New plan to minimise impact of climate change in West Lothian
Measures are being put in place to protect West Lothian from increasing numbers of severe weather events.
Council Executive have approved the council's Adaptation Action Plan, one of the key commitments set out in the Climate Change Strategy.
Climate adaptation aims to enable West Lothian to be more resilient to climate impacts and take advantage of any beneficial opportunities. To achieve this, changes are required to reduce the effects of any climate change-related impact on property, service delivery and the wider West Lothian community.
The new Climate Change Adaptation Action Plan for the council as an organisation provides a set of common sense, resource efficient actions that will deliver long term benefits for assets, services and communities.
It includes over 70 actions over the next six years to help minimise any negative impacts such as: implementing sustainable urban drainage systems; using woodchip from arboriculture operations used as weed control in cemeteries; and localised weather forecasts to allow targeted road management.
A report in 2018 found that the council identified that the council spent approximately £40 million on maintenance and repair costs, as either a direct or indirect result of extreme weather events between 2000 and 2015.
