Staffordshire County Council (SCC) is one of the largest employers in Staffordshire with over 5,000 officers serving a population of over 85,0000 local residents.
The council manages and delivers a range of local public services from our main offices at Staffordshire Place, County Buildings in Stafford Town centre and from sites located around the County.
SCC’s commitment to sustainability is encapsulated in their Corporate Climate Change Strategy ‘Green Shoots.’ The strategy sets out targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050 from a 1990 baseline figure, with an average annual decrease of 3% and to generate 15% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. These actions will contribute towards mitigating further avoidable climate change, with monitoring of energy usage from buildings, street lighting and fleet vehicles occurring annually. Progress on these targets to date includes the progression towards installation of solar photovoltaic panels on County Farms Estates and a number of school buildings, procured through SCC’s Sustainable Procurement Strategy, a biomass boiler heating system at Staffordshire Place, schools and corporate buildings, a vehicle excise duty band limit on all leased vehicles and active use of a sustainable travel hierarchy for business related journeys as detailed in their Green Travel Plan.
In addition, ensuring SCC’s services, local businesses, communities and residents are well adapted, and have increased resilience to unavoidable climate change, is also a priority. SCC assess the risks of climate change to our services and service users, actively monitoring and supporting the implementation of their Climate Change Adaptation Plan.
As part of our responses, SCC worked with South Staffordshire Council, local residents and local organisations to develop a tailored Severe Weather Plan for Bilbrook, South Staffordshire. The plan will support the community to increase their resilience to current and future severe weather events. Following on from the success of the work being done in Bilbrook, SCC are continuing to collaborate with local partners to identify and support communities around Staffordshire.
SCC also provides support for fellow SWM members Staffordshire Business and Environment Network (sben), who promote the economic benefits of environmental and sustainable growth.
As a waste disposal authority, SCC has also committed themselves to a zero waste to landfill target, through increased recycling rates at county-wide household waste recycling centres and the recovery of energy from waste at the Veolia W2R facility in South Staffordshire and Hanford facility in Stoke-on-Trent.
SCC has been a SWM member since 2017 and we have worked with them to help develop a series of sustainability priorities for the council and the county of Staffordshire.
Our primary contact is Rachel Melvin, Sustainability & Waste Strategy Team Manager.