Inspirational: the climate garden at Kew provides ideas and solutions to try to address the ever-growing threat of the climate emergency

CROYDON COMMENTARY: The glaciers are melting faster than the glacial pace of progress at our council. TRACEY HAGUE takes Town Hall bosses to task, six years after they declared a climate emergency 

Croydon Council declared a climate emergency in 2019. Little happened until July 2024. After ignoring their own 2022 Climate Action Plan, the council finally employed some staff to tackle its carbon emissions. Islington Council has a sustainability team of 10 or 12 staff that is growing. But London’s most populous and second-biggest borough geographically has just two full-time equivalent staff. This is woefully inadequate and set to fail… again.

Time and again when I speak to councillors, I am told that climate doesn’t come up on the doorstep. But that depends on how you frame the question. Any street engagement with the question “Is [insert authority] doing enough for the climate?” reveals locals overwhelmingly think that not enough is being done. It’s not an academically robust method, but it gives a good idea of local mood, hence why journalists and broadcasters use it. Ask “Any local issues?”, and you’ll get a list of crime and anti-social behaviour, bins, parking and high Council Tax.

Since I was a teenager, I’ve been campaigning on environmental issues – writing to the MP Bernard Weatherill long before emails or the internet existed, and when I wasn’t even thinking of parenthood – when many are prompted to take climate action for their children’s future.

The climate emergency can no longer be ignored.

I used to work with Jeremy Leggett, the first scientific director of Greenpeace International, who attended every single COP conference since they started in 1995. We’re now up to COP30 and he’s using his retirement and a Blue Planet award to rewild large tracts of the Scottish Highlands.

Things may have come full circle for me now. From working in Solarcentury, the photovoltaic company Dr Leggett set up in a shed in Richmond, my optimism has just got a big boost by seeing the first photovoltaic modules (£100,000 triple array!) being installed on a Croydon secondary school, courtesy of Croydon Community Energy, a community benefit society.

The path to this installation was far from smooth, but it shows people power – locals doing it for themselves, for everyone’s benefit, with lower fuel bills, carbon savings and even some modest financial returns.

The Croydon Green Network is also a sort of cooperative, of five community groups – volunteers who want more action on the climate in our borough. After the Croydon Climate Crisis Commission’s report was ignored, the Croydon Green Network was formed and, eventually, representatives met with Councillor Scott Roche, the council cabinet member for streets and environment. That was  July 2024, five years after the council declared a climate emergency.

Broken promises: Cllr Scott Roche

We were promised meetings every six months – not enough, but it’s a start, we thought. It was 11 months before Roche met the Croydon Green Network again, and that only happened after I asked another climate question at the council meeting in April. “It’s hard to talk when the door is not only closed to you but double-locked and bolted,” as a Croydon Green Network colleague said.

Like many frustrated Croydon Green Network members, I’ve learned to do as much as I can personally, to fight for authorities to act. Ultimately, communities find a way to do it themselves.

People power is incredibly strong, as Croydon Community Energy’s share offer shows, but this doesn’t let authorities off the hook.

If Croydon Council is serious about its climate ambitions, it needs to step up a gear and stop dismissing the concerns of residents and campaigners. At least we have ambitions and hope: does the council?

Councillors and council staff are finally starting to get carbon literacy training. Hopefully, now they will finally understand the seriousness and urgency of taking meaningful climate action now.

Some claim to accept climate change is happening, but they use the council’s own financial crisis as an excuse to do nothing. Quite simply, we cannot afford not to act.

In the Croydon Green Network there is a huge amount of knowledge and willingness to work with the council to ramp up local action. The council acknowledges it cannot reach its target of Net Zero by 2030 without community and business sectors, yet they’ve not even set up the proposed Green Business Network. Time and again opportunities are not seized – and this goes back long before the council’s bankruptcies.

Catalysts for action: Sir David Attenborough with Prince William. But why does it take a 99-year-old broadcaster and member of the royal family to get the government to act?

This is happening nationally, too.

Why does it take a 99-year-old broadcaster to speak to a prince to make the government finally protect Marine Protected Areas? “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention!” has never been more true!

As time goes on, I have to keep topping up my optimism tank to continue the fight. A visit to Kew Gardens’ new carbon garden is inspirational; do go if you can.

Our volunteer tree guide reminded us of the saying: “The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The next best time to plant one is now, knowing you’ll never sit under its shade.”

So does Croydon Council have the foresight, the bravery even, to metaphorically plant projects which it won’t see the result of in their careers, possibly not their lifetimes?

There’s a limit to what individuals can do and a big need for authorities to act. It’s easy to point the finger about the unchangeable past, such as, “Why declare a climate emergency six years ago if you have little to no intention of acting on it?”

Conservative and Labour councillors continue to blame one another in their playground politics. The Greens and the sole LibDem councillor in the Town Hall try their best but are blocked by the council’s not-fit-for-purpose constitution: three and a half years on from their election, and four and a half years since the council switched to the mayoral system, and Croydon’s constitution has still not been updated and fails to recognise that there are more than two parties.

Flattened: the Alpine village of Blatten, in Switzerland, was completely destroyed by a melting glacier in May this year

The glaciers are melting faster than the glacial pace of council progress. Climate change is happening now. Look at the record temperatures and spring drought in Croydon so far this year.

Look at the flash floods, the forest fires, the high energy bills. Ask anyone from the Swiss village of Blatten which was destroyed by a glacier in May.

We don’t have time for Town Hall political games or climate change denial (though astonishingly, there are still some climate change deniers in the council chamber).

I and others have tried every tactic to get climate action locally. We continue to lobby for action at all levels. Two meetings a year with a member of the Mayor’s cabinet is not collaborative working: it’s an insult. Continue to ghost us, and we’ll simply get louder. We are not going anywhere. Get used to it or do something about the climate, so we don’t have to keep up the pressure.

Show you care about locals suffering and dying from excess heat, struggling to get to school or work with flooding on roads and rails, living in cold damp homes, uninsured as extreme weather events push up insurance costs to unaffordable levels.

As Anita Roddick said when asked how much of a difference one person can make, “Have you ever tried sleeping with a mosquito?”

So will the council step up? Will you join us to make them?

• Tracey Hague, pictured right, is an environmental campaigner, parent and energy expert from Croydon. She is involved with various vegan and environmental organisations, holding decision-makers to account and unafraid to ask pointed questions. She also bakes a mean vegan cake

• Croydon Commentary provides a platform for any of our readers to offer their personal views about what matters to them in and around our corner of south London. To submit an article for publication, just email us at inside.croydon@btinternet.com, or post your comment to an Inside Croydon article that has caught your attention

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