Sarah Sharp has sent in a motion about divestment to Chichester District Council’s Full Council meeting on Tuesday 28th January at 2 pm.
It would be great if you could write in to your District Councillor with reasons why divestment is a good idea. This is about divesting the pension funds of the staff away from fossil fuels etc. The pension funds are not run by CDC but by WSCC so the motion is to ask CDC to write to the Trustees of the pension fund at WSCC to divest.
You can see more here.
Here is the wording of the motion:
“Chichester District Council declared a Climate Emergency in July 2019 and will need to place climate change at the heart of our forward plans in order to meet our target of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
Chichester District Council employees are members of the West Sussex County Council Local Authority Pension Fund, which has funds invested in the fossil fuel industry. Mark Carney is one of many leading advisers signalling that investments in fossil fuels are not safe in the long-term. There is a growing movement across the UK for councils and organisations to divest from their fossil fuel investments, as a first step in their move towards
carbon neutrality.
The following motion was passed by Worthing Borough Council and Adur District Council before Christmas and Arun District Council in January. I hope that this council will agree with, and support this request.
‘This Council calls upon the Trustees of the West Sussex County Council Local Authority Pension Fund (of which the Council’s employees are members) to divest that fund of all
investments in fossil fuel stocks, equities and funds and it instructs the Council’s Chief Executive to write to the Trustees of the fund with a copy of this Motion and ask them to take
action.”
As you can see the motion doesn’t really dwell on the reasons why one would want to divest – which is what she hopes to make the central part of the speech before the motion.
But it would help her if residents take the trouble to write to their District Councillors ahead of 28th Jan. If you want to, please do include Sarah on the email or blind copy her in on smsharp@chichester.gov.uk – it would be great to have your support on this!
You can find out who your Councillor is by looking up here.