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colourful lupin flowers

Green agenda

We recognise the scale and urgency of the global challenge from climate change and that local action on global warming can make a difference.

We already have a number of measures in place including:

  • ensuring energy efficiency across all our buildings and the move towards reducing fleet emissions
  • ensuring that our planning policy continues to support blue and green infrastructure - rivers, streams, parks and nature reserves
  • to reaffirm its commitment to combatting climate change we have a number of projects underway or in the pipeline.

Community orchard

Sutton Lawn is home to our first community Orchard. Two hundred and fifty fruit and nut trees have been planted with the help of local school children. Once established the orchard will provide local residents with fruits and nuts they can pick and take home.

1000 trees planted

We have committed to planting 1000 trees across the district over the next 4 years. This includes planting 2 trees for every one we have to cut down due to disease.

Ashfield already has some amazing outdoor spaces and we want to ensure that this continues for generations to come. We’ll be working with local schools to involve local children in the tree planting.

Electric vehicle charging points

Twenty electric vehicle charging points have been fitted across the district. The 8 standard 7kW charging points and 4 rapid charging points are available for residents and visitors to use.

Bee and butterfly habitats

Twenty six bee and butterfly habitats have been installed on The Lawn, Sutton. These have been erected as the first stage in developing a specific pollinators section on the park.

This area situated near this new garden section will see wildflower and plants purposely chosen to promote bees and butterflies as well as other pollinating insects.

Wildflower verges

The importance of wildflower-rich road verges has been all over the news in recent years.

Championed by Plantlife, the ‘cut less, cut later’ campaign encourages councils to adopt this thinking to allow the health of road verges to significantly improve. We are committed to looking at ways we can improve the health of areas we are responsible for and encourage the growth of wildflowers.

Energy efficient homes

We have invested heavily into improving the thermal efficiency of our housing stock. Works to improve thermal efficiency have included:

  • A rated double glazed windows
  • central heating replacement
  • loft insulation and cavity wall insulation
  • external wall insulation to our non-traditional and timber framed properties
  • communal biomass heating installations to 2 of our largest flat blocks
  • new gas infrastructure to previously 'off gas' areas
  • solar photovoltaics to the larger flat complexes. 

We are excited about the new technologies emerging which will give us many more opportunities to reduce fuel poverty, reduce energy consumption of its domestic and non-domestic assets and reduce carbon emissions.