A COUNTY woman who asked for answers from the council on climate change said she feels “fobbed off” by their response. 

Caroline Screen put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to Worcestershire County Council asking how many climate change questions had been asked by members of the public at council meetings over the last 12 months.

The council’s response did not answer the question, instead pointing her to the online minutes of the council’s meetings.

She said: “There were other members of the public asking similar questions at the same meeting and I wondered whether they had received replies.

"That’s why I submitted my Freedom of Information request, but the county council have told me I need to do the work myself.

They said I should go back and read the minutes of all meetings myself to see how many questions have been asked about climate change.

"This would be very time-consuming but, more importantly, there is no way from the minutes to tell me if questions from other residents were ever answered.”

Ms Screen, from Malvern, submitted her FOI request back in January and added: “I feel fobbed off by the FOI reply, and I still don’t have an answer to my original question.

"It reflects a lack of urgency to do what needs to be done to address the climate and ecological emergency.

"The current attitude of most councillors lets down Worcestershire residents as well as future generations.”

In 2019, councillors removed the pledge to declare a climate emergency, putting back their carbon neutral target to 2050.

Hundreds of protestors turned up to County Hall and sat in a packed council chamber to hear whether the council would declare a climate emergency and set a target of making the authority carbon neutral by 2030.

An amended motion, put forward by cabinet member for environment Cllr Tony Miller and backed by the Conservatives, removed the plea to declare a climate emergency and pushed the carbon neutral target back to 2050.

Johnny Birks, from Extinction Rebellion, said: “Why won’t Worcestershire County Council join the UK parliament and 75% of Local Authorities in declaring a climate emergency?

"That is an essential first step if they are to recognise the scale of the problem and the need to act now to tackle it.”

A council spokesman said: "We can confirm that the request was considered by our Information Access Co-ordinator.

"On this occasion, the level of information requested was not given to the customer, as we thought a legal exemption was able to be applied when responding to the request.

"The legal exemption in question was Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act.

"This section of the Act can be applied as an exemption if information is deemed reasonably accessible, to the customer in the public domain.

"We apologise that the nature of this exemption was not made clear in our correspondence with Ms Screen.

"We have reviewed our response to Ms Screen and it has been brought to our attention not all of the information originally requested is reasonably accessible online.

"We are therefore reviewing our response to Ms Screen and will update in due course.”