Agenda item

A report of the Head of Planning and Regeneration.

A report of the Head of Planning and Regeneration was submitted updating the Committee on the outcome of environmental audits undertaken for October 2021. (Item 6 on the agenda filed with these minutes).

The Sustainability Officer attended the meeting to assist the Committee with the consideration of this item and provided an update as follows:

·         The Council had an in-house Environmental Management System for Council owned property at Southfield Road officed, the Information & Computer Services building, Loughborough Town Hall, Charnwood Museum, Oak and Ark Business Centres and Woodgate Chambers.

·         The environmental audits had taken place on 19^th and 20^th October to check the implementation of the Environmental Management System and legal compliance with it.

·         Where non-conformities had been raised, recommendations for mitigation actions had been made.

·         The implementation of mitigation actions was managed through the Legislation Update Service which enabled the service to manage actions and the timelines for actions.

·         The audit identified any activity it considered to be posing an environmental risk or a breech in legal requirement as either a Non-Conformance with Requirement (NCR - a non-fulfilment of a legal requirement), an ‘Issue’ or a ‘Recommendation’.

·         The October 2021 audit found two new Non-Conformance with Requirement (NCRs) found with six found in March 2021. Including the two new NCRs identified there were currently three NCRs open, two at the Town Hall and one at Woodgate Chambers. Five of the NCRs identified through the March audit have now been closed.

·         Housekeeping was found to be good throughout the premises with chemicals being stored in the correct locations such as cleaning cupboards. An NCR was raised for no waste transfer note being available for the collection of printer cartridges.

·         Most of the paperwork and statutory inspections required renewal every 12 months.  Therefore, auditing every six months was seen as unnecessary.

·         It was intended for the full audit in March 2022 to be reported to the Audit Committee in June 2022 and then to continue on an annual basis.

The Chair raised the COP 26 conference that had been taking place and considered it likely that it would lead to legislation from the central government that would affect the Council.

The Sustainability Officer responded that the Legislation Update Service would feed any such developments through to the service as part of the audit process.

The Chair raised the issue that the wording of ‘Internal Audit’ was confusing as the Internal Audit was a separate audit and proposed it be changed to ‘Environmental Audit’.

The Vice-Chair raised concern that if the audit was conducted every 12 months rather than every six months, issues may arise in that time that may need attention sooner.

The Sustainability Officer responded that the scale of risk was relatively low for processes conducted on-site.   Whilst the Full Compliance Audit was annual, regular reviews were conducted with building managers.  Due to the operations and activities undertaken, there was a low scale environmental risk.

RESOLVED

1. That the Committee notes the outcome of the environmental audit process,

including the identified actions for any mitigation required.

2. That the Committee notes the proposed reduction in the frequency of internal environmental audits to every 12 months.

Reasons

1. To ensure the Committee is kept informed of the Council’s approach to

managing environmental risks related to the Environmental Management

System.

2. Based on the relative environmental risks of the sites, it is considered auditing each site every six months is unnecessary. Most of the paperwork and statutory inspections require renewal every 12 months. This means that the same paperwork is reviewed at both the full and interim audits. Over time compliance has increased and processes improved.