Young people’s views on climate change were shared at a Bath and North East Somerset Climate Youth Conference joined by deputy council leader Councillor Sarah Warren.
Staff and pupils from schools across the area joined a discussion on Active Travel with Bath & North East Somerset Council deputy leader Sarah Warren during the conference on 8 March.
The conference was hosted by Kingswood School in Bath and had the theme of ‘positive changes that we are making as a society’.
Councillor Warren, who is also cabinet member for Climate Emergency and Sustainable Travel, spoke to a group of 27 students aged 11 to 18 about the council’s priority areas for reducing carbon emissions and encouraging nature recovery across the area.
The main focus of the session was a discussion on active travel, which includes walking, wheeling and cycling, with students invited to share their experiences and perspectives to feed into the council’s Active Travel Masterplan.
Councillor Sarah Warren said, “Thank you to Kingswood School for organising such a fantastic event and for inviting me to speak. I’d also like to thank all the pupils who took part in my session, they gave us some really good feedback to include in our Active Travel Masterplan including highlighting that personal safety is a huge issue that we need to tackle if we want our children to feel safe using active travel modes.”
The Active Travel Masterplan will set out the existing and future active travel infrastructure required to enable and provide for sustainable and healthy forms of transport in order to reduce traffic congestion and carbon emissions across Bath & North East Somerset. The plan will be for all types of active travel whether it’s for commuting, leisure or utility.
The masterplan will support the existing Local Plan framework and call upon policies already included in other transport plans and strategies including the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan, The Journey to Net Zero transport plan and the Transport and Development SPD.