This story was told in a story circle at the Learning History workshop in February 2008.
Read how some wilful individuals with a keen interest in alternative energy got their voices heard by using the strutiny process.
Giving Local Heroes a Voice -
Using Scrutiny to translate 'wilful individuals' into effective climate change policy
a story from the Incensed by Sustainability story circle
Scene 1 of my story. It is at the back of the car park; it’s a leisure center in Woking. It’s a bit desolate. There’s a group of middle-aged men shuffling around. They have just got off their coach. They are a little bit sleepy, a little bit bedraggled, a little bit tired. They’re shuffling around the back of this leisure centre. They have a little root around inside - they go in the back door -come back out again. They’re wandering around the side, they are looking up the roof, they are looking up on what is going on the nice glittery photovoltaic tiles. And they’re having a poke around the Hydrogen fuel cell. That’s scene 1.
Scene 2 goes back about 6 months prior to that when I arrived at E. Borough Council which is a district not that far from Woking. It’s not that well known, and had not long started its own system of scrutiny. But there are a couple of heroes of this story really: there’s the hairdresser from W., there’s a keen recycler from L.B. and a couple of others who have also has got a key role in this. There’s a few villains as well but I’m not going to name them as they get kicked out of the story eventually anyway. So these heroes, they’ve been at E. for a long time as councilors and they have really been interested in alternative energy and sustainable energy. They’re backbench councillers, not necessarily doing very much but they’re really really keen to do something on alternative energy.
So I arrived at E. and my job was as scrutiny manager to set up some policy reviews of various areas such as antisocial behavior. And they came to me and said they wanted to do alternative energy, and I said you are the members and it is your decision, we’ll do it! So, we set up a little review and that led to the trip down to Woking on the minibus (described in scene 1), and we had a look around at what Woking were doing and asking difficult questions, some of which we got some answers to.
And we went back to base and we had some chats with other people and had some more meetings, and over time we managed to get a report together. At that time as well I heard of the Energy Savings Trust — it was pretty much the first time - and we got them to come in and do a pilot with us and we managed to get people like the housing director and the various facilities, people to actually come and sit in a room with the Energy Savings Trust and the Leader and talk about our energy use and our energy needs and what we are doing right, wrong and what the potential was.
After that came a scrutiny report which went through all the right processes and leads to the final scene of this, which was about the time I left when the various programs were getting into place. And E have since signed the Nottingham Declaration; it has made some progress on some of the issues; it has got a lot further to go. But, it really gave the voice of these few heroes that have been kicking around trying to get them selves heard - it gave them a chance to get their views out into the mainstream.
And we still haven’t got all the answers from Woking so at some point I like to have to Learning History that gives us the inside track of some of the Woking story.
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