Monday, October 22, 2007

Full Council

A busy week and I’m only now catching up with posting a few things here, so bear with me as a post a barrage of things I’ve been meaning to post for a few days.

Wednesday was full council, the first one since July. I asked three questions of cabinet members; one on the plans for the new pool (which is aiming for zero carbon emissions, compared to the approximate 636 tonnes the existing pool emits in its annual energy use), another on pest control (killing squirrels, to be more specific, relating to some casework in the ward where pest control had made repeated visits to a council property to trap or poison squirrels in the loft, but as building services had each time failed to block the holes up the squirrels were coming in through, they kept returning and more and more were killed) and a third on whether the Mayor agreed that we need more community notice boards (no, he doesn't, he thinks the libraries and Lewisham Life are sufficient for advertising events and that notice boards contribute to street clutter - not sure I agree, not everyone plans their local event far enough in advance to meet the copy deadlines for Lewisham Life, and many people don't read Lewisham Life or go to local libraries. Arguably we all should, but a poster on a noticeboard can be a way of reaching out to people who wouldn't otherwise be aware of your event or organisation) . The questions and answers can be found here.

The Green Group was disappointed that the Labour and Tory groups voted to end the meeting at 10pm, before business was finished and before we had got to our motion on Adult Social Care, which a number of members of the public had been patiently waiting in the public gallery for. We immediately resubmitted it and it should be the first motion on next month’s agenda. Next time perhaps we will be a bit pushier and try to get the agenda re-ordered if members of the public are waiting and it looks like we won't get through the whole agenda. Labour proposed an amendment to the motion which we were prepared to accept to get cross-party support. Basically, it was calling on the Mayor to "work with London Councils and
other stakeholders to lobby central government to tackle the national adult social care crisis and commit to more appropriate funding levels". More on full council on Dean’s blog.

5 comments:

max said...

Have they ever answered to your question about the carbon footprint of demolishing an existing pool to then rebuild it?

Anonymous said...

kind of, p42 of this: http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/B0133B62-3F5E-46C1-8A87-83DE49B74D90/0/26bfbb2888474bdcab73e57575f2763eMembersQuestionsandReplies17October2007.PDF

Question by Councillor Luxton
of the Deputy Mayor
Question
What is the current annual carbon footprint of the existing Ladywell Leisure Centre and what will be
the annual carbon footprint of the planned new Loampit Vale Leisure facility?
Reply
Ladywell Leisure Centre
In 2006 Ladywell Leisure Centre consumed 539,400 kWh's of electricity producing 232 tonnes of
carbon dioxide and in the same period the site consumed 3,346,000 kWh's of gas producing 636
tonnes of carbon dioxide. Taking into account the area of the building (6,573 square metres) the
carbon footprint is approximately 0.13 tonnes CO2 per metre per annum and the National
Performance Indicator figure for the building is 591kWh's per square metre.
Loampit Vale
The brief for the new pool, along with the proposed adjoining residential development, includes an aim to
have zero carbon emissions. This would be achieved by a combination of low energy demand design
(insulation, ventilation, etc) and a single energy source that exploits the balanced energy demands between the
pool and the housing. If the energy is generated on site then the fuel source would need to be bio diesel and /
or woodchips. Electricity generation would from a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) boiler or wind turbines
or solar panels. It is difficult to provide detailed figures prior to the completion of the detailed design but
information on the annual carbon footprint will be available once this detail is completed at the planning
application stage.

max said...

Kind of...another kind, as kindly as possible.

Anonymous said...

What I think this means is yes, in the short-term, the carbon emissions in demolishing the existing pool and building a new one would be high, but over the new pool's life-cycle, there would be savings and a sharp reduction from the current 888 tonnes of CO2 per year at Ladywell Leisure Centre.

max said...

This is of course impossible to verify given that:

a) the data on the production of CO2 of the demolition and rebuilt is not provided and;
b) an analysis of the energy consumption of a refurbished Ladywell Leisure Centre is not provided.