| Improving the Environment |
Our built and natural environments shapes how people feel about where we live, work and spend our leisure time. We want an environment that we can value and will be respected by our residents at home and at work and by visitors to the District.
We all need to take actions to reduce our effect on the environment. We can do this by consuming less, which helps to save our scarce natural resources. By reducing our waste we can make big improvements to the environment.
We know that our weather patterns are changing. We are experiencing more extremes of cold, heat and rainfall. We know that we need to tackle climate change and one way we can do this is by reducing the Districts carbon emissions and adapt to changes in weather patterns and prepare for more severe weather events within the Bradford District.
A clean, high quality, safe local environment can help support our districts regeneration. It will contribute to our sense of health and wellbeing, and the creation of strong, safe, and sustainable communities. We can all work to create a clean, green and attractive environment within all of our communities and one of the effects of this is to reduce environmental vandalism, things like fly tipping and graffiti. We can all be better at reducing our waste, throwing away less in to the household rubbish and thinking about ways in which we can re-use and recycle things we no longer need. Sending rubbish to landfill costs us all.
Improving the way we treat our environment can make a big difference to all our communities across the Bradford District and we need everyone to understand the part they can play in doing this.
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| Our Long-term Ambitions for the Environment |
By 2020, all residents will place a high value on the districts built and natural environment. We will be taking concerted action to rapidly reduce and manage the impact of human activity on our climate and environment.
We will have a cleaner district and neighbourhood environments, closing the gap in levels of cleanliness between neighbourhoods, and increasing the sense of safety and wellbeing. Citizens will take responsibility for the cleanliness of their streets, parks and open spaces.
We aim to have a greener environment which makes best use of natural resources. This will involve new approaches to managing waste in order to minimise waste, maximise recycling and reduce waste going to landfill, recovering value and energy from our waste stream.
We will create a more sustainable environment to positively affect climate change. We aim to use resources efficiently, minimising energy and water use, re-using as much as possible, and expanding the use of renewable energy and locally sourced fuels. The Council will be an exemplar of good practice, and will provide leadership to support organisations and communities to reduce consumption of carbon-based fuels and understand the importance of sustainable design, production and consumption. These approaches to manage carbon and our impact on climate change will also result in more sustainable transport, improved air quality and water management.
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| Recent Achievements |
The Bradford Community Warmth Programme concluded in March 2011 having provided 20,552 major energy efficiency measures to private sector households throughout the district since it started in September 2009, receiving recognition as being one of the largest and most successful schemes of it's type to have operated in the country as well as being shortlisted for the prestigious international Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy in 2010
The percentage of waste recycled and composted has increased across the District, the 2010/11 recycling rate is 33.8% this is as a result of kerbside collections and improved recycling centres.
The cleanliness standard of the District has increased to 93% in 2010/11 (using the ENCAMS methodology).
Five parks in the district have received Green Flag awards for best practice in the management of green spaces.
In the last three years (2009/11) the Parks Service has secured over £5.5 million in external funding. This includes £3.2 million for the renovation of Robert’s Park in Saltaire, over £600,000 for investment at grass roots football, £125,000 for a national BMX track , £644,000 for play and environmental works from the Landfill tax credit distributors including a prestigious national award of £250,000 for the St Ives Estate.
According to the speak out survey (2006 -2010) 95% of citizens said that Parks and Open spaces were important (21%) or very important (74%) to them. On average 75% of respondents where satisfied with Parks and open spaces. Statistical analysis of the survey suggests that 25 million citizen visits occur annually in the district parks.
Bradford Council is the single largest owner of woodlands and trees in the district with a total of 858ha of land managed as woodland habitat across 111 sites with an additional 13,000 trees planted along highways. Historically, the district falls in to the least wooded areas of the country at 5% in the 1990s, tree planting by the Forest or Bradford and the Council has lifted this to nearer 10%. In 2011 Leisure Services was awarded the Forestry Commission's Woodland Planning Grant to assist the Council to write detailed management plans for each of its sites and improve the quality and productivity of its woodlands.
The West Yorkshire Local Transport Plan has developing a low carbon transport system as one of its key goals and continues to promote limited growth of traffic in peak periods as well as working to increase road safety.
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