“Absolutely every resident in Bracknell Forest” needs to be involved in the fight against climate disaster, the council’s new leader has said.

Labour councillor Mary Temperton has told the Local Democracy Reporting Service of her ambitious new plans to involve the whole community in the council’s climate fight.

“The council cannot do this on its own,” she said. “We need absolutely every resident in Bracknell Forest to make the change. We’ll be out there with market stalls talking to people, we’ll be out there every week.”

“We need car sharing, we need solar panels, we need minimum use of single plastics. There are enormous things that we can do that don’t cost an awful lot of money, though some of them will. But together we can find out what are the challenges and how to overcome it.”

Cllr Temperton is looking at ways to revamp the council’s climate work—scrapping the previous council leadership’s Climate Change Advisory Panel.

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Instead, she wants its replacement to be much more broadly-based. “It’s got to be community led,” she said. “I’m going to bring in business—leaders from business. I’d love to bring in retail. I’m ambitious so I want to bring in Sainsbury’s and other things like that.

“I want to bring in everybody to tell me what challenges they’ve got to change. Hopefully if we have this overall panel where they come and talk to us they’ll be able to take it back and come up with things. And after six months we’ll be able to say, what have you achieved?”

Cllr Temperton has taken personal responsibility for overseeing the council’s work on climate change. She told a meeting of the council on Wednesday, May 24, that climate change was “my passion.”

And she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service she wanted to build on the previous council’s work. She said: “We’re building on what the council did. But now we’ve got to get out there in the community. The council cannot do this on its own.”