Thread by @AlysGreens

Lots of #GreenWins today at Policy & Sustainability Committee today including on:
✈️ international travel emissions
🏳️‍🌈 signing up to Stonewall
❌️ ending sexual harassment
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Gaelic language
☀️ Extreme heat resilience
💰 Budget
🌱 Community Climate Fund
🎬 saving Filmhouse

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🏳️‍🌈 First up, @Alex4Craig_Dudd was pleased to propose a motion on behalf of @EdinburghGreens @EdinburghSNP and @EdinburghLibDem agreeing to sign up to the @StonewallScot Diversity Champions Programme.
This was a really important move to support LGBT+ rights of our workers.

Getting to this stage has been a bit of a saga: @Alex4Craig_Dudd first proposed that the Council should consider signing up in Feb 2022, and it's only now - over a year later - that we finally got the report, which didnt even recommend that we should sign up yet.

We also had lots of concerns about some of the language used in an original version of the report, and I'm grateful to @CllrBenParker @adamrmcvey and others for calling this out and getting a new report issued.

After some of the troubling comments at full council last week () it was really important for us to show a strong statement of support for LGBT+ people & we were so pleased to have 3 parties behind this amendment, and that it passed despite Tory opposition.

There were some powerful and touching speeches on this item so I'd recommend watching this item back on the @Edinburgh_CC Webcast if you are interested!

edinburgh.public-i.tv/core/portal/we…

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Next up for us was an amendment on the council's Gaelic Language Plans. We approved the draft plan, but ensured that there would be at least one workshop with members of the Gaelic speaking community, added a question to the consultation, and asked for a report on funding.

✈️ We had a report on the carbon impact of international travel. Unfortunately, it didn't include any travel by the Lord Provost, so @CllrBenParker had an addendum making sure we would get this data, and it would be included going forward.

☀️ Sticking with climate change, we had a reponse to a motion from @CllrBenParker on extreme heat, climate adaptation & resilience. This was a really useful report showing what's being done, but revealed that some policies are pretty old, and don't necessarily all join up.

Our addendum asks for information to be shared setting out how all of the policies (should!) work together, when they're up for review, & who's responsible for them.

An example of the "boring but important" stuff we can get done in committees, to help make change down the line!

❌️ Our final thing on the 'reports' section of the agenda was on sexual harassment. We had an addendum calling for a report into the Council having a standalone sexual harassment policy, recognising the great work @ScottishTUC @STUCwomen have done in this area.

Then on to motions, and we had a joint amendment with the SNP responding to a motion from Labour asking for a report into the redeployment pool. This was following on from the Budget decision which proposed revisiting to council policy of no compulsory redundancies.

We sought to expand their motion to include some of the other budget decisions we're concerned about including around privitisation of waste services. We were disappointed this wasn't accepted by labour despite us changing it to an addendum (therefore not changing theirs at all).

We have some pretty serious concerns that revisiting the redeployment pool will lead to calls for compulsory redundancies, and comments from the tories and lib dems in the meeting made it clear that they will be pursuing this. We'll be keeping a careful watch going forward!

We had 2 motions up as well:
🌱 I had one about the Edinburgh Community Climate Fund - welcoming its success, asking how it can be expanded, and how we can support projects which weren't successful this time round.

💰 @CllrBenParker's motion asked officers to see what support other parties might need to do climate impact assessments of their budgets, as we were the only ones to include it this time round, despite all parties supporting our original motion calling for a template to be made.

🎬 Finally, we were pleased to support @FinlayMcF emergency motion on #Filmhouse, and to add an addendum calling for the Council Leader to write to the Scottish Government in 24 hrs asking for financial support to help keep it as a community cultural asset.

🤐 We also had a big success on one of the private items about care homes which came to committee. I can't share it just yet but we should be able to once the minutes are released.

🙋‍♀️ As well as motions & amendments, of course, we scrutinised other items including asking questions about:

🚨 #CaseyReport & Police Scotland
📈 Accessible progress reporting
🔋 Local heat & energy strategy
🗽 Statues & slavery
👨‍⚕️ Health recruitment

And more!

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