Report of AGM and Public Meeting 16 October 2025

The notes below cover both the 2025 AGM and the October public meeting, which consisted of an open discussion about CA-WN’s current activities and future plans, with attendees invited to suggest new ideas. The meeting was recorded and is available to view on CA-WN’s YouTube channel.

AGM

The AGM meeting papers (Chair’s Report, Treasurer’s Report and Financial Report) are available to download.

1.     Apologies for absence Alexina Cassidy, Dave Musson, Helen Dyson, Patsy Hollingum, Peter Nalder, Richard Hollingum
Present Alan Mawer, Clare Robertson-Marriott (CRM), Clare Slater, Grace Cosford (GC), Harry Mellor (HM), Hilary Haynes (HH), Jane Wood (JW), Jonathan Harris (JH), Maria Lee (MaL), Martin Coombs (MC), Mick Lorkins (MicL), Mike Longman (MikL), Roy Hawkesford, Teresa Cox (TC), Rupert Knowles (RK)

 2.      Minutes of last AGM  Accepted with no alteration.

 3.      Chair’s Report. Available in full at the link above. JW has enjoyed being Chair for the last 4 years but is not standing this year. She emphasised the value of belonging to CA-WN as a community of like-minded people.
This has been a good year with some outstanding guest speakers, however the change in leadership at West Northamptonshire Council has presented some challenges and is likely to continue to do so.
Attendees thanked JW for her work as Chair.

4.     Treasurer’s Report. Available in full at the link above. CA-WN started the year with funds of £3,931 and ended it with £4,013. There has been minimal expenditure on essential annual subscriptions and a small amount of income from donations, including a generous donation of £200 from Alice Whitehead of Save Our Street Trees, to be spent on a tree project.
Our bank, Metro Bank, are imposing a monthly account fee of £3 from 1 December this year.

5.      Election of Officers
The Constitution allows for 4 Officer roles, currently:
Chair - Jane Wood
Treasurer - Harry Mellor
Secretary - Jane Wood
Vice Chair and Membership Secretary - Alexina Cassidy

The following Officers were elected for 2024/25:
Chair – Harry Mellor, nominated Jane Wood, seconded Rupert Knowles
Treasurer – Harry Mellor, nominated Jane Wood, seconded Mick Lorkins
Secretary – Jane Wood, nominated Hilary Haynes, seconded Teresa Cox
Membership Secretary – Alexina Cassidy, nominated Rupert Knowles, seconded Jane Wood (JW to contact AC after the meeting to confirm)
Vice Chair – vacant. AC advised she does not want to continue in this role. To be discussed at a future meeting.
These appointments were unanimously approved.

6.     Election of Steering Committee members
In addition to the Officers, there are currently 6 Steering Committee members. All were present at the meeting and confirmed they wished to continue in that role.

• Clare Robertson-Marriott
• Clare Slater
• Jonathan Harris
• Mick Lorkins
• Rupert Knowles
• Teresa Cox

MC and GC expressed an interest in attending the next Steering Committee meeting with a view to potentially joining the committee.  JW to send out an invite and link.

Public meeting

A summary of the main points raised.

• CA-WN Exchange (CE) is a useful forum for publishing climate and nature related articles. Please share it and if you know anyone with expertise or an interesting story to share, tell them about CE and ask if they might be interested in writing a piece.

Two big projects for the coming year:

• CA-WN is supporting a Festival of Nature being organised by the Northamptonshire Natural History Society (NNHS) on 19 September 2026 at Delapre Abbey. MikL, from NNHS Weather & Climate section, is contacting local environmental groups to invite them to participate.
• Building Resilience. CA-WN paid a consultancy to measure variations in temperature and humidity in ten homes and discovered these vary greatly across homes, as does what different households perceive as comfortable. Therefore generalised assumptions about how our homes are heated and run are of limited use. Currently we’re in a position where expected national guidance on how homes should be heated is yet to be published. Currently the starting point nationally for assessing how energy efficient homes are is the energy performance certificate (EPC), which is very general. Over the coming winter season we want to work on improving the assessment of home efficiency. Without a good assessment there is no way of knowing whether investment in the property is worthwhile. More information to follow in CA-WN Exchange.

Upcoming events

• Midlands Festival of Nature, event run by Kettering Wildlife on 30 and 31 May 2026. More details to be shared when available.
• Park Bioblitz. NNHS has been contacted by ID Verde, the WNC contractor responsible for maintaining Northampton parks, to ask if they wanted to get involved in an event in the parks - something like a bioblitz in parks including Brackmills/Hardingstone park, Bradlaugh Fields, Staunton Lakes, and Abington Park. This would involve inviting experts in different fields (e.g. ornithology, invertebrates, botany) to carry out surveys on the agreed day.  Details and date tbc.
• Tree swap. The guest speaker at last year’s AGM was from a group in Holland called More Trees Now which specialises in digging up young saplings to hand out for free. MicL set up a group called Northamptonshire Woodland Community Volunteers, which has held several tree harvesting and collection events. This winter we plan to invite people to collect any trees local to them and bring them to a ‘tree swap’ event, to be held early 2026, potentially to coincide with Valentines Day and the Climate Coalition’s annual ‘Show the Love’ event.  Many people have unwanted little trees popping up in their garden which could be passed on to someone else. HM already has many potted up that he is taking care of and is also planting some acorns from this year’s ‘mast’ crop.

Other points

• CRM met someone from the Abington Park management committee today about an idea to restore biodiversity in two spinneys in the park.
• HH has been a member since the start of CA-WN and in fact suggested the group’s name! She generously offered to make a monthly donation to cover the £3 monthly bank fee, which was gratefully accepted. HM to contact her to set this up.

Engagement with WNC

• MaL is very concerned about air pollution as she lives in the centre of Northampton. She has met with local Labour councillors and asked what an individual can do. It was suggested that she could attend the Place Scrutiny committee, which the public can attend and speak if they have points to make relevant to the meeting agenda¹.
• We cannot disengage from the council and having CA-WN representatives make statements at council meetings is a good way to engage. MaL is happy to attend and speak as needed – other volunteers would be welcome.
• TC recently attended the NCALC (Northants County Association of Local Councils) AGM – WNC Leader Mark Arnull was there. There was much discussion about planning and reassurances were given by Cllr Arnull that WNC are having a big review of the planning department with more jobs and an improved strategy. He was asked if there will be a focus on renewable energy and he agreed that there is a climate emergency.
• If councillors are not interested in anything to do with climate change, going down the route of Air Quality (AQ) might be seen as more practical. There are AQ standards but it is difficult and expensive for members of the public to measure these accurately. There is only one proper AQ monitoring station in the WN area (at Spring Park) which never shows pollutants anywhere near the limits. The limits can anyway be seen as inappropriate as it is detrimental to health to breathe in any pollution.
• The council maintains a number of other AQ monitors but they are fairly basic. AQ near the Northampton bus interchange is very poor. The Airly app and online map for AQ in Northampton shows everything green but NO2 levels are very much higher than the target levels. There is no AQ reporting in WNC’s quarterly KPIs.
• Council contractors will all be signed up to Net Zero or an equivalent. The impact on West Northamptonshire of the council’s position on Net Zero is likely to be that contractors will put older kit here and save the new cleaner equipment for councils that are bought in to delivering Net Zero.
• Prior to the 2025 local election JH had been working with others to build a cross party consensus on the council around their responsibility to act on climate. It may not have been moving at pace, but agreement at least existed. This no longer seems to be the case. As a member of WNC’s Cross Party Sustainability Working Group JH felt he had some influence before but this has been lost.
• Although the new administration at WNC has done away with the interim Net Zero targets the legal national target of 2050 (as set in the Climate Change Act) still stands. The new administration wants to talk about environmental impact rather than climate. At the last council meeting, it put forward its delivery plan, in which there is no mention of climate and the only environmental issues mentioned were fly-tipping and litter. Nationally, some political parties are now saying they want to review the Climate Change Act.
• The Local Plan is one of the only ways we have of making sure we are aiming for the 2050 legal Net Zero target; JH is now focused on this as a way of making sure national targets are adhered to. A new version of the Local Plan covering the period up to 2043 is being written.
• Through CA-WN Exchange we can keep trying to counter misinformation on climate from the mainstream media and through social media. There is a regular Council Watch feature on CA-WN Exchange which helps to keep our audience informed of what WNC are doing.
• There is no preparation being done for very hot summers and possibly very cold winters. Planning needs to look at life in 25 years’ time – whereas everything is being done based on today’s world.
• The Climate Change Act says councils are responsible for climate adaptation and mitigation.  It doesn’t place any specific responsibility on councils to report on scope 1, 2 & 3 emissions, although WNC has been doing this since 2023. It’s not currently clear if that will continue.
• Some public consultations are due from WNC, which we should encourage people to respond to. One of these is the Local Nature Recovery Strategy, which has been delayed again. Current consultations are here.
• Lobby your ward councillors to tell them if you’re not happy with the council’s stance on climate.

CA-WN past and future

• A history of CA-WN’s first 4 years is up on CA-WN Exchange. The last year doesn’t seem very active but perhaps that’s because we’ve already done a lot. We are perhaps preaching to an audience of like-minded people – do we need to do more to reach out beyond that? And if so, how?
• JH advised that on visits to schools, students are talking about these important issues.  Some schools have climate awards – this could be promoted more widely.
• TC works for the Open University and they do a lot through their student union, as students have more power to raise issues than OU employees. Can CA-WN do more to work with schools, for example to highlight poor AQ
• Eluned Lewis-Nicholl has written lesson plans on AQ for Northamptonshire and has written to the AQ officer at WNC (Joanna Oakes) without getting a reply so far. MaL has asked her councillors to follow up.
• Has CA-WN liaised with the 1000 Voices campaign? We have, however people perceived as ‘activists’ tend to be dismissed - some 1000 Voices members have been banned from council meetings.
• The level of global heating is at 1.5 degrees now and is on track to be 2 degrees by 2050 or even earlier. Can we have conversations about the issues that this raises, for example water and food security? More very hot summers like the one we have just had are a severe threat to UK food production – this year’s was the second worst harvest ever. 43% of UK food comes from abroad.
• A new report related to food security came out in the last couple of days. It is good but raises many of the same points as the previous national food strategy, which was effectively shelved by government. RK has been working through the two side by side. MC offered to do an AI compare and contrast – HM to share details of the two reports. We can feature something on this in CA-WN Exchange.
• Can we find a local very defined issue to campaign on such as a planning issue, getting locals involved can be very effective? JH suggested looking at the Strategic Planning Committee agenda.
• The UN has forecast that global GDP will reduce and this will include the UK, yet governments continue to borrow against GDP.
• WNC Audit Committee runs a strategic risk register, which includes a risk around energy, but nothing on water.  JH attended an Audit Committee meeting to ask why water is not on the risk register and was told it is not considered a significant risk comparable to energy. Issues like this can be raised by members of the public at or in advance of Audit Committee meetings¹.

1.       Public engagement with WNC.

The council’s constitution permits members of the public to make statements at council meetings, or to submit written questions in advance to be answered at the meeting.
Questions and requests to make statements must be sent to democraticservices@westnorthants.gov.uk. The email should include your full name, address and contact phone number as well as your question if appropriate.

Statements are strictly limited to 3 minutes (practising timing is recommended!) and must be linked to an item on the meeting agenda.  You must register to make a statement at least 24 hours before the start of the meeting.  

If submitting a question to be answered at the meeting, note ‘Questions need to be framed so as to elicit information rather than make a statement’.  The deadline for submitting questions is 10.00am, three clear working days before the meeting.  So for a meeting on Thursday questions will need to be sent in by 10am on the previous Friday.

The council meetings timetable and papers are published on their website. Note meeting agendas and report packs are published 5 days before each meeting.