Despite an inflation busting 4.8% rise in council taxes at the last budget Wolverhampton City Council have still deemed it necessary to recruit a Climate Change Officer to their ranks, complete with a salary of £32,000 per year (Express & Star, 9th August).
Environmental awareness is now at the forefront of the public psyche and many people are making their own eco-efforts, aware that we are all being called upon to do our bit, but how having one officer based at Wolverhampton City Council is going to make any measurable difference to the plight of the planet really isn’t clear.
This looks distinctly like the City Council trying to self-promote by boosting its green credentials and jumping on the environmental bandwagon, regardless of the dent it might make in public funds. But perhaps the real worry should be what allocation of the budget this Climate Change Officer lays claim to, and what kind of initiatives are going to be launched in order to justify their place at the council.
Outraged councillors have rightly stated how the public sector should seek to reflect the private sector with these environmental issues; by having the current management tackle them rather than spending money on further expansion. And surely that’d be a lot more economical than paying thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money for this new green man, or indeed woman, to come in and solve their environmental woes...