We are here to facilitate a conversation with local people, to co-design and co-develop ideas, try some things out with small groups, and help support wider climate action in the community.

 

We want to find out as much as we can about pollution, traffic and other related data to create a picture of the impact on our community. We want to find out what it would take for it to be easier to drive less here, for it to be easier to walk or cycle more.

 

We will work with established and emerging community groups and stakeholders in Chorlton & Chorlton Park wards, to find out about the challenges and opportunities of reducing carbon emissions, and help grow community ideas for climate action.

 

We will be running three pilot mini-projects to work with people at a primary school (Barlow Hall), a residential street (tbc) and a group of businesses (tbc).

There are many ways to get involved and over the coming year we will be reaching out as widely as we can to find out how/ if we can help, and facilitate this conversation.

Here are some specific things you will be able to do to be part of the project:-

 

• • Become a Data Champion
  • Become a School Champion
  • Join the Chorlton Climate Action Community Forum 
  • Check our website for updates, resources and future events
  • Sign up to our mailing list to keep up to date with news and events.
  • Head to our online engagement platform Commonplace, to have your say on specific online questions, surveys & sessions which will inform our findings and help co-develop responses for future activity 
  • Join our face-to-face sessions. As Covid allows, we will be more active out and about in the Chorlton area 
  • Request that we attend a meeting with you or your group, or facilitate a session / workshop with you
  • Get involved in one of our mini projects 

• Join our Mailing List
• Follow us on Twitter
• Find us on Facebook
• Follow our Instagram
• Email us 

We can certainly try!

We host a monthly Chorlton Community Climate Action Forum where we share updates and people come together to grow ideas. 

As well, we are happy to support individuals and local groups who want to share their news. We can help with promotion and storytelling.

We are a small project and through 2021 as the project grows we hope to be able to support and link people up people in the community to amplify what comes out of these initial connections and conversations. 

Look out for our future events and head over to our Commonplace site or email us.

There are also a variety of groups already active in Chorlton – head to the our friends page to see a developing list.

Lockdown has reminded us of the benefits of removing traffic from neighbourhoods – with cleaner air, greener spaces and safer streets. Emissions from transport make up one third of all direct Co2 emissions in Manchester – and the majority of that comes from cars, and it’s the only sector of carbon emissions which is growing.

 

We also know that ⅓ of all trips of 1km or less are taken by car – a journey that would take less than 10-15 mins by foot and 5 mins on a bike.

 

We want to support the 72.5% of households who own one car or more in our neighbourhood*, to drive less and walk or cycle more.

 

Not everyone can make different choices about how they get around; but with help a number of us could, more of the time, to benefit the overall community, leave space on the roads for those who really need it and do our bit towards the city’s goal to halve carbon emissions in the next five years.

 

*Data aggregated across both awards from the 2011 census. Chorlton (75%) Chorlton Park (68%). 4% of households across both wards have 3 or more cars,

Manchester’s leaders have signed the city up to cut carbon emissions by half in the next five years – and then half again by 2030.

Fossil fuel cars aren’t being phased out of the UK until 2030, and even then some hybrids will be allowed, by which time it will be too late.

Furthermore, we don’t have enough key resources like lithium to manufacture all the electric cars needed for everyone to swap their fossil fuel car for an electric one.

Even without the damaging environmental impacts of pollution, it is also hard to see how we can carry on with the increase in congestion and traffic. In the last ten years, traffic on residential roads has doubled.

We are aiming to do as much as we can with what we have in our 12 months (Jan-Dec 2021). 

 

• Create a clear picture of traffic, pollution and other patterns in Chorlton that show what is happening here, and how we might enable reductions in emissions 
• Carry out overall engagement with the community including key demographics to create a collective vision 
• Deliver 3 mini engagement projects that enable us to learn the challenges and opportunities in a school, residential street & business area
• Help facilitate community ideas via the Chorlton Climate Action Community Forum and other methods and increase visibility of climate action in all shapes and guises
• Support and help build resilient connections for wider climate action, including developing the case for potential further funding to allow greater change to be made 
• Create a Toolkit/Learning Resource for other communities

Data partner Open Data Manchester have installed two air quality sensors in Chorlton, one at the four banks and one at Barlow Hall school, where we will be working later in the year.

ODM have also distributed camera-based traffic sensors to volunteers who have started working with the project.

All traffic movement and pollution data captured will be shared openly for use by the community, in keeping with ODM’s values and the values of the project.

It’s important that you understand what data we will be collecting through Our Streets Chorlton, how it is stored and how safe it is. Our Privacy Policy has all the information you need and it can be found here.

Our Streets Chorlton is being delivered by the Chorlton Climate Action Partnership, formed of the core partner organisations Groundwork GM, Walk Ride GM, Open Data Manchester, Sustrans & the University of Manchester, and supported by digital engagement partner Commonplace.

The project is run by project coordinators George Coombs and Pauline Johnston, who can be reached here.

Each of the partner organisations has people working on the project at different times:

• Groundwork: Michaela Howell, George Coombs

• Walk Ride GM: Claire Stocks, Pauline Johnston

• Open Data Manchester: Julian Tait, Sam Milsom & Sophie Walker 

• Sustrans: Alice Swift & Jo Phillips

• UoM: Sarah Mander & Angela Mae Minas

• Commonplace: Brian Sellers, Benjy Meyer and Sam Campion. 

Many of us live in Manchester, some of us live in Chorlton.

Chorlton Alliance chair Carolyn Kagan and Councillor Eve Holt also played a fundamental part in the bid to the Lottery, project inception and its evolution. 

The project came about when a few local people were brought together in December 2019 as a result of a call for ‘expressions of interest’ to the first round of funding from the new Climate Action Fund, a £100m pot created by the National Lottery.

 

Those people brought in others and the Chorlton Climate Action Partnership (CCAP) was formed to table a funding bid on behalf of Chorlton. In August 2020 it was announced we were one of 15 projects that had secured funding ranging from £200k to £2.5m. Another batch of nine projects was later announced. 

 

In September 2020, the Partnership set about scoping the project further and recruiting the coordinators, ready to start the 12-month project in 2021. In October 2020 we established a monthly community forum to spread the word and formally link the project to the community.

In January 2021, the project coordinators started work full-time, focused on launching in the community in February, and engagement platform specialists Commonplace also joined as a delivery partner for the project.

Because Manchester has got a big challenge to reduce carbon emissions from cars and a big goal to increase walking and cycling – to double and double again rates  in both. Chorlton is well placed to be a pioneer in both. 

 

We have one of the highest rates of car ownership in Manchester; we have one of the highest rates of ‘propensity to cycle’ – and a new cycleway to be installed by the end of 2021. 

 

When we held climate action workshops in 2019, reducing cars and increasing trees, plants & green space were the two most popular actions people wanted to focus on.

 

Chorlton is also where some of the partners live or work and are already connected to climate action & community groups and individuals wanting to do more, which was one of the requirements of the National Lottery.

The Chorlton Climate Action Community Forum is our main formal point of connection to the community. It’s an open meeting held once a month and we hope those who attend decide how to evolve it.

Our project coordinators will be connecting with formal and informal community groups and representatives.

Partners are also involved in other projects and groups locally. If you think there are groups we aren’t connected to and should be please drop us a line.

The Chorlton Cycleway is a Manchester City Council scheme funded by the Mayor’s Challenge Fund and part of the Bee Network being rolled out by walking and cycling commissioner Chris Boardman. 

We aren’t connected to the scheme but we are working with Manchester City Council and Transport for Greater Manchester to ensure we align our data collection and other activities to support each other’s work effectively and efficiently.

Our Streets Chorlton  are funded by the National Lottery Climate Action Fund. 

The Climate Action Fund “aims to reduce the carbon footprint of communities. A broader movement of change will enable communities to do this within and beyond the communities we fund. In this first round of funding, we are supporting a number of place-based community-led partnerships to make the changes in their community they believe will have the biggest impact on climate change.”

The Chorlton Climate Action Partnership received just over £200k in development funding from the National Lottery Climate Action Fund for a 12-month project to work with the community on how to reduce greenhouse gases in Chorlton, with a focus on vehicle emissions.

 

That money is paying for two project coordinators and the kit and materials they need to do their job. A website, graphics and content, data collection and analysis of pollution and traffic patterns and some of the activities and equipment related to our three mini projects, as well as evaluation of the project and final reports. 

 

The project has already attracted some in-kind match funding and unfunded time from partner organisations.

We aren’t able to provide funds to third-party applicants due to guidelines from the National Lottery Climate Action Fund. 

Our project team is here to work with people in Chorlton on ideas relating to climate action so hopefully we can help in other ways. 

From time to time we may require specialist skills for support with areas of the project delivery and in these instances, we will publicly advertise those opportunities. We also have a Local First Policy – Our Streets Chorlton by which we benchmark our decisions on outsourced project work.

The project’s purpose & outputs are defined by an agreement with the National Lottery based on our bid for funds.

The CCAP holds a fortnightly delivery meeting to align activities and make decisions within the pre-defined scope of the project.

 

The project coordinators are managed by the two lead partners, Groundwork and Walk Ride GM, and Groundwork acts as the overall accountable body, holding the funding and legally responsible for overall delivery according to the agreement with the Lottery. 

 

Partners are responsible for operating within the law via their own policies.

The project has shared agreements on data and our Partnership Privacy Notice can be found here.

Where guidance on project activity is required, input is sought from the Chorlton Climate Action Community Forum.

The exact nature of the mini-projects will be fully determined by the groups convened for each one, within the predefined scope of the project.

 

The traffic, pollution and other community data collected will be determined by the ideas from community workshops, notwithstanding data we already committed to record in the project proposal.

 

A forum steering group is actively being formed which will work with the CCAP to determine future direction and future funding bids.

We are hoping that the project develops a case for greater investment to facilitate more systemic change.

 

If you would like to get involved in this, please join the Steering Group mentioned above.

Our bid was developed in light of Manchester’s zero carbon framework 2020-2025 to reduce carbon emissions by half in the next five years, and the Greater Manchester Green Plan launched by Mayor Andy Burnham in 2019.

Manchester’s plan is held by the Manchester Climate Change Agency (MCCA) on behalf of the city.

The MCCA has also secured funding to run engagement schemes in five or six other neighbourhoods in Manchester and we are working with them to learn and share as much as possible.

You can read the MCCA report on what some of the biggest carbon emitters in Manchester are doing to reduce their carbon footprint here.

We are also communicating with some of the other climate action projects funded by the National Lottery, such as Cumbrian Action for Sustainability (Cafs), as well as the Lottery Climate Action Fund itself, which will allocate funds every year for the next nine years.