District Dispatch - 21 September 2022

Experts believe that the funeral is one of the most watched broadcasts of all time, with billions of views from across the world. It was a historic and majestic day that we will never forget. Most of our work has continued as normal over the past couple of weeks, but a few things were rescheduled as a mark of respect. We apologise for any inconvenience this caused.

One piece of work that was rescheduled was our 'Supporting You' campaign that I spoke to you about a few weeks back. There is no doubt that people are finding the cost of living challenging at the moment and so our campaign aims to make people aware of the support that is available. This is being delivered in partnership with the Observer Series, and will be launched next week on Thursday 29 September. It will cover a range of themes, from help with finances to household bills, as well as support for businesses. Please look out for this in next week's Chichester Observer and Midhurst and Petworth Observer - or on our website and social media channels. We are also urging people to continue to support local businesses wherever they can - and we are hoping to highlight local offers that will benefit you as part of our campaign.

We are also currently asking you to share your thoughts and suggestions on the theme of our next climate change focused event for residents, which follows the success of our first public engagement event of this type last November. At the event people heard from industry experts about the actions they could take to cut energy use and create renewable energy to save money in their homes. This is all part of the council's work on its Climate Emergency Action Plan, which sets out a target of a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions year on year until 2025 for both the council and for the district as a whole.

We received fantastic feedback from our event last year, with around 70 residents attending from across the district. We're now looking to organise our next event and have been considering a range of different themes that this could focus on. We're really keen to hear which of these themes you would prefer us to cover and so we have created a short survey (opens new window), which will run until 13 October 2022. If you have a few minutes to complete it, we would be really grateful.

We've also created a video to update you on some of the many actions we have taken across the district to help tackle the effects of climate change in our area, which you can find on our climate change page.. The video highlights the range of activities we have delivered, from providing over 8,000 trees to local residents, community groups, businesses, tenant farmers and landowners, to launching a ground breaking project that aims to safeguard and enhance strategic wildlife corridors. Please do take a look if you haven't done so already.

We have also recently started work on a £340,000 project to improve the energy performance and carbon footprint of part of our short stay accommodation. Earlier this year, we were successful in securing £205,000 of Government funding to support the project. By investing in this work, we are making it possible for residents in our accommodation to reduce their energy use as well as helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our area.

To keep up to date with the latest council news, please sign up to our email newsletter.

Best Wishes

Cllr Eileen Lintill

Leader of Chichester District Council