Brighton Councillor Urges Central Government to be More Ambitious in Their Net Zero Policies and Delivery

Brighton has shown their ambition as a community to become a carbon-neutral city by 2030. They have made significant strides in the battle toward Net-Zero, becoming the leading UK Net-Zero city.

Brighton City Council believes that they will only achieve their carbon neutral ambitions when all city businesses, organisations, communities, residents and visitors work together. 

Without more help from local and national governments, they will struggle to reach their target of zero carbon emissions by 2030.

It has become clear that local and national governments need to match cities like Brighton’s ambition if real changes are to happen.

The seaside city of Brighton is very much on the path to becoming the first UK city to be carbon neutral.

However local councillor, Samer Bagaeen who has a background in the built environment, believes that achieving Net-Zero ultimately comes down to what local governments and councils in cities do.

Councillor Samer Bagaeen’s popular view is that local and national governments need to be more ambitious in their policies, to make achieving Net-Zero possible for cities like Brighton.

In an interview with Constructive Voices, Councillor Samer Bagaeen said:

“We’re doing a lot of small things here and there but you know what, I think we need to be more ambitious in the things that we can scale up.”

Councillor Samer Bagaeen believes that everyone must work together across all industry sectors and all parts of the community to achieve Net-Zero. He holds the view that we are not at the top of our game when it comes to collaboration and that more could be done by everyone including local and national governments to make it a collective effort. He believes that more governments should be attending local property events such as Footprint+ to show they are serious about wanting to help with the climate change emergency.

Councillor Samer Bagaeen said:

“You need local government to step up, you need the bankers to step out, you need central government to kind of be more ambitious in their policies and the delivery. So it’s a collective effort.”

Nobody is naïve and everyone understands that there are obvious constraints to how much local and national governments can do, the biggest one being money.

It is estimated that retrofitting all of some cities’ building stocks, could cost billions of pounds. However, this does not have to be only viewed as a barrier.

Councillor Samer Bagaeen said:

“It’s (money constraint) worth a barrier and an opportunity.”

Other councillors hold the same view that local and national governments need to do more to show support for cities like Brighton which are on the path to achieving Net-Zero.

Councillor Phelim MacCafferty, who is also the Leader of Brighton & Hove City Council, told a special conference:

“We need political leaders working together at national and international levels to give our planet and our ecosystem a fighting chance.” 

Time is clearly not on our side when it comes to the climate change emergency.

Immediate action is needed to secure a healthy future for upcoming generations. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the climate change emergency is not at the forefront of the central government’s minds. In the UK’s most recent budget last year, a mention of the climate change emergency was nowhere to be heard.

Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion tweeted her response to the Chancellor’s speech:

“Over an hour on his feet and ‘climate’ did not even pass the Chancellor’s lips. I am seething.” 

Many people saw the budget as an opportunity for the government to fund and deliver on their Net-Zero policies.

However, the government’s attention was on other subjects such as public health funding and reducing taxes. They chose to bury their head in the sand when it came to the climate change emergency.

This budget was nearly a year ago and still today nothing has changed in the government’s ambition and delivery of Net-Zero policies.

It is evident that local and national governments need to give cities like Brighton more resources and support so they can turn their ambition into real change and make more strides toward carbon neutrality.

The city of Brighton is doing their part, now local and central governments need to step up and do theirs. Once again we can see that collaboration is key to achieving a Net-Zero future.