1. 1. Our approach to environmental sustainability
  2. 2. Environmental Sustainability Survey 2022

We are committed to improving our environment and reducing our carbon footprint. We can make changes on our doorstep that will benefit our local environment. Our behaviour and decisions can help to meet wider UK sustainability and carbon targets. We also need your help.

What the Council is doing about environmental sustainability

Our five-year corporate plan, Reigate & Banstead 2025, includes an objective to reduce the Council's own environmental impact, support local residents and businesses to do the same, and to make sure our activities increase the borough's resilience to the effects of climate change.

To help achieve this objective, the Council's Executive agreed a new Environmental Sustainability Strategy and Action Plan in July 2020, which commits us to making our own operations, and the borough, a more sustainable place to live.  

We committed to review the Strategy regularly, and, after an engagement and review process the revised Strategy and Action Plan was approved by the Council Executive in March 2024 – the Strategy and Action Plan can be found as Annex 1 and Annex 2 under Item 70 of the March Executive papers (PDF, ModernGov).  This revision reflects the changes in policy and technology since 2020 and builds on our actions and lessons-learnt in the first three years of delivery.

We will continue to report on our progress annually.

Our environmental strategy and action plan

Our original 2020 Strategy identified three main sustainability themes where together we can make a big difference, and in our 2024 review we added a fourth:

  1. Energy and carbon – reducing emissions and increasing renewable energy and fuel use.
  2. Low impact consumption - using fewer natural resources - such as cutting the amount of water we use and the food we waste.
  3. Biodiversity and the natural environment – protecting and enhancing our green spaces and ecosystems.
  4. Climate adaptation and resilience - accelerate adaptation and develop resilience for the predicted future climate.

We are making progress, but there is much more to come. 

Read the 2020 Environmental Sustainability Strategy and Action Plan 

Annual reporting

In September 2023, we took our third annual report (PDF, ModernGov) and Action Plan Report (PDF, ModernGov) on progress with our own Environmental Sustainability Strategy to the Executive Committee. The report includes updates on all of our Strategy themes, information on borough and council-level carbon emissions, and how we are working to reduce these.

Further reading

Previous years’ reports can be found below:

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