Be Birmingham

[Tristan_Parker]

Be Birmingham is the Local Strategic Partnership for the city of Birmingham, bringing together the public, private and voluntary sectors to achieve city-wide targets which have been agreed with government. In environmental terms, there are four main aims that Be Birmingham helps to undertake: making Birmingham a clean city; reducing waste; being prepared for the impact of climate change; and reducing carbon emissions.

As Keith Budden, Birmingham Environmental Partnership Manager, points out, these are not just targets for Birmingham’s local authority to achieve – they encompass all areas of the city, covering around one million people, 440,000 households, and 42,000 businesses and other organisations.

The city was recently awarded the prestigious Green Flag Award by the Audit Commission (which recognises outstanding work throughout public services) for its partnership approach to tackling climate change – one of only three areas in England to have received the award for work on cutting pollutive emissions. Be Birmingham’s partnerships helped to implement these measures.

“We were very pleased with the award”, says Budden. “The partnership approach has resulted in an absolute emissions reduction, but it’s also about engaging people, organisations and businesses to deliver change. One reason that the Audit Commission awarded the Green Flag to us was because we set a target of saving a demonstratable 100,000 tonnes of carbon, which we achieved in the last financial year. The target this year is to demonstrate 120,000 tonnes of carbon saved, but it’s not just for the council – it demonstrates the passion of individuals, businesses and other public sector organisations across the city.”

A wide range of measures were initiated to make this vast carbon saving across the city, including work around insulating homes and supporting residents to improve energy efficiency, and providing a finance mechanism through the Green New Deal to allow people to access renewable energy generation technology in their homes.

Other key aspects of the strategy involved working with communities to demonstrate value changes, and improving public sector procurement to reduce carbon emissions and waste – this element involved removing what Budden calls the ‘waste hierarchy’ in environmental activities, ensuring that it was not just domestic and residual household waste – which makes up around 15% of Birmingham’s total waste – that were targeted, but the whole ‘waste flows’ of the city, particularly industrial, commercial and construction waste.

With a strategy as multi-faceted as this, and a carbon reduction target as ambitious as 100,000 tonnes, partnership working was always going to be an essential strand of the city’s environmental aims, with as many organisations and individuals contributing as possible, as Budden explains:

“It was very clear that for Birmingham to achieve a 60% cut in emissions, that couldn’t be done by one organisation or sector alone, it had to be part of a collaborative work effort. If the entire public sector became zero carbon tomorrow, we still wouldn’t hit our target, as the total public sector emissions for the city are 10-15%. It would be a great example for others, but we’ve got to work with individuals and the homes they live in.

“We also have to demonstrate to individuals that they’re not doing it alone – its part of a city-wide effort. That’s just as important, that communication.”

Be Birmingham will then focus on some of the bigger planning issues, making sure that there are specific leaders and other people in the city held to account for delivering specific programmes around waste, planning and energy. This, says Budden, will make sure that the work on environmental targets starts to become joined up at a strategic level.

Budden goes on to offer his advice for other organisations wanting to undertake carbon reduction measures; whether on the grand scale of the city of Birmingham or in a far smaller context, the principles remain the same, he says:

“Ensure that individuals engage with leaders, and that climate change is firmly on the agenda, making sure that there are practical delivery programmes in place, with people responsible for delivering the targets. Whether it’s your boss for the floor of the factory or office you work in, your local ward councillor, or the chief executive of a business – people need to be held to account, otherwise it always becomes somebody else’s responsibility.”