The Vale of Glamorgan Council's Climate Change Action Plan has progressed, but the Coronavirus restrictions mean that the council will have to be "flexible" as it continues to consult with residents on the subject, the cabinet has heard.

A report from the Corporate Performance and Resources Scrutiny Committee and the Environment and Regeneration Scrutiny Committee for their views on how the plan was being developed was noted at yesterday's cabinet meeting.

The report provided an update on the work to develop a Climate Change Action Plan as part of the response to the Climate Emergency declared by the VOG Council in July 2019.

It also read that to ensure the Council had a "robust" plan for tackling climate change "it was important that the community and other stakeholders were involved in shaping the plan and its implementation" but due to Covid restrictions changing how the Council works "there needed to be a rethink to its approach".

The message the Council wants to give is that no idea is "too small" or "too ambitious" for consideration.

The Council's Communications Team would also develop a programme of activity over the next 12 months to enable the public and community groups to continue to inform the work on climate change and shape the Council's response.

Feedback from the scrutiny committees included queries on active travel and community groups.

Councillor M. Morgan referred to consultation around Active Travel and stated that this seemed to mainly focus on commuters, and asked for further consideration of public transport that could reduce road traffic and make routes safer for walkers, cyclists and horse riders.

Councillor Sivagnanam stated that until travel infrastructure improved there would not be big enough changes. She added that the Action Plan was a good beginning, but more lobbying of Welsh Government for infrastructure improvements was needed.

Cllr Sivagnanam also stated that the consultation should also focus on specific community groups. In reply to this, the Head of Policy and Business Transformation advised that linking to specific groups was something that would be progressed.

The aim of the consultation was to allow "open ended responses", so groups could feed in their views and comments. Responses would then be categorised into themes and analysed by the Strategy & Partnership Team. There would be further consultations on specific areas later on.

Councillor G. John outlined that all Council departments needed to look at how they worked, for example, the Planning department needed to give more protection to trees. Councillor John added that all departments needed to consider how they worked to achieve the Council's environmental objectives.

VOG Council leader Neil Moore thanked the councillors for their feedback, and stated that some of their concerns were in areas already included in the plan.

"I welcome comments from scrutiny because if there's something missing, we need to know," he said.

Cabinet Member for Social Care and Health Cllr Ben Gray said: "I think its really positive how the scrutiny committees have engaged with it and I think we can all acknowledge things need to be done.

"We don't know the full impact of a lot of these steps so I'm really excited to see how our overall strategy develops and all the efforts we can do on this.

"We're doing this in partnership with everybody and that's the only way it's going to succeed."

The committees also heard how progress has been made in areas such as improving street lighting, developments part of the 21st Century Schools Programme, promoting active travel, improvements to house stock, tree and wildflower planting, supplementary planning policies and the roll-out of recycling arrangements.

The cabinet also noted a report outlining the findings of the Auditor General for Wales' examination of the council's waste reduction arrangements and recycling targets.

The findings were that the Council was on course to meet Welsh Government recycling targets but would need to develop a long-term Waste Management Strategy, address the service's financial pressures and develop a more structured and documented approach to involving the diversity of the population.

Cabinet Member for Neighbourhood Services and Transport Cllr Peter King said: "That's a fair criticism but rollout in Barry demonstrated how much we had learnt and I am absolutely chuffed to 'bilio' with the efforts of the service area.

Council leader Neil Moore said: "I think it's an amazing thing to do, and let's not forget we're in the middle of a pandemic.

"Our officers have come and shown how good they can be and how good they are.

"I am happy, but I accept the comments because you can always do better."