Active travel and more sustainable public transport is on the route map for West Lothian’s climate action hub when it takes part in Linlithgow’s first Move for Good Festival next weekend.
A team from West Lothian Climate Action Network (WLCAN) will ask residents for their top priorities for Linlithgow for transport and climate hopes.
The focus on local transport stems from the major topics in town including High Street parking and traffic flow/ pollution in the town centre.
Only last year Linlithgow completed a lengthy air quality management monitoring programme which had seen pollutant levels from vehicle drop in the last decade- despite the number of vehicles using the High Street increasing in the years following the Covid Lockdown.
Climate hub staff will have a stall at Saturday’s festival and will use an interactive vote to gather residents’ views on the key climate action issue of transport.
Neil Barnes, WLCAN’s senior development worker and also a resident of Linlithgow, said: “Previous local consultations led by Linlithgow Community Development Trust and others have shown that car parking in the High Street was one of the biggest and most controversial issues locally.
“The latest regional data and analysis from the Scottish Climate Intelligence Service shows that the two biggest sources of emissions in our region are cars and gas boilers. I’m sure that is the same for our town.”
WLCAN will also be asking visitors to share West Lothian weather related stories as part of information gathering for experts who will use this to plan adaptation for extreme weather events. The climate stories also reveal how weather patterns have changed in the area, feeding into a national picture that is being built.
Changing weather patterns are already beginning to affect decision making in Linlithgow, and other parts of the county, with planning applications being considered in terms of flood risk. Some applications already refused in the ancient burgh because of increasing flood risk.
The Move for Good Festival is a first for the town. It has been organised by Linlithgow Community Development Trust’s active travel programme @moveforgood and includes opportunities to explore sustainability for everyday journeys through a programme of creative workshops, talks, activity taster sessions, workshops and guided walks.
Move for Good events will take place at the West Lothian Cycle Circuit, adjacent to Linlithgow’s Xcite centre, The Cross, Cross House and the Vennel.
WLCAN will have a stall at the Kirk Hall in Cross House, Kirkgate. 12.30-3.30pm.
It will also be a chance to hear more about the climate hub’s network of organisations across West Lothian who are tackling climate change at local level. These include West Lothian Bike Library and Linlithgow CDT.
The hub hopes to run a climate summit in Linlithgow in May, replicating an earlier localised event in Bathgate to pin down the issues facing particular areas such as flooding, pollution, land contamination and nature depletion.
WLCAN is a membership of community grass-roots organisations. Helping the network and distributing funding, the company, or Hub is funded by the Scottish Government. Its aim is to galvanise local activity into meaningful improvements in the quality of life and physical environment of West Lothian, through activities that mitigate climate change.
By Stuart Sommerville, Local Democracy Reporter
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) is a public service news agency. It is funded by the BBC, provided by the local news sector (in Edinburgh that is Reach plc (the publisher behind Edinburgh Live and The Daily Record) and used by many qualifying partners. Local Democracy Reporters cover news about top-tier local authorities and other public service organisations.
