Almost 5000 people voted Green here in Cheltenham at the local elections in 2021, making us the third largest and fastest growing party. In St Paul’s, we came second place from a standing start, out of six candidates. The Green Party can win in Cheltenham!

Votes for the Green Party also send a message that we want to shift our political priorities to tackle widening social inequality, build back better from Covid, bring in new thinking, and take urgent and vital action on climate change.

You can help change the course of local and British politics – by voting for change this Thursday 5th May.

The post Your Vote Makes All The Difference appeared first on Cheltenham Green Party.

26th April 2022

Dear Mr Brearley,

Having worked for several years in domestic energy supply, I am deeply conscious of the profound and destructive effect of rising energy prices upon prepayment meter users, most of whom are renters in precarious circumstances.

I understand that standing charges are set at a base rate for all energy users so that supply and infrastructure can be maintained. However, it doesn’t make sense for it to be the same rate regardless of the amounts of actual energy used – since wealthier householders use a much greater supply of energy, so put far more pressure on the grid. It simply isn’t fair or reasonable to expect them to pay the same amount as people who use a fraction of their supply demands.

Domestic energy supply to warm our homes, light our space and cook our meals is something that no-one in the UK can live without. We have no choice but to pay for unfair standing charges that are set by yourselves. OFGEM cannot exist as an entity to make the market more fair for consumers if we are working from a catastrophic flaw at the foundation of pricing structure.

In addition to these standing charges – and the variable and highly unpredictable costs of energy for prepayment users who cannot simply be shifted to energy plans, a new supplier or direct debit payments that are normally recommended to people wishing to save money – I am also very concerned that these users are also now expected to shoulder the costs of failed energy suppliers. Those suppliers that haven’t gone into closure are passing their own costs onto their customers and raising prices – this should not be, under any circumstances, the route that we can take. People are terrified of the effects this is having on their household budgets and standard of living.

I am writing to ask you urgently to do as has been suggested by Fuel Poverty Action, which has written to you asking you to:

I look forward to your addressing this unconscionable situation as early as possible.

Many thanks,

Tabi Joy

Cheltenham Green Party

If you’d like to send OFGEM CEO Jonathan Brearley an email of your own, Fuel Poverty Action has a simple form to help you get in touch with your views.

The post OFGEM and the Standing Charge Fiasco appeared first on Cheltenham Green Party.

The good news is that since the last IPCC report was released in 2018, we’ve seen climate strikes, Fridays for Future, the meteoric rise of the Green New Deal movement. People are calling for action and a new agenda is being set.

It is time to move on from individualistic changes, and it’s time to collectivise! To mire yourself in panic and depression is not going to change anything – but to join a group, like Cheltenham Green Party, you can be on the same level as people who know the stakes, and are taking action for a better world.

This year, Cheltenham Green Party came third place in local elections across Cheltenham, and second place out of six candidates in St Paul’s ward, our target ward. We are at the forefront of the change that people want to see. And we want to be there with you.

The post Climate Change Summers appeared first on Cheltenham Green Party.

Local elections for Cheltenham and Gloucestershire are taking place on Thursday 6th May. These elections are significant this time around because they’re the first chance since 2019 for the British public to take action on the causes in democracy that matter to them. And it’s a chance to take a new direction, and build back better through the pandemic.

So it’s definitely a good opportunity to have someone advocating on your behalf who can make a positive difference and be a voice for change!

Cheltenham Green Party are running candidates in all wards this May, and we all have some really good ideas about work we’d like to do.

• We want to make sure that new housing developments are future-proofed and focused around walkable communities.
• We could create local community energy projects using solar and wind power that would be cheaper for people to use.
• We could test out a basic income so that people can reach their potential without needing to fight for their own survival.
• Roll out a retrofitting scheme to make warmer homes.
• Create bee corridors and rewilded areas across town and in the countryside.
• We could create training programs to help people get jobs in a new green economy, and we can create worker protections so that human happiness is prioritised before just profit.
• We can create better local food networks so that there’s less food waste, and our supply chains are more resilient.
• We can find better ways to prevent and mitigate flooding so there’s less damage done by unpredictable weather.

If you’re feeling excited about these ideas, please consider voting Green!

The post What Difference Could Greens Make on Our Council? appeared first on Cheltenham Green Party.

Frontline workers, including health and social workers, shop workers, teachers, delivery drivers, bus drivers, cleaners and waste disposal workers, firefighters and police officers, funeral staff and many other sectors, are continuing to work in public to help protect people, but are often lacking full protection themselves.

We’re all doing vital work wearing masks and socially distancing, but vaccinating key workers can also help to prevent the spread of the virus.

The Green Party have launched a petition to ask the Minister for COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment, Nadhim Zahawi, to prioritise frontline workers – if you agree, you can sign it here.

The post Essential Support for Essential Workers appeared first on Cheltenham Green Party.

It is time to take urgent action to help our next generation, and stop them from falling into deep and irreversible uncertainty.

RE: Partial accommodation and tuition fee refunds for students.

Dear Vice-Chancellor Stephen Marston,

After the Prime Minister’s statement regarding a third national lockdown on Monday 4th January and with a subsequent press conference on Tuesday 5th January, we are writing to you to raise our urgent concerns about the welfare of University of Gloucestershire students.

While Cheltenham Green Party acknowledges and respects the University’s sovereignty, it is vital, and feel it is only right, to protect the interests of our student constituents and future generations.

During Monday’s announcement, the Prime Minister failed to utter a single word in acknowledgment of the deep uncertainty and economic impact being presently faced by university students. That despite the fact over 2 million students live in England and Wales and are suffering and curtailed, yet again, due to tightened restrictions.

With another national lockdown in place, students are being discouraged from returning to their term-time addresses if they have not already done so. Furthermore, a proportion of students’ accommodation fees are used for running services and facilities they are no longer able to access, such as the gyms, social events, cafes and bars at Pittville Student Village. To expect University of Gloucestershire students to pay full fees for accommodation they cannot live in, and services they cannot use, is unreasonable and unjust.

Covid restrictions have removed many, if not all, practical elements to several courses. Laboratories have been closed off, field trips have been cancelled, and overseas fieldwork and work experience opportunities have disappeared. Despite the utmost effort of lecturers, no form of online learning can adequately replicate the development of practical skills so many students rely on for future careers. Burdening students with tuition fees is already an immoral policy, but forcing students to pay upwards of £9,250 for an experience falling so far short of expectations is even more so, especially since that experience is one metric used to justify fees and the marketisation of higher education in the first place.

These students made the choice to apply for a place at the University of Gloucestershire based on the unique range of services and amenities that they are now missing out on. The University is profiting from their loss of opportunity and their disappointment. It is not a

fit start in life for any person, let alone anyone who has trusted you and your staff to guide them into their adulthood. You have an opportunity to provide the support that they deserve.

Mr Marston, we are urging you to initiate negotiations with your students concerning partial refunds for tuition and for accommodation costs. It is unjust for the University to profit from its students while these same students are legally prohibited from returning to term-time addresses without extenuating circumstances, are having a learning experience that does not reflect what they were sold and facing job shortages as a result of the pandemic.

We are also urging you to join your colleagues at Universities UK in lobbying the Department of Education for financial support for our higher education institutions. Without centralised funding, the UK’s world-leading universities face financial collapse in the very near future, creating damage that may take years to repair.

You have the platform to persuade our Government to provide the funding packages that would rescue our universities from economic failure and safeguard the UK’s higher education and research for the future.

Thank you for taking time to read our letter. We look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Cheltenham Green Party

The post University of Gloucestershire – Student Rents appeared first on Cheltenham Green Party.

“It’s something that our councils can change. They have a legal responsibility for addressing health issues in our environment, and it should not be the responsibility of the people at risk to advocate for their own safety.

“We can clearly see that children and elderly people, people with existing health conditions or chronic illnesses, those living in high-traffic areas in town centres, and people from Black and Asian communities who tend to face inequalities of healthcare and housing – all of whom are statistically most likely to die of the effects of air pollution – will continue to suffer from our communal lack of diligence in making better futures for everyone.”

Tabi added: “This isn’t an issue isolated to big cities. It’s here on our doorstep – on our pavements, on our driveways. The last Air Quality Action plan for Cheltenham expired in 2019, coming up to nearly two years ago. Where’s the new plan which should have come into force this year?

“The council promised at a cabinet meeting in January 2020 that it would start measuring particulates for the first time, through some new AQ Mesh Pod monitors. Science has shown that particulates can cross the blood-brain barrier, causing heart disease, cancer, brain damage. When will the data from particulate measurements in Cheltenham be published?

“The council said at the same time that they would start measuring Nitrogen Dioxide levels in real time. When will this data be shared with the public?

“Air pollution levels for both nitrogen dioxide and particulates are at illegal levels in parts of Cheltenham, and if we are slow to address this, we will pay the price in residents’ health. Independent measurements by the Parish Council in Leckhampton show that the levels of particulates (PM2.5) in a suburb of town are averaging above the World Health limit. The council’s own measurements of Nitrogen Dioxide show average levels past the legal limit in the centre of town. This is an urgent crisis. Yet nothing meaningful is being done.

“We can’t wait another seven years for action. We need immediate commitment. We’ve lost lives. We’ve done the research. We have the data, even if it’s not being widely shared.

“Please work with people across Cheltenham to help uplift all of us.”

Cheltenham Borough Council Nitrogen Dioxide data

The table and chart below compares NO2 levels, as measured by CBC’s diffusion tube monitors, at 8 sites across the town, over the period 2011 to 2019.

The 8 sites shown have not been ‘selected’ in any way – they are the only 8 sites that CBC has consistently monitored over the last 9 years. We have also shown the average reading of the 3 diffusion tubes sited at St Georges Street/Swindon Rd, where they are co-located with the reference monitor. This site has only been producing full data since 2013.

Figures highlighted in red are above the annual 40 ug/m3 legal limit.

The 9 monitoring sites given above are broadly in the town centre. It isn’t possible to look at air quality trends in other areas of the town, as CBC has not consistently monitored locations outside the town centre over the last 9 years. But this data clearly does not support the conclusion that there has been ‘steady improvement’ and a ‘generally positive trajectory’ in air quality in Cheltenham.

We can see the essentially static levels of air pollution in the town centre by looking at the average readings across the 8 sites for which there is full data for the 9 year period. (Data for the 3 co-location sites only exists for 7 years.)

The variance between 2011 and 2019 is only 1.2 ug/m3 NO2 – around 2.9%. This is within the margin of error of diffusion tube sampling.

Bear in mind also that 12 out of the 72 data points (8 sites x 9 years) have some months where data is missing.

When looking at pollution data, DEFRA stresses that it is important not to look at a single year in isolation due to the influence of weather conditions.

The data shows that the average town-centre NO2 levels for 2011 and 2017 were identical. There was a dip in 2018, but this almost been completely reversed in 2019.

Given the margin of error in diffusion tube monitoring, the issue of missing data from some of the monthly sampling, and the possible influence of weather conditions, the only conclusion is that air pollution levels in Cheltenham have remained broadly static over the last 9 years.

It is impossible to conclude from the data that there has been a ‘slow but steady improvement in air quality’. A much more accurate statement would be that air quality has been essentially unchanged over the last 9 years.

The post It’s in the air we breathe: we need to address pollution now appeared first on Cheltenham Green Party.

In May this year, Westminster released £2 billion of funding for safe walking and cycling routes to help councils reduce the health pressure of the pandemic. While councils such as Brighton responded with ambitious plans such as a segregated sea-front cycle lane, Gloucestershire County Council’s vision for Cheltenham went no further than a few unsightly red-and-white bollards in front of a few shops on Bath Road.

Yet even this gesture only came after fierce pressure from Cheltenham residents, who were tired of having to choose between breaking physical distancing guidelines and walking in the road with on-coming motorists. I doubt, however, that the “bollard solution” is what anybody had in mind…

This week, we discover that GCC was awarded just £864K out of a possible pot of £1.15 million for safe walking and cycling routes. Why? Because the award depended on how well the first batch of funding from May was spent.

The question the people of Cheltenham need to ask is: Do we think GCC’s “bollard solution” was a good example of our funding well spent? And if not, what would we have liked to see?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad GCC got the funding – it’s been far too long coming – but the fact remains: GCC could have (and should have) got more than it did. The reason it didn’t was because it’s run out of ideas and isn’t brave enough to put forward the vision the county needs post-covid.

GCC urgently needs a shot of imagination and ambition, underpinned by new ideas and fresh insight from across the generations. In short, we need more diverse representation to revitalise and bring new perspectives to a council that has become narrow-sighted and stale. Because without imagination, Gloucestershire will keep missing out.

Jess West – Green Candidate for All Saints Ward

The post Where Are Gloucestershire’s Great Ideas? appeared first on Cheltenham Green Party.