Purpose

The Environmental Sustainability Partnership (ESP) oversees work across the district to achieve the following vision in the Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Vision & Values statement:

“Bath and North East Somerset is an area with lively, active communities that are low carbon and resource efficient, and unique places and beautiful surroundings that are building for a greener and low carbon future”

The Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy sets out the ESP's current approach to achieving this, with the key aim of providing the community leadership needed to help people to reduce carbon across the district by around 45% by 2026. The Strategy has three principles:

• Partnership Working
• Community Enablement
• Leading by Example

The ESP consists of:

1. A high-level Board  
2. Workstreams which cover various aspects of environmental sustainability. More about the activities within these Workstreams can be found in the ESP’s Climate Local Action Plan which was submitted in 2012 as part of the Council's commitment to the national Climate Local programme. An action plan has also been submitted as part of membership of the EU Covenant of Mayors programme.
3. The Environmental Sustainability Network website, which was set up to provide a place where people from across the district can easily communicate with each other around ideas and opportunities related to environmental sustainability. The Network now has over 400 members and a wealth of information on issues and upcoming activities.

 
ESP Board Membership

Chair: Cllr Mark Shelford, Cabinet Member for Transport & Environment, Bath & North East Somerset Council. 

ESP Board Members are drawn from all political parties, key stakeholder organisations and other delivery partnerships. The ESP also has Expert Advisors from relevant organisations.

Please find ESP Board meeting minutes and updates on the ESP page of the Bath & North East Somerset Environmental Sustainability Network.