Last month Milton Keynes Council passed its 2020/21 budget, giving Milton Keynes its greenest council budget ever and enabling the Labour-led council to take some of its first big strides towards reaching their goal of MK becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

Thanks to the work of Cllr Jenny Marklew (Lab, Stony Stratford) & Cllr Emily Darlington (Lab, Bletchley East) significant funding has been granted for climate change initiatives, biodiversity projects and green community action that will help to make Milton Keynes a greener place to live. 

Some of these projects include green & blue space projects to create safe habitats for wildlife, green roundabouts to absorb carbon and the city’s biggest ever investment in trees with a commitment to planting 2 trees for every 1 dangerous or damaged tree that is cut down. There is also funding to begin work on forward-thinking carbon and energy initiatives to move towards becoming the greenest city in the world.

Milton Keynes Conservatives voted against the funding and even requested that funding for certain climate change projects be removed in amendments that weren’t passed at the Full Council meeting on the 26th February.

Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Cllr Jenny Marklew, told us: “It has become incumbent upon all of us to take responsibility and play our part in limiting the impact of climate change and our new budget proves that Labour-led Milton Keynes Council is serious when it comes to climate change”

She continued: “Our target to be carbon neutral by 2030 and carbon negative by 2050 is ambitious but achievable and the new budget helps us to lay the foundations required to meet these goals.”

Cabinet Member for Public Realm, Cllr Emily Darlington added: “The work already being done on biodiversity projects around the city is really exciting and the funding included in the budget for more tree planting, green space projects & community engagement will go such a long way to helping us become the greenest city in the world and nurturing a healthy environment for our residents and nature alike.”