‘The community and town council need to work together to help the environment,’ says mayor

THE new mayor of Melksham, cllr Simon Crundell, is passionate about the environment, but what does he have planned during his time as mayor to promote how the town and its residents can help fight climate change? 

In this article, he speaks to 15-year-old St Laurence student, Josie Green, who visited Melksham News on work experience this month.  Cllr Crundell tells Josie about his passion for the environment, the impact that Melksham can have, and the plans that he has for improving the town’s impact on the planet. 

Why are you passionate about the environment? 

“As we have been growing up, as a generation, we’re more aware of environmental issues as part of our curriculum. CO2 emissions and the effects of global warming were first mentioned at the United Nations by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and I think as decades have gone on, we are starting to see far more adverse weather events and more extreme weather, and we are really starting to see the consequences of global warming and how global warming is linked to extreme weather events and biodiversity loss. In politics you have an opportunity to do something about these things and at various levels of government you can do different things. 

“At town and parish council it may seem as though we are pretty powerless to do things about these big global issues, but I think that I am in a privileged position to be on Melksham Town Council and there are things that we can do, particularly around biodiversity. It’s sort of a generational thing but I am also very lucky that all of my colleagues recognise the scale of the challenge and although it’s perhaps an issue that the younger generation are more passionately aware of, it’s now an issue that spans the generational divide and it’s not so much like the 90s when it was only younger people who were passionate about it. Now it doesn’t really matter what age you are.” 

Do you think a small town like Melksham can have an impact? 

“Yes, in short. We often use ‘environment as a sort of large umbrella term; in terms of carbon reduction, I don’t think we can have a massive impact – it’s a global issue and it goes well beyond the powers of a town and parish council. But where we can have a massive impact is on biodiversity. In Wiltshire we are an agricultural county, we produce an awful lot of food to feed the nation and over half of our crops are dependent on pollinating insects. 

“Without these pollinators we would see reduced yields in our crops and eventually crop failures, and that has a massive impact upon people’s lives, on food prices and the ability to feed ourselves. So, we have a responsibility to consider biodiversity and I think that at a parish and town council level, we have a huge agency to make a difference. 

“When talking about the umbrella term of the environment, whilst we have no power to legislate decarbonized personal transport or to change the way we go on holiday, the area that we can make a big difference on is biodiversity – Britain is one of the most biodiversity deficient countries in Europe. We need to ensure that there are habitats and plants that allow insects to thrive. In a town and parish council, we have responsibility for public land, which means we need to look at how we share our green open spaces with human recreation and the natural world – these needn’t be mutually exclusive. 

“This is good for our mental health too, and in that way, we can have a huge impact. This is why we need to consider biodiversity in everything we do at the council – for example if we are building new bus stops, we will consider living bus stops where the roofs can be habitats for pollenating insects; when we’re looking at public gardens, look at habitats for bees because most of our bees are solitary which means that when it comes to winter, they will lay in crevices. 

“Therefore, we can provide essential habitats such as bee hotels made from bamboo sticks to help the biodiversity. Because we are the lowest form of government, we are the closest form of government to the public, we know the ecology of Melksham very well. So in that sense, we can create a real meaningful impact in the field of biodiversity.”

How would you like to see the town council improve its impact?

“One of the great advantages is that there are lots of pots of money for biodiversity and so in the last budget we tripled out tree planting and ecology budget – I will be pushing to increase that further. I would like to see biodiversity and ecology to be a priority for Melksham Town Council and I know that my colleagues from different parties are committed to that. It’s all about spending money wisely – it’s not good enough to just say that we have tripled the budget, we need to bring the community on board and not doing this to Melksham, but bringing Melksham with us. I think we are a town that would enthusiastically adopt such a proposal.” 

What can the residents of Melksham do in their everyday lives as a way to help? 

“I think particularly in the way we garden. Our gardens have a massive impact on the world around us, so incorporating water in our gardens, having a pond, is essential for insects to thrive. Having a ‘messy garden’ is also really good for insects and so those days of very neat borders, where we spend hours and hours weeding, we remove a lot of essential habitats. 

“There are other measures too, for example at the Chelsea Flower Show they were promoting ‘No Mow May’ which is to let your lawn grow throughout the month and therefore provide those habitats. If everyone were to do that, we could build up a big web of habitats. On a larger scale if we look at hedgehogs, which are in an alarming state of decline, we can do things such as not fencing off spaces so the hedgehogs can move freely – there are many things we can do as residents. 

“More broadly, an interesting policy that I have been discussing with councilors in Devizes Town Council. They’re consulting residents in a hyper-localised manor about what they want from their local green space. A lot of streets have a small green, and residents are being asked about what they want with it – do they want it to be mowed grass that they can play on, or a wildflower meadow, or possibly a mini forest to be planted there, and I think we can do more like that in Melksham Town Council. 

“However, in order for that to work we need to have the community on board with us, it’s not just something that the council can do to an area as the residents have to want it.” 

There are many litter bins around the town but no recycling bins – is this an issue that has been discussed?

“This is something that we have discussed. A lot of the time, if you have these separated bins, they actually all just go to landfill anyway – this is because people put their litter in any of them. So, as well as looking at the bins, we also need to think about how we will collect that litter. We are looking into how we can resolve this and there are certain things that we can do; for example, if we have the money, there are services that will sort out the litter for you, so it’s split into refuse and recycling. 

“It is certainly an issue that has been raised in the council within this last year – we are a very new council but it is something that shocks us too. You would think that in the 21st century it would be a given that we are looking to recycle litter that is in public bins and so we are looking into it and trying to find a solution.”