new, improved Local Plan, which will be forthcoming later this year as stated in the recent Eastbourne Local Development Scheme plans.

In their 2024 annual report, in the “Improve energy efficiency, reduce emissions, and lower bills” section, EBC states, “Annual targets for 2024 have been achieved in the last year of the current contract. Number of Warm and Well Helpline cases supported, number of Warm Home Check visit assessments completed & % of WHC clients receiving a major heating or insulation measure funded by ECO or grant.” EBC also cites how ESCC are seeking to, from April 2025, “offer a single-point-of-contact home energy efficiency and fuel poverty reduction advice and signposting service for anyone in East Sussex living in a cold home.”

EBC seems to be partly taking the lead from ESCC and national services regarding energy efficiency advice services. Nationally, the government has promoted schemes like ECO4, The HUG, The Local Grant, zero-VAT insulation, and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, offering £7,500 to transition to “low carbon heating systems including heat pumps and biomass boiler.” These changes comprise the government’s broader plans within the Warm Homes Plan, Future Homes Standard, the creation of Great British Energy, and the Climate and Nature Bill.

Reactive and Proactive Approaches

Despite the buildings and heating progress EBC has made in their decarbonisation project, surveying their stock and solar projects and so on, outlined in their annual reports since 2020 and prior documents, it appears that EBC and other councils have taken a fairly reactive approach to MEES, offering services and waiting for private tenants or landlords to come forward. This is evidenced more sharply by other councils, like North East Lincolnshire Council, which told CMS law, “the authority reacts to complaints received.”

By contrast, Wealden District Council appointed a MEES officer who provides direct landlord contact and exemption guidance. Other councils are also hiring MEES officers, which could be reflected in the national update on the CE UK scorecards forthcoming in June 2025.

One problem with reactive enforcement is that tenants in vulnerable situations may fear eviction or rent increases if they report poor conditions. This is especially problematic while Section 21 no-fault evictions remain legal, despite government pledges to ban them in the Renters Rights Bill. 82% of 208 councils approached by CMS Law in 2023 said they take an “intelligence-led approach” in reacting to complaints.

Eastbourne has a lot of older housing stock, some of which is in the PRS. In the ‘Conservation Area’ of Eastbourne (see the 2017 Conservation Consultation), housing is distinguished between two key eras: 1850 – 1870 and 1880 – 1910.

A Note on the Renters Rights Bill

Although MEES was the central topic of this article. It’s hard not to mention that running alongside MEES reform is the Renters Rights Bill (2025). These proposed changes combined could significantly change the housing and energy sectors. Amongst other things, the bill proposes:

Ban Section 21 “no-fault” evictions

Cap rent increases at one per year under Section 13 rules
Apply the Decent Homes Standard to the PRS
Apply Awaabs’s law to the PRS to address health hazards like mould and damp within timeframes
Introduce a PRS property database and ombudsman
Ban bidding wars and DSS discrimination

Conclusion

MEES remains a crucial but underused tool as the UK targets net-zero and better housing standards. Councils hold the power but often lack the capacity, funding, or political will to act decisively.

EBC has made environmentally friendly building and heating decisions but has lagged in MEES enforcement. As stricter thresholds loom, councils may need to boost their MEES response, especially in areas with older housing and large PRS sectors.

Clear national guidance, local resources, and strong tenant protections will be key. Monitoring local outcomes as new policy unfolds will show what truly works.

What Can Be Done Now?

If funding allowed, EBC could take five realistic steps:

Appoint a MEES Officer – reallocate staff or use grants to create the role
Publish Annual MEES and EPC Data – track progress and improve targeting
Engage Landlords Proactively – briefings, plain-language guidance, webinar support
Embed MEES in the forthcoming Local Plan – integrate enforcement into future policy
Empower Tenants – offer advice, grant knowledge, and support networks, which councils do under the current reactive approach.

Generally, a successful proactive approach adopted by councils nationwide will significantly impact the dual problem of fuel poverty and emission reductions.

Have your say on the MEES consultation before 2 May 2025; the survey is accessible here.

There’s nothing neutral about carbon neutrality

In anticipation of the forthcoming Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 Symposium on Saturday April 26th at Emmanuel Church, Upperton Road, Eastbourne (free tickets bookable here), Andrew Durling, Executive Director of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC, provides a personal perspective:

The phrase ‘carbon neutrality’ sounds very dry and technical, doesn’t it? Hardly a phrase to set the pulse racing! But let’s unpack what the phrase really means and why we should actually get very excited about it.

First off, there’s nothing neutral about carbon itself. Far from it, carbon is one of the most positive and amazing things one can talk about.

For carbon is the fundamental building block of all life on Earth. Its unique ability to form stable bonds with itself and other elements allows for the creation of the complex molecules that make up living organisms, including carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids like DNA and RNA. Without carbon, life as we know it would not exist.

But because carbon manifests in so many different forms and interacts in so many ways with so many other elements and life forms, it forms one of the key cycles on Earth, helping to maintain a dynamic equilibrium of Earth’s ecosystems. This carbon cycle is the continuous movement of carbon atoms between the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land, and living organisms. This cycle is crucial for sustaining life in several ways:

Regulation of Earth’s Temperature: Carbon dioxide ( $C O_{2}$ ) in the atmosphere acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat and keeping the planet at a habitable temperature. The carbon cycle helps regulate the concentration of $C O_{2}$ in the atmosphere.
Foundation of Food Webs: Through photosynthesis, plants absorb $C O_{2}$ from the atmosphere and convert it into organic compounds, forming the base of most food webs. Animals obtain carbon by consuming plants or other animals.
Nutrient Availability: The decomposition of organic matter returns carbon to the soil, providing essential nutrients for plant growth.
Ocean Chemistry: The ocean absorbs a significant amount of atmospheric $C O_{2}$ , influencing its chemistry and supporting marine life.

But, human activities, particularly the burning of carbon in the form of fossil fuels and deforestation, have significantly disrupted the natural carbon cycle, leading to an increase in atmospheric $C O_{2}$ concentrations. This enhancement of the greenhouse effect is the primary driver of global warming and climate change, posing existential challenges to human societies and ecosystems worldwide. Understanding and managing our impact on the carbon cycle is crucial for ensuring a sustainable future for human life on Earth. Carbon neutrality is therefore simply a technical way of saying that we care about the carbon cycle and want to restore it to its normal function of sustaining all life.

So we need to bring the carbon cycle back into balance, by significantly reducing carbon emissions and capturing the carbon emitted through activities like tree planting and soil restoration, so that the excess of carbon emitted is balanced, or neutralised, by an increased ability of the land and ocean to absorb the excess carbon; hence the term ‘carbon neutrality’. Now, each one of us can assist in this process in a myriad of ways. But we have to be strongly motivated to do so, otherwise we won’t collectively engage with the carbon neutrality strategy with the necessary enthusiasm that such a great challenge demands.

Of course, we each have our own motivations for engaging with carbon neutrality, or climate actions and sustainability strategies in general. But here’s my perspective, one that helps to keep me motivated anyway: what greater motivation can there be than for each of us to feel we can become an integral part of the work of Gaia, our planetary home personified by the Ancient Greeks as the Earth Mother? Gaia was the name given by renowned scientist James Lovelock to Earth’s ability to function as if it were a living system, regulating itself constantly to keep the planet viable for all life. So whatever we do to facilitate carbon neutrality could be seen as an act of care towards Gaia – Earth as a living being – and a gesture of solidarity with all of life, even – especially if one is religiously or spiritually inclined – a demonstration of one’s love for all of God’s creation. With this recognition of a deeper meaning to engagement with carbon neutrality, then any action in support of it becomes meaningful and positive in itself, affirming one’s deep connection with all of life and all that supports life, especially the carbon cycle itself.

Therefore, whatever targets are set, like making Eastbourne carbon neutral by 2030, becomes achievable simply because it is no longer just a technical exercise but rather something that is ethically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually good and worthy in itself. Furthermore, the strength of the collective motivation of all those strongly engaged in actions that facilitate carbon neutrality becomes enough to enable any target, including the 2030 target, to be met whatever the challenges may be, just as the collective motivation of the British people in 1940 to stand up against the threat of fascism despite incredible odds was enough to ensure not only that defeat was avoided but that victory over fascism would eventually be achieved.

Perhaps ‘carbon neutrality’ should be replaced with a new phrase? How about ‘carbon positivity’? Any other suggestions?

Review of 2024: a personal perspective from our Executive Director

Looking back on 2024, it’s clear that the transition to a Net Zero Eastbourne is gathering pace. Eastbourne DGH, through its decarbonisation project which started in 2022, has now become the first renewable heated hospital in the UK after having replaced its steam heating system with a 4.8MWth multi-stage heat pump system, which provides renewable heat to the building. Coupled with the solar PV array over one of its car parks, and a major insulation retrofit to improve the thermal efficiency of the hospital, the DGH will now be reducing its carbon emission by 4,100 tonnes per annum, amount to a cumulative total of 24,600 tonnes by 2030, a significant contribution towards the town’s Carbon Neutral 2030 target.

Another step change in Eastbourne’s renewable energy transition will occur when the Suncoast Solar Farm is built within the next few years, after having been granted planning permission by Eastbourne Borough Council earlier this year. When completed, the solar farm will have a capacity of 20MW, equivalent to supplying the power needs of 6,400 homes. This is a big step up from the mere 5 or 6 MW of solar power capacity currently installed across the borough. When local microgrids and regional energy pricing becomes a reality over the next decade or so, then the renewable power from the solar farm can be sold direct to local residents and businesses, reducing energy bills locally because solar power is so much cheaper than fossil fuels. There has understandably been much local concern about the need to protect the biodiversity of the site when the solar farm is built, and one of our members wrote a blog post about this issue, which can be adequately addressed if an appropriate biodiversity management plan is implemented, as many existing solar farms in the UK demonstrate.

But these large projects have to be supplemented by supporting individual households across the borough to gain access to renewable energy and energy efficiency installation schemes, as domestic properties account for more than 40% of the town’s overall carbon emissions. So Eastbourne Eco Action Network (EEAN) has this year continued to develop an ever stronger partnership with Energise Sussex Coast, an award-winning community energy cooperative. Together we have developed an Eastbourne Energy Champions network of trained volunteers able to give basic energy advice to local residents and signpost them to sources of expert help – such as Energise Sussex Coast provides – if they are in fuel poverty or need to make their homes warmer. A second round of Energy Champions training began in Eastbourne a couple of weeks ago and will continue in 2025, so if you wish to receive free training to become an Energy Champion volunteer, please let us know. The more, the merrier!

Another big source of carbon emissions in Eastbourne is the transport sector, which is not surprising given the high degree of dependence of the town on cars for moving around, coupled with the lack of Active Travel infrastructure such as safe cycle lanes. To raise awareness about the need to make local cycling safer, especially for kids going to school, the 4th Eastbourne Kidical Mass Bike Ride took place in May, which many EEAN members joined in with. The lack of bus lanes also restricts the quality and reliability of the local bus service, but progress toward rectifying this was achieved this year when East Sussex County Council approved plans to put bus lanes in Seaside, a key arterial road in town notorious for its traffic congestion. Many EEAN members engaged extensively with the consultation process in order to support the introduction of the bus lanes.

But further improvements are needed to local bus services to make travelling by bus a much better alternative to driving for local residents, which is why this year EEAN set up an Eastb ourne Bus User Group, bringing together local stakeholders to collaborate on making these improvements. To encourage people to think about driving less, EEAN’s EcoTransport Group once again organised a Car Free Day in Eastbourne, in Hyde Gardens. EEAN also held a very productive workshop in February about the latest Local Transport Plan (LPT4) prepared by East Sussex County Council.

For a fuller picture of all that is being done in Eastbourne to make the town more sustainable and carbon free, please look at our One Planet Eastbourne community ecosystem digital platform, which is hosting plans made by some local businesses, including those who get free support from EEAN to help devise such plans. Some local businesses do show great climate leadership through their efforts to become more eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable, and Richard Garland gave a keynote speech at our Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 Symposium earlier this year to explain how his business is progressing on its sustainability journey.

Given that the impacts of climate change are arriving thick and fast now, the need for climate adaptation is becoming ever more urgent. Part of such adaptation is figuring out how local food growing can be better protected from climate impacts such as increased flooding incidents, increased frequency and severity of droughts and heatwaves, and so on. EEAN has partnered up with Eastbourne Food Partnership and Blue Heart to investigate how local food growers are coping with such impacts and what strategies, if any, they are using to better adapt to those impacts. Part of that investigation involved visiting local groups involved in community food growing, such as Gather Community Garden, Pevensey Bay allotments, Pevensey & Westham Community Forest Garden, and Langney Community Centre. A presentation on EEAN’s research on local food growing and climate change was made at the recent Eastbourne Food Summit.

Other highlights this year was exhibiting at the Spring Water Festival Eco Fair, wonderfully organised by Plastic Free Eastbourne, and engaging with the pop-up Climate Hubs in the Beacon shopping centre in collaboration with volunteers from the Eastbourne Climate Coalition. We’ve also engaged with the hard-working volunteers of the Eastbourne United Nations Association, who have a fantastically effective carbon sequestration programme that is supported by many residents and organisations in the borough, as well as by Eastbourne Borough Council. It’s also worth a shout-out to the magnificent volunteers of Treebourne, an organisation EEAN helped to develop in its early days. Treebourne has planted many thousands of new trees across the town, which will not only help wildlife but also create vital shade to help significantly cool the streets and public spaces when the inevitable intense heatwaves arrive.

Eastbourne Borough Council continues to reduce its own carbon emissions, and the latest yearly update to its Climate Change Strategy is now available online. An independent assessment of the progress the council is making with its Climate Change Strategy, compared with all other comparable local councils, is available from Climate Emergency UK, which has a detailed scorecard for Eastbourne. EEAN continues to collaborate with the council on ways to develop and improve its climate strategy; to assist this collaboration, all the directors of EEAN have received the Certificate in Carbon Literacy from the Carbon Literacy Project after receiving training organised by Community Energy South.

EEAN also engages in the community consultation process that the Environment Agency organises regarding its Pevensey Bay to Eastbourne Coastal Management Scheme, which this year published its plans for protecting the local area from flooding for the period 2027 to 2037. The success of this scheme is vital if Eastbourne – a low-lying coastal community very much in the front line of climate change – is to have any kind of viable, sustainable future in the long-term.

But while we still have our present coastline to enjoy, another EEAN project this year was to design an upgrade to the East Sussex Coastal Culture Trail, a key tourist route that connects up some of Eastbourne’s cultural assets with other cultural assets all the way to Hastings. The upgrade is necessary due to the current lack of safe connectivity between destinations along the trail, especially for walkers and cyclists. Bringing together the many stakeholders who need to collaborate on such an upgrade was a key part of the project. To facilitate that, EEAN and Bespoke Cycle Group organised a Summer Cycle Ride for them so that they could see for themselves exactly where the upgrade is needed. With Active Travel improvements to the trail, the local tourist economy would benefit from increased visitor numbers, coupled with an increased uptake in cycling, facilitating a modal shift away from car driving along the coast.

To conclude, I wish to express my heartfelt appreciation and thanks for the tremendous work of so many volunteers to help drive forward climate action locally, action which helps make the town better for all through co-benefits such as cleaner air, safer streets, greener public spaces, etc. We all deserve a rest over the festive period! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all!

This Annual Review was prepared by EEAN’s Executive Director, Andrew Durling, who also prepared the Annual reviews for 2022 and 2023.

Growing in a changing climate: an Eastbourne Food Summit presentation

Guest blog by Robert McGowan from the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC, based on his presentation at the Eastbourne Food Summit in October 2024:

We at Eastbourne Eco Action Network are helping the town become carbon neutral by 2030, which means working with communities, businesses and the local councils on the many environmental challenges we face. One of the things we can do is bring people together and give people the chance to tell their stories and discuss openly the most effective ways to take action.

Two years ago, we organised the Sustainable Business & Solar Summit next door at the Welcome Building – and one of the key questions we wanted to ask was: we live in officially the sunniest town in the UK – so why is there so little solar energy generation? Particularly on the large flat roofs of the industrial and retail units – and the enormous car parks that surround them.

Last year we convened the Sustainable Transport & Active Travel Summit at the Welcome Building, which also brought together lots of experts and brilliant people. The leading question I wanted to ask was why Eastbourne is practically the only seaside town in the country without a safe, traffic-free way of riding a bicycle or scooter along the seafront. I’m not sure if we have the answer to that – but at least we publicly asked the question! Fast forward to this year – and the theme of the conference is sustainable food production and distribution in the local area – brilliantly organised by the Eastbourne Food Partnership. I’m not sure if they have a key question to frame the theme this year – but can I suggest one: how is it that the sunniest town in the UK can also seem to be one of the wettest?

Illustrated map of the Eastbourne area

Helen Cann, 2024

And it’s the impact of a changing climate on local food production – growing – that I’m going to talk about today. We’re currently working on a project with Blue Heart, which is looking at innovative ways to predict and mitigate the impact of flooding in Eastbourne and southern Wealden for the benefit of local people, businesses and the environment.

Learning about the real experiences of growing is the heart of our project – as such we have developed a survey that’ll go out to everyone involved in the Eastbourne Food Partnership in the next few days.

So the theme is change. But perhaps I should start with something that hasn’t changed very much at all: the rock and soil that lies beneath us. This is one of William Smith’s famous – and beautiful – geological maps of Sussex, from 1819. It shows the green of the chalk South Downs that of
course meets the sea at Beachy Head. The light blue is Wealden clay, and the greyish bit in the middle is Hastings Greensand – which is often more substantial than the word sand suggests and forms the blocks from which St Mary’s Church in Old Town is made.

Geological map of Sussex

William Smith, 1819. The Geological Society.

The open, treeless downland was created thousands of years ago by Neolithic farmers, who built imposing, fortified villages on hilltops. Much of the East Sussex downs continued to be farmed and grazed through the Iron age and Roman times. The great forests of the Weald were sometimes cleared for hunting estates in the Saxon period that would have included livestock and crops. The Sussex iron industry was built on the iron-bearing clays and sandstones that were scorched in blast furnaces fuelled by charcoal made from the surrounding woodland.

A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales and Part of Scotland

William Smith, 1815. The Geological Society.

And of course, the different underlying rocks and clays and their varying character and chemical composition had implications for what could be grown where – and the growing community here will be far more knowledgeable about that than I am. But, as George Monbiot points out in his brilliant book Regenesis, much about soil does remain mysterious:

“Soil is this thin cushion between rock and air on which the entirety of human society and civilization is built. 99% of our calories come from it. It’s an extraordinarily complex ecosystem.

It’s more than that – it’s a biological structure, like a coral reef. It’s built by the organisms that inhabit it. If it weren’t for those organisms, there would be no soil. But it’s also got properties, unlike any other ecosystem or biological structure that we know.

In fact, there’s quite a heated debate among some soil scientists as to what soil even is. It’s got some characteristics which make it seem almost like a super organism, in that they get these extra-ordinary synchronized events taking place right across the soil. It is incredible that this system upon which we totally depend is almost unknown to us.”

Eastbourne remained an area of small rural settlements until the 19th century. Four hamlets occupied the site of the modern town. By the middle of the 1800s most of the area had fallen into the hands of two landowning families: the Gilberts (who had inherited land from the Gildredge family) and the Cavendish family. William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire, hired Henry Currey in 1859 to prepare plans for an entirely new resort town – and the rest is history.

Perhaps slightly less well known, is the story of Mary Ann Gilbert. Born in Lewes in 1776, she had a relatively poor childhood after her father died. In 1814 she inherited swathes of land and property in Sussex from her uncle. She was married to Davies Giddy, who took on the Gilbert name: they lived at Gildredge Manor and had eight children together.

Mary Ann Gilbert

Ozias Humphrey, 1796

Shocked by the extent of hardship and poverty in Sussex in the 1820s, which led to the Swing Riots, Mary Ann set up a scheme to cultivate land at Whitbread Hollow, beyond Meads and on the way to Beachy Head, which is now a sports field belonging to Bede’s School. She hired 27 labourers to shift fertile clays from nearby marshland and transport it to the allotment site – and remove flints and pebbles. They managed to produce a healthy crop of potatoes.

By 1832 Mary Ann had nearly 200 people renting allotments, growing mangelwurzels, turnips and potatoes and the occasional pig. She kept detailed reports and calculations and encouraged good practice such as using seaweed as fertilizer and introducing water butts. The number of allotment holders had doubled to over 400 by 1844. She also founded agricultural schools at Willingdon and East Dean that were staffed by teachers from the local workhouse.

Mary Ann Gilbert’s experiment reduced poverty in Sussex by almost half. It was an agricultural revolution that was the foundation of the allotments we see across the country. I think you’ll agree, it’s a really inspiring story of a local woman and one I didn’t know until very recently – I must thank Sally Lee from Rooted Community Food for enlightening me – it’s a shame she can’t be here today.

Mary Ann Gilbert died in 1845, but her legacy is still felt. Eastbourne Allotments & Garden Society, has overseen the town’s 14 allotment sites for many years. The society currently rent out over 1,200 plots, all of which are in high demand, with hundreds of people on a three-year waiting list for a plot.

Whitbread Hollow

Robert McGowan, 2017

Could it be that allotments are actually becoming fashionable? I’m beginning to think so. And why not? We seem to be in an age of anxiety – be it technology overload or concerns about pollution or the reliability of exports and imports from neighbouring countries. And this seems to be a time when lots of people want high quality, healthy, affordable local fruit and veg – plus social contact with like-minded people, exercise and a general warm glow and sense of wellbeing. That’s certainly what I’ve picked up from my visits to the Gather and Rooted community gardens. They’ve kindly agreed to fill in our survey about growing in a changing climate – and hopefully many of the other local growers will too.

Gather Community Garden

Robert McGowan, 2024

We will analyse the results and report back in a few weeks’ time. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the very wet weather over the last couple of years – rainfall around 30% above average this year – and the fact that many allotments and gardens are located on the floodplain – the feedback so far has centred on designing ways of improving drainage on plots. French drains and wicking beds have been mentioned, along with more water butts and ponds.

In recent weeks we’ve been talking about fundraising for a community cargo bike that can help with deliveries to community fridges, food banks and retailers. We might be better off with a community cargo boat!

Rooted Community Food

Robert McGowan, 2004

A video of Robert McGowan’s presentation at the Eastbourne Food Summit is available here:

https://youtu.be/XuAlNry3k-w?si=Zgl4k51JTGrDRXcg

growing food in a changing climate: a community garden view

Some of us from the Eastbourne Eco Action Network team paid a visit to the Gather Community Garden at the Churchdale allotments in Eastbourne recently and had a chat with the team there about how they deal with some of the impacts of climate change on their site. The community garden is well-managed with a large team of volunteers busily looking after a wide variety of food crops, with much of the surplus distributed to foodbanks and community fridges across the town, helping to alleviate food insecurity locally through a steady supply of fresh, organic, nutritious fruit and vegetables.

What emerged from the chat was that the garden experiences growing problems from both the stronger winds and more intense rainfall events that climate change is bringing to the local area. The winds can now be so strong that the roofs of various wooden structures around the site may be blown off at times, or the structures themselves might be blown over, resulting in much maintenance work to repair and reinforce those structures. The wind effect is most pronounced on the side of the site most exposed to the wind because of a lack of trees on that side, but the opposite side of the site is bounded by a line of very tall trees, providing good wind protection on that side.

section of garden where flooding is most severe

More significantly, the site experiences severe flooding at times, especially as the site is very much in the Eastbourne Levels, a low-lying area of town almost at sea-level and therefore difficult to drain fast enough during periods of intense rainfall. The solution that the garden is seeking is the insertion of a French drain alongside one side of the site, then linking that drain to a drainage ditch (the Horsey Sewer) just outside the entrance to the site. This ditch is part of a vast network of drainage ditches that help to drain the Eastbourne and Pevensey levels, which receive a huge volume of water from the many rivers and streams flowing into them throughout the water catchment area. Indeed, without this drainage network, the Eastbourne Levels would revert to becoming the marshland it once was centuries ago.

a diagram of a traditional French drain

According to Wikipedia, “A French drain (also known by other names including trench drain, blind drain, rubble drain, and rock drain) is a trench filled with gravel or rock, or both, with or without a perforated pipe that redirects surface water and groundwater away from an area. The perforated pipe is called a weeping tile (also called a drain tile or perimeter tile). When the pipe is draining, it “weeps”, or exudes liquids. It was named during a time period when drainpipes were made from terracotta tiles. French drains are primarily used to prevent ground and surface water from penetrating or damaging building foundations and as an alternative to open ditches or storm sewers for streets and highways. Alternatively, French drains may be used to distribute water, such as a septic drain field at the outlet of a typical septic tank sewage treatment system. French drains are also used behind retaining walls to relieve ground water pressure”.

But the garden is waiting for permission from the Environment Agency for permission to connect the French drain to the drainage network, as the agency has the ultimate responsibility for the network and controls the water quality as well as maintaining the many pumps and sluice gates that regulate the flow of water through the network. This permission is essential before work on installing the drain can begin (assuming sufficient funds can be raised for this project).

Whilst we were at the garden, we talked to a volunteer about his work and discovered that one of the problems the site experiences in very hot summers is the soil drying out and becoming very hard, making it difficult to break up when preparing a new growing bed. There is plenty of mains water on site so watering the rowing beds is not an issue (apart from the labour involved!), so there is not an emphasis on having lots of rainwater butts on site like we saw on other sites like the forest garden in Pevensey, which lacks mains water. However, the volunteer did report that he would like to see a large water container sunk into the ground on site to store water so as to reduce the amount of walking from the mains water pipes outside site to the growing beds.

growing food in a changing climate: a community centre view

Eastbourne Food Partnership’s community engagement stall.

At a recent community fair at the Langney Community Centre, at which the Eastbourne Food Partnership ran a community engagement stall with regards to the new community garden being developed outside the centre, I chatted with Martin Hills, the gardener employed part-time by the centre to help design and develop the community garden on land owned by Eastbourne Borough Council. Martin is a qualified permaculture designer and is applying his knowledge of permaculture design principles to help design the community garden, which is about 0.75 acres in size. As he says in his garden plan: “The aim is for a thriving, self-sustaining ecosystem that meets the needs of its inhabitants – including human. To this end, it will be a place where people want to be, a place of beauty, a place that appeals to all the senses, a place where some human food can be grown, a place to play, a place to sit and quietly reflect, a place to connect with Nature”.

Martin Hills with his community garden design.

Martin standing in front of the community garden.

As the garden design incorporates vegetable beds already partly prepared, and an orchard already under development, as well as a forest garden that would contain plants that can be foraged, I asked Martin about how the food growing systems in the garden would cope with the extreme weather events now more frequently occurring as climate change accelerates. He replied that the key is diversity of planting and designing in resilience to the garden. The greater the diversity of food crops and plants grown within the garden, the more likely that there would be some crops in any year that would survive extreme weather events, even if other crops failed in that year, something that would have to be expected and accepted to some extent as climate change progresses. Increasing the chance of survivability would be made possible by the extensive use of no-dig methods, deep-rooting plants (especially perennials), and cover-mulching (with compost and humus produced on-site) to protect the stability and quality of the soil as well as ensuring enough drainage to prevent the soil from either drying out too much or becoming too wet. The site is on a slope, and elevated above the Eastbourne floodplain, so it does not suffer the kind of extensive flooding during extreme rainfall events that, for example, some of the allotments sites in the lower part of town do.

Google satellite image of Langney community garden.

The addition of forest gardening principles within the garden also helps as it increases biological sustainability and plant diversity, attracts pollinators and other beneficial wildlife, helps keep pests and diseases under control, and provides leaf litter, leading to increased nutrient resistance and drought resistance (particularly useful given that Eastbourne is in a water-stressed area and increasingly severe droughts are a feature of climate change in the south east of England). This helps to ensure the garden can flourish without large amounts of watering. The other useful feature of forest gardens is that they also allow for continual food output without annual tilling, pesticides, fertilisers, or other high inputs of chemicals or energy. Another good example of how a forest garden works can be seen at the Pevensey & Westham Community Forest Garden, a very short distance away from Langney.

Martin standing next to the copper beech tree in the community garden.

The community garden already has an abundance of mature trees around the edges, including a magnificent copper beech tree providing valuable cool shade. There are also some new tree saplings planted by Treebourne, which will provide valuable shade along the side of the garden next to the road. Trees help protect young crops by providing wind-shelter against winter storms and cooling shade during summer heatwaves, invaluable as the UK now experiences warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers.

Martin explained that, as the community garden develops, whatever surplus food is produced by it will be directed to the foodbank and community larder hosted by the Langney Community Centre each week, helping to ensure that there is a regular, fresh supply of healthy organic fruit, nuts, and vegetables to supplement surplus food brought in from elsewhere. This will help to build local food security and food resilience in Langney, one of the relatively more deprived areas of Eastbourne, and this is so important given that national and international food supply chains are increasingly coming under stress due to the impacts of climate change.

Martin at the edge of the circular lawn.

The creation of a large, circular lawn in the centre of the garden would facilitate outdoor community gatherings as well as workshops to educate local people about matters such as foraging, crop processing, plant identification, etc. The Langney Community Centre is keen to facilitate this education, as evidenced by the explanatory signs in the Edible Garden already developed on a small patch of land immediately in front of the centre and maintained by a keen band of volunteers.

Martin’s top tip for growers is to avoid digging the soil as much as possible, as digging disturbs the soil life that is essential for good plant growth and efficient drainage.

growing food in a changing climate: an allotment view

Pevensey Bay is a low-lying coastal community in East Sussex, next-door to the large resort town of Eastbourne. The shingle bank along Pevensey Bay’s seafront provides protection from the strong storm surges that often come its way, especially in winter. But the village also experiences flooding inland, as several drainage channels run through it, helping to drain the large water catchment area known as the Pevensey Levels, a freshwater wetland renowned for its wildlife. Because the village is more or less at the level of the high-water mark, the water in the drainage channels can sometimes only be released out to sea when the ebb tide falls below the level of the water in those channels, which can be very full in periods of intense rainfall, periods which will become ever more frequent and intense as anthropogenic climate change accelerates. This can lead to the channels overflowing their banks at times.

flooding in winter of 2023-24

To explore this phenomenon further, following on from my previous investigation on climate change impacts on local food growing, in collaboration with the Eastbourne Food Partnership, I paid a visit in June 2024 to some allotments at Pevensey Bay owned by Pevensey Parish Council, situated off Waverley Gardens. These allotments are next to the Salt Haven, one of the main drainage channels running through the village, and therefore had a history of flooding incidents. From my conversations with some of the allotment holders on site, it was clear that many of the allotments there are flooded at least once every year, but that the winter of 2023-24 was the worst in living memory for flooding, as there were about 4 or 5 very severe flooding incidents. Not all the site gets flooded, as about half the allotments are on higher ground as much of the site slopes gently upwards from the Salt Haven. But all those allotments that back directly onto the haven do flood every year.

fruit trees next to Salt Haven

The main impact of the flooding is that growing vegetables is pretty much impossible in winter on the areas that do flood, but it was noticeable that there were many large, mature fruit trees and bushes on the areas that experienced flooding every year, and that they seemed to be flourishing, with plenty of fruit developing on them, which seemed to indicate a high degree of tolerance to the flooding than if vegetables were planted, perhaps indicating how the allotment holders had adapted to such flooding by earmarking those areas just for fruit growing. Certainly the allotment holders I spoke to were phlegmatic about the flooding situation, accepted that only fruit trees were capable of surviving the flooding and just planned most of their vegetable growing higher up on the slope above the flooding level. But they reported that because there had been so much rain over the previous winter, the whole site was so waterlogged that most vegetable planting had to be significantly delayed until May, shortening the growing season quite considerably. The difficulties for growers on the site is reflected in the fact that the rental charges for the allotments are much lower than on other allotments in the area, especially in Eastbourne. However, it was clear from my site visit that, once planting had finally got under way, the productivity of the site appeared to be high, with most allotment plots demonstrating a healthy abundance and growth of crops.

pipe outlet that exacerbates allotment flooding

One allotment holder was keen to show me a drainage pipe outlet that was below the haven bank as it apparently aids the flooding of the site by allowing the water to flow easily onto the site well before the haven breaks it banks, leading to a much more rapid and more frequent flooding of the site than perhaps should be the case. It appears that there is no tide flap (or the tide flap is damaged or malfunctioning) on the haven side of the pipe to shut off the flow when the water level in the haven rises above the level of the pipe. I heard that there are probably several other similar pipes on site within the bank undergrowth with the same or similar issues, which has been raised by some allotment holders with the local Environment Agency staff to no avail apparently.

view of Salt Haven from allotments bank

It does raise the possibility of whether a survey could be done at some point (perhaps by the Blue Heart Project or an organisation funded by it?) to investigate what kind of pipe drainage does actually exist along the Salt Haven and how it affects water levels both within the haven and beyond its banks. Such a survey would presumably involve extensive clearing of the undergrowth along the bank to check where the pipes are and what condition they are in. But it would perhaps generate valuable data about how the haven actually functions in a critical stretch of it before it reaches the sea, and also create more accurate data about how fluvial flooding impacts Pevensey Bay generally, as many of the gardens elsewhere in the village also experience flooding from the drainage channels.

growing food in a changing climate: a forest garden view

The impacts of climate change are becoming ever clearer and more damaging as the years go by. One of the most significant impacts is on the way we grow food. As climate scientists predicted, UK winters are becoming warmer and wetter, and last winter was no exception, resulting in significant crop losses for UK farmers. It also resulted in greater difficulties for local growers in the Eastbourne area, such as smallholders, allotment holders, community gardens, etc, especially as intense rainfall events led to flooding issues on many growing spaces, followed by weeks of very sodden ground that made any work very challenging. The need for growers to adapt to a rapidly changing climate is becoming ever more acute.

in response, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network has begun a collaboration with the Eastbourne Food Partnership, supported by the Blue Heart project, to survey the ways in which local growers are responding to the challenges of growing food despite the impacts of climate change and investigate how such growers can be better supported in their climate adaptation efforts.

One such local growing project is the Pevensey & Westham Community Forest Garden, which has been running for the last 8 years, planting many fruit and nut trees and bushes on land that had fallen out of active management for many years, becoming an unkempt and overgrown scrub and woodland in the process. The volunteers that run the forest garden report that they have not experienced any significant drop in fruit and nut production even during intense heatwaves or periods of intense rainfall, primarily because:

the site is very well-drained, being in the Pevensey Levels where the extensive network of deep and wide drainage channels is carefully monitored to ensure water levels in the channels are kept at stable levels with no flooding onto adjacent land (the Langney Sewer runs alongside the forest garden but has never flooded onto it).
the site is protected by shading from an extensive tree canopy that keeps the forest garden cool enough during heatwaves, reduces water evaporation from the soil and ground cover, and protects young plants against strong winds during winter storms.

community orchard site next to Pevensey Castle

The forest garden volunteers point out that, by contrast, a community orchard they have been developing in the last few years on an exposed site next to Pevensey Castle, a short distance away from the forest garden, did suffer a big drop in fruit production in 2022 during the intense summer heatwave that resulted in the UK reaching a temperature of 40 degrees C for the first time ever. The relative lack of tree cover for the orchard, compared to the forest garden, meant that the young fruit trees did not have enough shade, putting them under great stress.

rainwater butts at side of forest garden tool shed

However, the main issue for the forest garden is the lack of any mains water on site, which means that in intense heatwaves and periods of prolonged drought there is no supply of water readily available for any watering needs. This has necessitated the volunteers setting up many water butts and rainwater cisterns on site to capture and store as much rainwater as possible. Rainwater conservation is sure to become ever more important for all growers and gardeners as time goes by, especially as fresh water is generally becoming an ever more scare, and more costly, resource in the water-stressed south-east of England.

Forest gardening is therefore one way in which food growing can be adapted to changing climate conditions. But other local food growing enterprises and communities will be visited over the course of the next few months to discover how they try and cope with the challenges of climate change and what kinds of help they may need to cope better.

supercharging carbon neutrality through symposia

The recent Carbon Neutrality Symposium organised by the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC (EEAN CIC) held at Eastbourne Town Hall on Saturday 20th April 2024 is hopefully the start of a regular series of annual symposia to review and reinvigorate the drive towards a carbon neutral Eastbourne by 2030, as mandated by Eastbourne Borough Council’s Climate Emergency Declaration of July 2019.

The Eastbourne Borough Council (EBC) Climate Lead, Councillor James Murray, opened the proceedings and made the point that EBC’s performance on its Climate Emergency Strategy could be usefully compared with other similar councils through the Climate Emergency UK scorecards.

These scorecards, completed for every single UK council, is a mine of useful, granular data about how councils are doing on climate action and a very useful source for EBC to use for its proposed review and refresh of its Climate Emergency Strategy, which will be updated by the end of 2024.

Kate Richardson, Sustainability Lead Officer for EBC, gave a short presentation on where Eastbourne as a borough currently is with regards to carbon neutrality and what the challenges are for the town in reaching that target by 2030. The main challenge is to speed up the borough-wide carbon emissions reduction from its present 6% or 7% reduction per year to more than 12% per year if Eastbourne is to meet its fair share of keeping global carbon reductions to no more than 1.5 degrees Centigrade as mandated by the UN IPCC COP21 Paris Agreement of 2015.

The keynote speaker for the day was Richard Garland from Gradient Consultants, an Eastbourne-based business. His inspirational speech and slideshow presentation demonstrated the kind of example on sustainability, climate action, and Net Zero that all Eastbourne businesses could follow, and will need to follow eventually in any case, as more Net Zero legislation is applied to a wider range of businesses in the next few years in order to help meet the UK’s legally binding commitment under the Climate Change Act to achieve Net Zero by 2050. As Richard said, “As a business we are de-risking the need to meet current and future compliance requirements within our industry, and we are acknowledging the opportunities of the low carbon transition- the green economy”.

The results of the Carbon Neutral survey by the EEAN CIC were presented by Jill Shacklock, one of the directors of the EEAN CIC. The survey was very much a pilot study that will help inform a subsequent revised and enlarged survey later on. But the initial data reveals how some early wins can be made in advancing carbon neutrality in Eastbourne right now. For example, many people don’t know what the current Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating on their property is or how to find out what it is. The government has a website that gives the EPC rating for all UK properties that have one, and each rating includes info about what measures could be taken to improve the EPC rating.

Andrew Durling, a director of the EEAN CIC, gave a very brief introduction to two digital tools that can help local residents and organisations to both discover their carbon footprints and ways to reduce them significantly through simple, practical actions that can be taken right now. The first was Giki Zero and the second was small99. Both tools are free, and were presented as particularly user-friendly and easy to use. Giki Zero allows people to quickly find out their carbon footprint and then select actions which can help reduce it, each selection automatically recalculating the footprint to demonstrate progress towards the 2030 global average target for all citizens.

Small99 is particularly useful for small businesses and organisations of any kind that have little time and resources to devote to in-depth Net Zero action planning. Such planning will need to be demonstrated by all organisations, especially businesses (as Richard Garland’s keynote speech emphasised), over the coming years if they wish to maximise their chances of both complying with Net Zero legislation and in securing more business or funding from other organisations already in compliance with such legislation.

Breakout groups throughout the event allowed for networking and sharing of ideas about how Eastbourne’s carbon neutrality strategy could be improved.

Carbon offsetting is an important aspect of carbon neutrality, and one of Eastbourne’s major carbon offsetting and carbon sequestration schemes was developed by the Eastbourne United Nations Association, which had an information stall during the Symposium. This scheme is entirely administered by volunteers and many local organisations have made donations to it, including EBC.

A full overview of all the actions and initiative currently being undertaken or planned in Eastbourne to further the town’s carbon neutrality strategy can be seen on the One Planet Eastbourne community ecosystem platform developed by the EEAN CIC in collaboration with OnePlanet.

Interestingly, the recent local elections held on May 4th can be seen as a triumph for those candidates that campaigned for cleaner air, better active travel/public transport, and faster climate action. As Chris Skidmore, the UK government’s former Net Zero tsar, said, “These elections have shown pro-environment parties and mayors who made net zero central to their campaigns made significant gains”. The Eastbourne Carbon Neutrality 2030 campaign is unanimously supported by all borough councillors, and has popular support amongst the town’s residents, as the recent well-attended Carbon Neutrality Symposium, and the many other events mounted, or supported by, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network indicates.

Making business a force for good

At our recent Carbon Neutrality Symposium held at Eastbourne Town hall on 20th April, our keynote speaker, Richard Garland, a prominent local business owner, gave an inspirational talk about how local businesses can make a very significant contribution towards Eastbourne becoming a truly Carbon Neutral town by 2030. Below is an abridged version of his speech:

Good afternoon, everyone. I am Richard Garland, and amongst other things I am co-founder of Gradient Consultants. We are chartered surveyors, project managers and compliance consultants, based here in town since 2004. Some of our projects you may be familiar with include the Fishing Quay development on Sovereign Harbour, Costa Drive-thru on Hampden Retail Park and the aﬀordable rental ﬂats in Southﬁelds Road. In 2020 we certiﬁed as a B-Corp, the ﬁrst independent company in Eastbourne and one of the ﬁrst UK built environment professional ﬁrms to do so. B-Corp is a global movement transforming the economy to beneﬁt ALL – people, communities and the planet. We still have to make a proﬁt but the way we go about it isn’t about making proﬁt at any cost – everyone has to beneﬁt along the way.
Our purpose is our commitment to making a positive impact on the world. As a certiﬁed B-Corp, our values are deeply rooted in sustainability, social responsibility, and ethical business practices. We believe what we do in the next 7 years leading up to 2030 really matters and now is the time to act, with our industry being responsible for over 40% of the UK’s carbon emissions. We consider ourselves carbon neutral through our support of Ecologi. Ecologi® have achieved the Veriﬁed Carbon Standard (VCS) and have been our oﬀsetting partner for a number of years. We currently oﬀset the business and personal emissions for all our people . We support tree planting and ecological schemes across the world. In the last 3 years we have oﬀset 138 tonnes of carbon, planting over 2000 trees, and supported global sustainable projects. Our goal is to retain this oﬀ- setting, regardless of emissions reduction , but bring it closer to home, which we have already started to do by supporting planting on the Eastbourne escarpment. But we want to go further…
In 2022 we decided to set our ambitions on Net-Zero by 2030. We recognised that at some point in the not too distant future Net Zero will be the new carbon neutrality, so we wanted to be ahead of that journey. We started looking at data collection. I cannot begin to tell you how many articles on how to measure, what to measure, and when to measure from, we read – and at one point we got analysis paralysis – just stuck! And it took a friend to simply say stop thinking and just do something, anything – even if it is simply to walk to work and then make that your ﬁrst action! This was a bit of a light bulb moment and as long as we could evidence a robust source of data it was worth doing something positive, rather than worrying over the how! We looked and celebrated what we were already doing, which included recycling pretty much everything, making sure our unwanted IT equipment and furniture goes into the circular economy, and pushing our clients to install bee bricks, swift boxes and fruit trees onto their development sites.
Calculating our Scope 1 and 2 emissions was relatively straightforward for us as a professional services business so I won’t dwell too much on it- the biggest change is the utility companies will help you with this so it is much easier to deal with. In conjunction with our landlord we now have an oﬃce that has solar panels, LED lighting, infra-red heating panels, additional roof insulation and ﬁlm on the windows to reduce solar gain. As for the dreaded Scope 3 emissions, for a ﬁrm such as ours this is where the majority of our emissions lurk and a challenging area for organisations in terms of data collection and carbon reduction initiatives. From travel to water to the things we buy, the list was long but eventually we agreed a more manageable list of priority measures, assisted by Small99. Our Pathway to Net Zero covers short and longer term planned activities to reduce our business ‘and personal’ GHG emissions, as well as push for a greater reduction in the emissions of the projects and services we advise on and can inﬂuence. At the last count there were 50 + ideas and actions. The priority ones get a champion, an estimated date for achievement and the emission saving impact. As a result we now use local suppliers as a priority. Local sourcing helps us reduce our carbon footprint and supports our community and local economy. We specify nature based materials, including hemp, lime and we now specify Graphenstone paint for all our projects. This paint absorbs CO2, removes pollutants to purify the air and as a mineral based paint it contains no microplastics. We hold our business event at venues close to a train station to encourage guests to make sustainable travel choices.
And we waved goodbye to our computer server in October last year, which was no longer needed since moving to the cloud as one of our reduction actions. The server had been running continuously for 6 years and by retiring the server we are saving 118 kgCO2e per year. The biggest impact on the list we are currently addressing is banking and pensions. Moving these ﬁnancial instruments has the potential to have the greatest impact of all – a sustainable pension is 21 times more powerful than giving up ﬂying, becoming vegetarian and switching to renewable energy. Our goal is to make a 10% CO2e reduction year on year from 2024 to 2030. This will have reduced our overall emissions by 70% by 2030. With the Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction prior to 2023 we believe we can achieve the necessary reduction in emissions to at least try and hit Net Zero by 2030.
So why do this, what and who beneﬁts? B-Corp gave us ‘a legal high, we started to see ourselves as activists and ethical leaders. For us it is a climate justice choice . As a business we are de-risking the need to meet current and future compliance requirements within our industry , and we are acknowledging the opportunities of the low carbon transition – the green economy. For example, retroﬁtting the UK’s existing building stocks, measuring the Whole Life Carbon costs on construction projects, and the impact of Net Zero building standards, are all opportunities for sustainable growth and meeting future Department for Energy Security and Net Zero targets. Clients need us to have taken action because their funders (banks, pension funds, government) will be demanding it of them. We are inﬂuencing our supply chain to take action before they require it of us and we are oﬀering to assist them with that change – openness, sharing ideas and transparency will make the journey go quicker! And to close, my advice to anyone at the beginning or on this journey is: do not over-strategise and get stuck in the data. Imagine if we did nothing and just talked about it? Look at what you have done so far, celebrate it and then take another step on your journey – be a force for good whatever you do!

We are grateful to Richard for kindly making available a full transcript of his speech, as well as the slideshow to accompany it.

Suncoast Solar Farm Planning Application (ref.230800): setting the context

This guest blog is from Miles Berkley, who was one of the co-founders of the Eastbourne ECO Action Network CIC, and is a Director of TechResort CIC which works from its base in Devonshire Ward helping to tackle digital exclusion, here and across East Sussex. He’s also a member of the multi-agency Lewes District Cost of Living Partners Action Group, and is a subscribing member of Friends of the Earth.

aerial view of proposed solar farm in Eastbourne Park

Setting The Context:

Friends of the Earth notes the need to increase at a minimum the amount of locally generated renewable energy in Eastbourne from about 4.8 GWh currently to 28GWh i.e. 5.8 times present levels (UK Climate Change Committee). In fact, Friends of the Earth recommends we go further to reach 56.1 GWh. For more details, look here: https://groups.friendsoftheearth.uk/near-you/local-authority/eastbourne#energy

The Eastbourne Borough Council Carbon Neutral Annual Report (Dec 2023) reveals that the town’s emissions in 2021 rose 6% from 2020 levels to 277.4 ktCO2e, the main source of which is domestic buildings, closely followed by transport. Eastbourne Borough Council has pledged to achieve a carbon neutral town by 2030, which the Tyndall Centre at the University of Manchester states that it requires an overall reduction of emissions by 12.3% per year – which is not being achieved.

We are experiencing the destabilising effects of accelerating global warming with more extreme weather events: storms, flooding, heatwaves, wildfires – all devastating the habitats of every species. We need to rapidly scale up action to decarbonise our energy sources, moving away from fossil fuels, as well as improving the UK’s national energy security.

Biodiversity Net Gain – improvements needed.

The present proposal presents a Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) of between 24-29% based on the creation of new habitats and water courses, plus the addition of 11.51 new hedgerow units.

In comparison, another similar sized local development of 17MW (compared to 20MW for Suncoast) achieved a 243% net gain in habitat areas, and 104% in hedgerows. This, the Ouse Valley Solar Farm, is supported by Greenpeace.

The Cleve Hill Solar Farm (373MW) development on the North Kent Coast achieves a 65% BNG and is supported by Swale Friends of the Earth Group. The latter development achieved this by reducing the overall area covered by solar panels to 45.5% of the developable area, leaving the remaining arable land to be managed for biodiversity benefits.

The Berwick Solar Farm in Wealden has, for example, installed a Swift Tower, orchards, and thermosolar beehives.

The developers need engage the professional opinion, and support of, local ecologists to conduct further studies, to obtain detailed expertise regarding the site, and to help oversee the delivery of a far-reaching and rigorous biodiversity net gain management programme. Preferably, they could work with Sussex Wildlife Trust which advised the Berwick Solar Farm, and possibly Buglife, who also provide specialist advice to realising the biodiversity of solar developments.

This proposal should seek to improve the BNG target, either through reducing the density of solar panels on the existing developable area and/or including other areas within the proximity for biodiversity investment, as done at Cleve Hill.

Local Community Benefits – needs a clear, significant, and defined local gain.

The proposal indicates that a Community Benefit Fund may be created but falls short of specifying the financial contribution envisaged, or the process for managing this, and does not set out transparently the financial gains to the developer, or landowner (Chatsworth Estate/Duke of Devonshire).

Suncoast state that the 20MW capacity can supply c6.400 homes. They use a metric of 2,900 kWh per home (slightly higher than the Ofgem average of 2,700 kWh consumption of electricity). The Energy Stats portal, which monitors the wholesale market price of energy, indicates the average price is currently around 10p per kWh – which if achieved would result in a minimum annual income to Suncoast of £1,856,000 annually, though market prices fluctuate e.g. prices have been twice or three times this level during the past 12 months, this could result in a turnover of c£4-6 million per annum.

From this the developer would need to repay the capital costs, say £424,000 per annum (£16 million capital investment at 6% interest depreciated over the 40 years expected lifespan) less other costs such as network connection fees, business rates, maintenance and rent to the landowner. If the development achieved an average net margin of say c20% of turnover, this could result in a net profit somewhere between £360,000 -1,080,000 each year (depending on market prices)

This speculation goes to the heart of the difference of this type of commercial development compared to a community energy scheme where the financial profile is more transparent, and the community benefit better defined. It would be beneficial for Suncoast to share its financial forecasts.

Level Up our deprived parts of town in a targeted and direct way

This proposal needs to recognise the financial wealth historically extracted from Eastbourne by the Chatsworth Estate (valued at some £905 million) together with opportunity to “level up” those parts of the town which are most deprived, from the latest LSOA data i.e. these are Hampden Park, Langney, the northeast of town centre, Roselands, and Devonshire Ward.

Given the historical perspective, and depth of the local need I suggest that a minimum fund of £5,000-10,000 per MW annually is provided by Suncoast i.e. £100,000 -200,000 each year. With the fund to be administered by a board of local constituted third sector grassroots organisations directing the funds to tackle deprivation in all its manifestations (energy and food poverty, homelessness, digital exclusion, and other aspects of deprivation) in these areas. This would augment and better target the now much reduced Eastbourne Borough Council Devolved Ward Budget Scheme.

Review of 2023: a personal perspective from our Executive Director

Another year has gone by, so time for a review of what the Eastbourne Eco Action Network (EEAN) has been up to in 2023, following on from the reviews of our activities in 2021 and 2022.

The highlight of our year was undoubtedly our widely acclaimed Sustainable Transport & Active Travel Summit in November, which opened with a keynote speech from Chris Ralls, a member of the EcoTransport Group. This summit brought together all the main players in the local transport sector to investigate ways of deepening collaboration on plans and actions to tackle Eastbourne’s notoriously chronic traffic congestion and pollution, as well as its over-dependence upon cars for travelling across town. Transport accounts for over 25% of the town’s carbon emissions, a proportion which has so far stubbornly refused to decline. The quality of presentations and workshops was very high, and together with the extensive networking evident during the summit, there is perhaps a good chance that the barriers to progress on local transport will finally be overcome, leading to more, better, safer walking and cycling infrastructure as well as more reliable bus services operating on dedicated bus lanes supported by more bus priority measures. The first opportunity to see such progress will come if the new Local Transport Plan 4 prepared by East Sussex County Council gets final approval and adequate funding for its implementation. You can comment on it now that it is open to public consultation until February 2024.

The One Planet Eastbourne online community ecosystem platform for mapping and tracking progress towards a more sustainable town was developed by the EEAN this year using the innovative OnePlanet app, designed to facilitate deeper collaboration between local organisations on climate actions and environmental initiatives. Extra grant funding has now been secured to significantly extend work on this platform and to help other local local groups to use the OnePlanet app.

The EEAN organised an Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 Gathering at the Town Hall in May, bringing together many of the local groups involved in helping to make the town Carbon Neutral by 2030. It was an excellent opportunity for those groups to give updates on their progress and to network with other local groups. Hopefully another such gathering can be organised in 2024.

The EEAN partnered up with Energise Sussex Coast to train up local volunteers to become Energy Champions, equipping them to run local energy projects such as giving basic energy advice to local residents and supporting local energy efficiency or clean energy initiatives of various kinds. The first event organised by the Eastbourne Energy Champions was a Business Community Energy Day in July at East Sussex College’s Green Training Hub in Hampden Park The first cohort of Energy Champions have now completed their training, and more cohorts will be trained up in 2024.

Eastbourne Borough Council decided this year to fund a scheme for offsetting the carbon emissions of Airbourne 2023, by far the town’s biggest festival of the year. The council approached us for advice on which scheme to fund, and we advised that the best scheme would be one developed locally by the Eastbourne United Nations Association. This scheme, which has been running successfully for many years, channels donations from local organisations into supplying free tree saplings to local communities in Uganda, proving these communities with much needed biodiversity improvements as well as nutritious fruit and natural medicines. The amount of carbon sequestered by the scheme is much greater than any similarly-sized tree planting scheme in the UK because of the special nature of the trees planted and the very favourable climate of that part of equatorial Uganda where the tree are planted.

In October, Eastbourne Borough Council submitted plans to the South Downs National Park Authority for its proposed Black Robin Farm redevelopment, part of its government-funded Levelling Up project. If approved, this would trigger a significant investment in the Eastbourne Downland Estate, the biggest since the downland was saved by popular opposition from being sold off by the council in 2017. Comments on the plan can be made via the SDNPA planning portal. Much rides on how well the plans would protect and enhance the downland biodiversity as well as addressing how transport by visitors to the site by bus, walking and cycling can best be supported and encouraged. I and my fellow directors have submitted comments to the SDNPA about the plans.

In December, plans for a big solar farm in Eastbourne, the first ever, was submitted to Eastbourne Borough Council by a commercial developer. If approved, it will be sited in Eastbourne Park and will supposedly generate 20MW of electricity, equivalent to producing enough clean energy to power 6,400 homes per year. If approved, the solar farm would represent the single biggest increase in solar power within the town, adding to the solar power generated by the solar canopy installed this year by Eastbourne DGH over one of its car parks. Solar power is a key part of the clean energy transition and a key element in the national strategy of weaning the UK off its traditional reliance on fossil fuels for power generation. However, much rides on the quality of the solar farm’s proposals on protecting local biodiversity, and how much the local community would benefit from the project. I and my fellow directors gave advice to the developers on how that might best be achieved.

2023 was the hottest year in human history and 2024 looks set to be even hotter when the current El Nino reaches its climax. No wonder 2023 was full of natural disasters worldwide such as severe floods, droughts and storms. Given that we may be entering the early stages of climate breakdown, there is a need for much more rapid progress not only towards a zero carbon Eastbourne, but also towards building a strong climate adaptation plan to prepare for the inevitable and damaging impacts of climate change upon Eastbourne, a low-lying coastal community that is very much in the front line of climate change, facing the rising seas and stronger storm surges of a rapidly warming world. Indeed, a key part of adapting to climate change is managing and improving our local sea defences. Which is why, in November, the Environment Agency released its list of options for maintaining and improving the local sea defences from 2027 to 2037 and started a public consultation on them. The EEAN is represented on the agency’s Coastal Community Forum for Eastbourne and attended all of its meetings so far, giving feedback about what our network perceives as the key issues that need addressing.

Key to developing the effective climate adaptation plan we need is the development of a strong and resilient local food system that supports local food growing initiatives and provides equitable access to healthy, locally grown or locally sourced food. Fortunately, the good folks at the Eastbourne Food Partnership, one of our partners, are doing lots of work on this and have this year won the Bronze Award from Sustainable Food Places for that work. They deserve congratulations on achieving this significant milestone and look forward to deepening our collaboration with them in 2024, especially through working with them on researching ways in which local food growing can adapt to our changing climate.

But there is so much more to do, especially as Eastbourne Borough Council’s latest update to its Climate Emergency Strategy states: “The Tyndall Centre and the University of Manchester have carried out analysis that recommends a minimum of a 12.3% per year reduction to deliver a Paris aligned carbon budget. The borough as a whole is a long way off meeting this year-on-year reduction”. The effectiveness of the council’s climate action plan was comprehensively assessed this year by Climate Emergency UK, which published a detailed scorecard of progress achieved in Eastbourne so far. Yet, as the strategy update also says, “We must not be put off by the challenge but must rally together and work together to improve the environment of our town for our residents, children, businesses and visitors now and in the future in order to mitigate global climate change”.

I wish to thank all the members and supporters of EEAN for all their hard work. The EEAN is entirely run by volunteers on a very small budget but consistently punches way above its weight, making significant contributions towards the ECN2030 campaign. May you all have a very restful and peaceful Christmas holiday period followed by a very Happy New Year.

Andrew Durling, Executive Director, Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC

What to do about Airbourne 2023 carbon emissions?

Airbourne 2023 is now over. But its carbon emissions remain in the atmosphere, adding to global warming. The emissions from Airbourne 2022 were estimated by Eastbourne Borough Council to be 241.5 tonnes C02e from the airshow event itself, and 6,033 tonnes C02e from the transport impact of event visitors. The council decided to offset those emissions through a carbon capture scheme. Eastbourne already does have carbon capture initiatives, primarily those run by Treebourne, a social enterprise that had its beginnings within the Eastbourne Eco Action Network, and which has already planted many thousands of trees across the borough, primarily on council-owned land.

But the scale of the carbon emissions from a festival as big as Airbourne 2023 – which attracted 750,000 visitors, most of them arriving in Eastbourne by car – was such that they could not be offset within the borough alone. So following conversations between Eastbourne Borough Council, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC, and the United Nations Association Eastbourne, it was agreed that the council would fund the UNA Eastbourne’s carbon offsetting scheme, allocating £7,000 to plant 14,000 tropical hardwood trees in Uganda, capturing 62,240 tonnes of carbon over 10 years. This scheme has been running successfully for many years already, resulting in 175,418 trees planted in Uganda so far.

But the scheme does far more than carbon capture. It was designed in close collaboration with local communities in Uganda to ensure that the scheme has the full consent of those communities and meets their needs. Backed by scientific research and monitored closely by UNA Eastbourne and its Ugandan partners, the trees planted are indigenous to Uganda, grown by Ugandan tree nurseries from seedlings, distributed freely to those communities that want them, and nurtured to full growth by those very same communities who integrate them within their own agroforestry practices on their farms or on land maintained by community institutions such as local schools and churches. The trees not only capture carbon faster and in far greater quantities than trees planted outside of the Equatorial region where Uganda is, but they provide many other benefits, such as enriching the soil and providing a harvest of nutritious fruit and natural medicines for the communities that nurture them.

Importantly, the trees planted under this scheme do not take farmland out of production, nor push out poor farmers onto more marginal land. Local farmers decide if they need the trees, which they value because the types of trees offered under the scheme complement the crops they grow on their farms. The trees protect the crops interplanted between them and enrich the soil, thereby increasing the productivity and income of the farms. Trees and crops work well together within the agroforestry system common on small farms in Uganda, something we should perhaps have a lot more of within the UK.

Tito Wekesa supervising the farmer (left) on planting the Mvule sapling. Behind this Mvule is a 1-year-old Terminalia. All saplings are protected by being in the midst of this banana shamba.

All of us, whether we live in the UK, Uganda, share the same planetary home, so all of us benefit from carbon capture schemes when they are run well, with careful selection of trees, right location, etc. The scheme that UNA Eastbourne runs in Uganda recognises that reality and also delivers a degree of climate justice too, as Uganda, like most countries in Africa, has contributed far less to global warming than rich countries like the UK have historically done, whilst the carbon footprint of most Ugandans is far less than that of most people in Eastbourne.

We can be proud of the fact that a carbon capture scheme devised in Eastbourne is having a significant effect in drawing down carbon from the atmosphere and setting a good example of an effective, fair, research-backed carbon offsetting scheme. But this does not relieve us of the responsibility to reduce the carbon emissions of Eastbourne, and our own individual carbon footprints, as fast as possible. The emissions of festivals like Airbourne, and indeed of all sectors of the Eastbourne economy, have to be much further reduced year on year until the town becomes genuinely carbon neutral, hopefully by 2030. Will we collectively rise to the challenge?

This blog post written by Andrew Durling, a Board director of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC

Coming soon: a summit for sorting out Eastbourne’s transport issues

Eastbourne ECO Action Network (EEAN) is organising a SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT & ACTIVE TRAVEL SUMMIT at the Welcome Building, Eastbourne on Friday 17th November 2023. It will be a follow-up to the successful Sustainable Business & Solar Summit last year, which brought together solar and renewable energy experts, manufacturers, installers, landlords and financiers to explore ways of expanding solar power in the UK’s sunniest town.

Why Transport? Our transportation systems, dependent as they are on vehicles running on imported fossil fuels, are a highly significant component of ongoing damage to the earth’s life-support systems. A wealth of evidence suggests that current levels of road transport also undermine people’s health and well-being through pollution, congestion, collisions and by eroding social connections. UN Secretary General António Guterres summed up the situation in 2021:

“Transport is fundamental to implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement. We are already close to the 1.5°C upper limit agreed in Paris. The door is closing for action on climate, nature and pollution. We must act together, smartly, and quickly, to make the next nine years count. Transport, which accounts for more than one quarter of global greenhouse gases, is key to getting on track. We must decarbonize all means of transport in order to get to net-zero emissions by 2050 globally. We know how to make this happen. First, we must accelerate the decarbonization of the entire transport sector.”

Here in Eastbourne, the largest town in East Sussex, with more than 100,000 residents, the local authorities have made various commitments. Eastbourne Borough Council (EBC) have pledged to achieve a carbon neutral town by 2030 (transport accounts for about a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions). The East Sussex Local Transport Plan runs up to 2026 and seeks to improve sustainable transport, while the Transport Strategy for the South East seeks to refocus its approach from “planning for vehicles” to “planning for people” and “for places”. However, progress has been agonisingly slow. As a report by AECOM put it in 2019 “Eastbourne has experienced a significant increase in highway congestion in recent years. All strategic highway routes to/from Eastbourne are very congested at weekday peak times.” Many recent planning documents talk confidently of a 10% “modal shift” from cars to bus, bicycles and walking. Achieving this would, however, require a massive increase (well over 100%) in cycle and bus use. Last year East Sussex County Council was rated among the poorer performing local transport authorities in England in terms of delivering the government’s objective of ensuring 50% of trips in England’s towns and cities are walked, wheeled or cycled by 2030. The key question is: how can the transport system in and around Eastbourne be made more attractive, efficient and sustainable without undermining the economy and causing undue disruption to locals and visitors? The Sustainable Transport & Active Travel Summit, organised by EEAN, EBC, and Eastbourne Chamber of Commerce, will explore these themes by bringing together a range of expert speakers and exhibitors – from companies running electric buses, to pioneers in cargo-bikes for “last mile” deliveries, designers of cycle infrastructure and leafy public spaces to purveyors of car clubs and solar-powered car-park canopies. There will be panel discussions, video presentations and lots of networking opportunities. The audience will include elected representatives, businesses, community groups, transport planners and local institutions from schools and colleges to the NHS. This blog post was written by Robert McGowan, a director of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC.

The importance of ‘Right Tree, Right Place’

Our guest blogger for this week is Sarah Brotherton from Wild Bourne, the newest working group within the Eastbourne Eco Action Network:

One of the ways in which we can tackle the climate crisis is through tree planting. However, this may not be as simple as it seems, it is certainly not a quick solution, and it is definitely not a substitute for reducing CO² and other greenhouse gas emissions.

Why are trees and woodlands so important in tackling the climate crisis? Because they store carbon within their structures, or biomass as it is technically referred to. However, it is worth pointing out that equal or even greater amounts of carbon are stored in woodland soils, so it is not just the tree it is what is below the tree that is also important. while woodland soils store substantial amounts of carbon, many grassland soils, particularly those of wet grasslands, and other wetland habitats store vastly more carbon than woodland soils¹. Which is good to know, because although Eastbourne does not have a lot of tree cover, especially as woodland, it has large areas of wet grassland in the form of grazing marsh in the Eastbourne Park and Eastbourne levels areas.

East Sussex is one of the most wooded counties in England, with 17% woodland cover compared to the national average of 12.5%. But if you live in Eastbourne, that might seem a stretch to imagine given that Eastbourne and much of the surrounding landscape are not very wooded. That is because the bulk of woodland in the county is within the High Weald, north of Horam, which is in fact the most woodland landscape in the whole of England.

So, does this mean lots of tree planting should be happening in and around Eastbourne? Well, this is actually quite a complex question. Eastbourne has a completely different underlying geology to the High Weald, which has led to a different historical land use, and that in turn has led to the development of very different, but no less important habitats, which is why the landscape around Eastbourne and the Downs at this Eastern end are characteristically different from the low and high Weald of Sussex. Take the chalk grassland on Eastbourne’s doorstep on the Downs. This is an internationally rare habitat, with 80% of the original extent of chalk grassland lost since WWII. Much of the loss in the last 80 years has been to arable conversion on the dip slopes and spreading secondary woodland on the scarp slopes. Secondary woodland is tree and shrub cover that has naturally regenerated because of extensification – the opposite of agricultural intensification – the land is no longer actively managed.

The South Downs National Park Authority in conjunction with Sussex Nature Partnership have produced an ArcGIS map which helps to sense check potential sites across both East and West Sussex, and the full extent of the South Downs National Park for woodland creation. This map draws on national and local data and is the best woodland opportunity mapping tool we have because it has been developed specifically to be used locally. It removes areas not suitable for woodland creation that are often other important habitats, it then weighs both positive and negative factors of the remaining areas across the counties to give one of three scores depending on how sensitive (suitable) the area is for tree planting. The one down side to this excellent tool is that is cannot be used to ascertain suitability for urban tree planting, as urban areas are screened out.

Image source: Mapping Woodland Opportunity in Sussex and the South Downs National Park Technical report, 2022

The map can be found by clicking on the link below. There is a storymap element which explains how the maps work, but if you scroll to the bottom there is an interactive map, which is zoomable:

Sussex and South Downs Woodland Opportunity Mapping (arcgis.com)

This mapping work suggests there is not a great deal of opportunity for woodland creation around Eastbourne. But that is OK, because Eastbourne has other naturally occurring habitats that are just as important if not more important in the fight against climate change. And anyway, the rest of Sussex, and in particular the High Weald AONB holds a place for us with its woodland cover, the same way that the Downs holds chalk grassland for the rest of Sussex. It is a reminder that looking after and restoring all habitats for biodiversity and for us is important, including for future generations, regardless of where those habitats are found.

¹ R Gregg, J. L. Elias, I Alonso, I.E. Crosher and P Muto and M.D. Morecroft (2021) Carbon storage and sequestration by habitat: a review of the evidence (second edition) Natural England Research Report NERR094. Natural England, York

Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 Gathering: a short summary

March 15th was a significant day in the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 (ECN2030) campaign, as it was the first chance for over two years for the many groups and organisations within the campaign to get together again in person to share their progress and their challenges since the campaign was launched back in January 2020. The gathering was co-sponsored by Energise Sussex Coast and the Warm This Winter coalition. The venue, Eastbourne Town Hall, was offered free of charge by Eastbourne Borough Council, together with substantial logistical support from the town hall staff, who did so much to ensure that the event was a success.

The gathering featured updates from many of the campaign’s members, some of them including slideshow presentations. First up was Andrew Durling, Executive Director of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC (EEAN CIC), which organised the gathering. He delivered a welcome speech that set the context for the campaign, explained what its 2030 target meant in terms of actual carbon emissions reduction, and reported on some of the recent activities of the EEAN CIC which have facilitated the campaign. He also briefly introduced the One Planet Eastbourne platform that is being developed to help map the entire ECN2030 campaign in a visual, interactive way that incorporates as much monitoring data as possible to track progress of the campaign.

Many updates were given by most of the key initiatives within the ECN2030 campaign, and some of them included extensive and well-prepared slideshow presentations. These slideshows can be seen by clicking on these links below:

Treebourne

EcoTransport Group

Energy & Housing Group

Eastbourne Borough Council

Energise Sussex Coast

Other groups that gave updates were: EcoEd2030, Plastic Free Eastbourne, Eastbourne Jubilee Green Canopy, and Wild Bourne.

Here is a screenshot from Energise Sussex Coast’s presentation, which featured a briefing about the Energy Champions scheme that will be rolled out across Eastbourne during 2023 with the assistance of the EEAN CIC:

If you wish to train to become an Energy Champion, please contact kate@energisesussexcoast.co.uk or andy@ecoactioneb.co.uk

The updates given clearly illustrated the depth and breadth of the ECN2030 campaign and the large number of local volunteers giving so much of their time and energy to taking real action to ensure that the campaign make real progress whilst simultaneously improving the quality of life, and the health of the local environment, within the town at the same time.

The EEAN CIC intends to organise further ECN2030 Gatherings at regular intervals, hopefully every three months, in order to keep the momentum going for networking within the ECN2030 campaign and to showcase even more of the projects and initiatives within the campaign. Making Eastbourne a town that does its fair share of reducing its carbon emissions as well as learning to live within the ecological boundaries of our one and only livable planet is an ambitious and worthy goal that requires the whole of our community to come together and collaborate to achieve it. The ECN2030 Gathering on March 15th will hopefully be seen as an important step in facilitating that collaboration.

Welcome speech at ECN2030 Gathering

On the evening of Wednesday 15th March 2023, at Eastbourne Town Hall, there was a gathering of many of the organisations involved in the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 campaign. The event was opened with a welcome speech from Andrew Durling, the Executive Director of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC:

Welcome everybody and thank you so much for coming along this evening. It’s so good to see you all. I do hope you find this evening both productive and enjoyable. My thanks go to Eastbourne Borough Council, and Councillor James Murray in particular, as well as the town hall staff, for helping to set up this evening, and to Energise Sussex Coast for co-hosting and co-sponsoring this gathering. My gratitude also goes to Miles Berkely, my predecessor as Executive Director of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network Community Interest Company (EEAN CIC), who did so much to help lay firm foundations for the CIC and for the development of the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 Campaign (ECN2030) generally. I also want to thank Pauline von Hellerman and Adam Rose for their great contributions whilst they were fellow directors of the EEAN CIC, during which time we all worked together to help lay the foundations for new, independently constituted groups, such as EcoEd2030 and Treebourne.

Also, on behalf of the EEAN CIC, I want to thank you all for the hard work and dedication you have shown in the ECN2030 campaign so far. You have all done amazing things and I know that you will do even more amazing things over the coming years. I look forward to hearing tonight about some of the inspiring projects and the achievements of the various groups and partners within the ECN2030 campaign. However, not every single group and partner in the ECN2030 campaign is represented tonight. To have updates from them all would take too long. But I do hope that this gathering tonight is just the first of regular such gatherings from now on, and that each time we can highlight different aspects of the strategy and the work of any groups and partners not able to be here tonight.

To put the ECN2030 strategy into context, it aims to reduce the carbon emissions of the borough as much as possible by 2030, with whatever emissions still occurring in 2030 offset by carbon capture of those emissions (such as by planting trees), ideally all within the borough itself, creating a Net Zero result. It is a highly ambitious target, but it reflects the fierce urgency of the Climate Emergency we are now well into. The 2030 target was unanimously agreed by all borough councillors in 2019, so there is a settled political consensus around it, backed up by the enthusiastic participation of many volunteers from across the local community in the campaign to try and reach the target. The EEAN CIC was established in September 2019 as a social enterprise dedicated to facilitating the ECN2030 campaign in any way possible and has developed strong working relationships with Eastbourne Borough Council, local community groups, and local businesses to support cross-community collaboration within the campaign.

But what is the scale of the challenge? The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Manchester says that, in order for Eastbourne to do its fair share under the UN Paris Agreement, then it should achieve an 82% reduction of emissions relative to the 2015 baseline for the borough. By my calculation that equates to a total of emissions in 2030 of just 64 ktCo2. To put that in perspective, the borough’s emissions in 2020 were 276 ktCO2.

But reducing the borough’s emissions has to be done sustainably, as part of an overall strategy to create a truly sustainable town that lives within the ecological boundaries of our one planet. UK emissions fell significantly in 2020, but primarily because of the pandemic lockdown. But that fall could not be sustained because lockdown had to end at some point in order to get the economy going again. A truly sustainable reduction requires systemic, enduring change across all sectors of the local economy, and in all aspects of our own lifestyles, so that we end up with a town in 2030 where the quality of life is such that it is an even better place to live and work in than in 2020. We can call that a One Planet Eastbourne.

An interactive mindmap of One Planet Eastbourne can be found on a new Community Ecosystem platform on OnePlanet.com that the EEAN CIC has created, and I invite everybody to have a look at it and see what they think. I hope some of you tonight may be interested in becoming part of the team that develops this platform and also provides support for any community group or business that wishes to create its own sustainability plan and connect it to this new platform. In that way we can create a visually engaging, interactive map of all the actions being undertaken within the ECN2030 campaign, joining up all the dots to see where the challenges and opportunities are for scaling up collaboration across the campaign, as well as monitoring the progress made.

The EEAN CIC collaborated intensively with Eastbourne Borough Council and the Eastbourne Chamber of Commerce to mount a Sustainable Business & Solar Summit at the Welcome Building last November, which was adjudged a great success by most who attended, forging much closer links between local businesses, councillors, and community energy cooperatives, as well as creating a much greater awareness of the huge potential for renewable energy installations and energy efficiency retrofits throughout Eastbourne, which would result in significant savings on energy bills, make warmer homes, and create more green jobs. Similar summits are now planned for each year of the ECN2030 campaign. I would like to thank my fellow directors, Jill Shacklock and Rob McGowan, in particular for the huge amount of work they put into organising the summit.

Finally, the EEAN CIC has entered into a long-term partnership with the Eastbourne Climate Coalition to develop a Climate Hub for Eastbourne, which will facilitate positive engagement with the local community about how they can become involved in creating a more sustainable and resilient zero carbon town and how they can make changes in their own lives that fit in with One Planet Living as well as increasing their quality of life at the same time. Two pop-up hubs last year – at the E-Festival and in the Beacon shopping centre – have already taken place, their success proving that the Climate Hub concept can work, thanks to the commitment and creativity of so many local volunteers and community groups.

The following groups made slideshow presentations during the gathering, which can be accessed in the links below:

Treebourne

EcoTransport Group

Energy & Housing Group

Eastbourne Borough Council

Energise Sussex Coast

Mapping wildlife habitats in and around Eastbourne

This blog post is by Sarah Brotherton, a member of Wild Bourne, a new nature conservation group within the Eastbourne Eco Action Network:

Eastbourne is known as seaside town, and the eastern entry point to the South Downs National Park. On one side Eastbourne has the chalk grasslands of the Downs, one of the most species diverse habitats in England. And, on the other side, the wetlands of the Eastbourne and Pevensey levels. Wetlands being globally the most valuable habitats for the services they provide to us – known as ecosystem services.

There is probably far more variety of wildlife habitats than you realised in and around Eastbourne, including: good quality semi-improved grassland, chalk grassland, lowland meadows, lowland heathland, coastal and floodplain grassland, traditional orchards, ancient semi-natural woodland, lowland fens, reedbeds, deciduous woodland, and marine cliffs and slopes. Many important habitats are already mapped, especially those referred to as ‘priority’ habitats. These are considered to be the most threatened habitats, and often requiring appropriate management to restore and enhance them. An easy way to get to grips with the types of habitats in and surrounding Eastbourne, is to look on at the publicly available habitat mapping data provided by Defra (department for environment, food and rural affairs) MAGIC (defra.gov.uk) As an ecologist, the first thing I always do when asked about a particular site is to check these maps and find out, which if any priority habitats are at a particular site.

The map below shows many, but not all, of the priority habitats in and around Eastbourne. Each colour is a different habitat type. For example, the blue is grazing marsh – and that is why it is found around the wetlands of Eastbourne levels and Cuckmere Haven area. The Khaki colour is chalk (calcareous) grassland, naturally this is found on the chalk downland to the west of Eastbourne.

It is worth noting that, there are many important sites that are not on ‘priority’ habitat maps, therefore it is best to treat this data as indicative only, but it certainly gives a good overview. The map also does not indicate the condition of the habitat. Some sites may be thriving habitats, whilst other sites may be in desperate need of appropriate management to restore them back to a good condition.

Priority habitats are different however from statutory protection. There can often be some overlap, but many many priority habitat sites have no legal protection. In and around Eastbourne, there are a couple of national nature reserves – Lullington heath, and the Pevensey levels, and a number of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) surrounding Eastbourne. SSSI sites have the highest level of national protection, and generally best represent our national heritage either in flora and fauna or geology. This includes the chalk grassland at Willingdon Down found on the Downs behind Willingdon village, and the chalk cliffs which start at the Meads end of the town. Some of the SSSIs are in good condition, whilst others are sadly in a declining in condition, and need urgent appropriate management to help restore them back to the highly valuable habitat they are. This unfortunately includes much of the chalk grassland on the Downs directly above Meads. Whilst the Pevensey levels are generally regarded to be recovering back to good condition.

Statutory sites are also mapped and publicly available from Defra Magic Map Application (defra.gov.uk), and the maps can be used very quickly to assess whether a site has any protection and often what condition the site it is in. The map below shows a variety of conservation designations, from the turquoise stripes of SSSI sites, to the lime green national nature reserves. Of course, every site that should be protected isn’t, and if you compare this map to the one above, you will immediately see quite the discrepancy in priority habitat sites and actual protected sites. But this does not mean these sites are any less valuable for the wildlife that lives there.

If you have the time, I encourage anyone interested to take a look at these maps if not already familiar with them. They are a great resource that are used by professional ecologists and conservationists all the time, and luckily happen to be available to all.

Is One Planet Living possible in Eastbourne?

This blog post is by Andrew Durling, Executive Director of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC. The views he expresses here are his alone and not the official view of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network as a whole:

Eastbourne is striving to become a Carbon Neutral town by 2030 so it can do its fair share of dealing with the Climate Emergency. This does, of course, involve reducing the town’s carbon emissions significantly and quickly, but in a sustainable way that doesn’t damage the town’s economy. The town’s carbon emissions fell dramatically in 2020 due to economic activity dramatically falling during the lockdown restrictions. That kind of unplanned carbon reduction was not sustainable and the lockdown caused much economic hardship despite saving many lives and preventing the NHS from collapsing. As soon as lockdown restrictions were removed, economic activity bounced back and carbon emissions rose again sharply.

But what does it mean to have a ‘sustainable’ town anyway? And what do we end up with if Eastbourne does become Carbon Neutral in a sustainable way? In short, what is the big picture, and how do we communicate that in a way which engages all parts of our local community and ensures a truly communal response to the ultimate communal challenge of climate change? These are the sorts of questions that I have been grappling with since a Climate Emergency was declared by Eastbourne Borough Council in July 2019.

I think part of the answer lies in creating a story about what ‘sustainability’ really means and telling that story in a way that is simple, clear, and easy to understand. Now I’m not clever enough to create such a story, but I know some people who are. They created the One Planet Living framework to explain what sustainability really means and how it can be achieved.

Furthermore that framework can be visually explored through an interactive mindmap – created on the oneplanet.com platform – that shows all the interconnections and interdependencies between the different kinds of actions that together lead to a town that sustainably lives within the ecological boundaries of this planetary home of ours.

I have started to create such a mindmap for the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 campaign, which can be interacted with online, but a screengrab of the current state of the mindmap is here:

The mindmap is composed of nodes representing outcomes, actions, and indicators for monitoring progress. The lines between various nodes represent the ways in which the nodes are related to each other in a web of complementary and mutually reinforcing interactions. Clicking on any one of the nodes opens up access to information and data about that node. I have created this mindmap using a free account on oneplanet.com, but my plan is to scale up the mindmap with a subscription to a much better featured account so I can put a lot more detail on the mindmap and transform it into a powerful way of monitoring progress towards the 2030 target. I also hope that other individuals or groups in Eastbourne will be interested in creating their own mindmaps and linking them up with each other so that we can all see what is being done in Eastbourne and how they contribute towards the ultimate goal of a town that lives within the limits of this one planet

I did this to demonstrate how the campaign could be presented in a clear, engaging way that shows how the 10 principles of One Planet Living need to be combined and applied in a joined-up way to effectively deliver a town that is not only Carbon Neutral in the narrow sense of the word (ie. emitting no more carbon that it can offset within its own boundaries) but also truly sustainable as an economy and society that can live within planetary boundaries (which is the only way to ensure that the town can stay carbon neutral over the long-term anyway).

Furthermore, these 10 principles also demonstrate how achieving genuine sustainability results in a much better quality of life for all, with very welcome outcomes such as cleaner air, adequate supplies of clean water, flourishing local wildlife, growing numbers of green jobs and businesses, etc. These outcomes are the practical results of actions that increase sustainability and are desirable outcomes regardless of where people stand with regards to the Climate Emergency in particular. In other words, the One Planet Living framework provides a story within which the mechanics of meeting the 2030 carbon neutral target can be embedded within a much wider, more inspirational vision of creating the kind of sustainable yet prosperous society we’d all like to live in.

Review of 2022: a personal perspective from our Executive Director

The Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC that I’m proud to be part of is a tiny social enterprise entirely run by volunteers and receiving very little funding, yet it continued to punch way above its weight throughout 2022 by continuing its mission to facilitate cross-community efforts to deliver a carbon neutral Eastbourne by 2030. How did it do this? Let’s see…

We participated actively in the development of the Eastbourne Climate Coalition, a new grouping of over 40 local organisations formed in the wake of the COP26 climate talks. The coalition agreed to pursue the goal of creating a Climate Emergency Centre in central Eastbourne in order to maximise engagement with local people about the key environmental issues of our time and showcase the opportunities to become involved in positive ways with those issues. We organised and managed, on behalf of the Eastbourne Climate Coalition, a crowdfunding campaign for the Eastbourne Climate Hub project that successfully raised over £5,000 to help fund it.

We provided crucial back-office support for two pop-up Climate Emergency Centres this year, in collaboration with our partners in the Eastbourne Climate Coalition. The first was an E-Hive marquee at the inaugural E-Festival in Princes Park in July, which provided a rich and varied programme of community-run events that engaged festival-goers with a wide range of issues concerning the climate and nature emergencies.

The second was an E-Hive hub in The Beacon shopping centre that was open 7 days a week for 6 weeks, from November 1st to December 13th.

Both E-Hives were a great success, buzzing with activities about all things eco, and all entirely run by local volunteers on a skeleton budget. The learnings gained from these two pop-ups will help planning for whatever permanent premises are eventually acquired, hopefully in 2023.

Our team put in hundreds of hours of work organising the Sustainable Business & Solar Summit at the Welcome Building in November, bringing together probably the largest gathering of local experts, installers, and funders in renewable energy and sustainability ever seen in Eastbourne. We worked in partnership with Eastbourne Borough Council and the Eastbourne Chamber of Commerce, plus some key local sponsors, to ensure that the summit was indeed a great success, opening up opportunities for a scaling up of the green tech sector in Eastbourne, crucial to reducing carbon emissions within Eastbourne as well as creating new green, well-paid jobs in the local economy and saving local businesses a lot of money on their energy bills. The collection of videos and slideshows of the great presentations made at this event are well worth watching.

We formed a partnership with Energise Sussex Coast, a local community energy enterprise, to facilitate the scaling up of energy advice to Eastbourne residents in 2023. Now more than ever people need help to find out how to reduce the size of their energy bills and how to keep their homes warm enough in winter. But every household’s circumstances are unique and there’s no better way to deliver energy advice than through in-person conversations in local settings with local energy advisors who have been trained up by fully qualified energy experts. We will be working with local organisations to help recruit volunteers willing to be trained up as energy advisors, and the training will begin next February.

We also provided assistance to the Eastbourne Food Partnership (which to a large extent grew out of our original Food Working Group) to help secure significant grant funding to employ a paid coordinator to scale up the work of the food partnership, now a fully independent social enterprise in its own right. This partnership is, amongst its other aims, about creating a coherent local food system that is climate-resilient and ensures a sustainable and accessible supply of fresh, healthy food to all local residents, food moreover that is grown locally as much as possible and grown in ways that promote soil health & local biodiversity rather than damage it, thereby reducing carbon emissions from inappropriate land use.

Our two working groups, the Housing & Energy, and the EcoTransport Group, have continued to be very active with their own initiatives, feeding informed comments into various council consultations and liaising with local councillors about how to reduce local carbon emissions in a variety of local sectors and projects. In a time when all local councils have such financial constraints that keeping up with all the many eco issues is now difficult for them, the input of well-informed and dedicated local volunteers into council initiatives on carbon neutrality is crucial and much appreciated by most councillors.

The good news is that, overall, carbon emissions are falling in Eastbourne year by year, but the bad news is that the fall is not yet fast enough to meet the 2030 target of meaningful carbon neutrality. We will be working hard in 2030 to help speed up that fall, especially as we have no time to lose now that the impacts of climate change are becoming ever more apparent even in the UK, which experienced its hottest ever summer in 2022. I would like to thank all those who volunteered their time and energy in all the projects we have been part of, and all those groups who have partnered with us. There has been nothing more rewarding for me than working with so many people dedicated to making Eastbourne a cleaner, healthier, greener place that contributes its fair share towards ensuring a safe enough climate future for our families and for all future generations.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Andrew Durling, Executive Director, Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC