Citizens Forum on Climate Change Session Five – Online

The Five Year Plan

Our fifth session of the Citizens Forum was held online due to the high level of community cases of COVID 19. This was a first for the team and for the forum members holding a citizen’s forum online. Even though we do hold regular webinars, the forums’ format tends to be different.

 We wanted to make sure the forum members could still break out in groups and capture the information and feedback needed for the session. We invited some special guests to our online forum to be our subject matter experts, our colleagues Sian from the Department of Infrastructure and Richard from Building Control.

We started the online session with a few words by Mrs Jane Poole-Wilson and Mr Ralph Peake who are the Chair and Vice Chair of the Citizens Forum. Jane and Ralph gave the forum members an update on how the feedback they give this evening will directly feed into the five year plan consultation and the review into the forum. Jane thanked the members for those who have already provided feedback on the online consultation (link can be found here: https://consult.gov.im/cabinet-office/climate-change-plan-2022-2027/ ).

A member of the Climate Change Transformation team then introduced the five year plan to the forum. Although there are many topics in the five year plan, this session only focused on some core themes within the plan.

The members who joined us online were then divided into virtual breakout rooms where a member of the team and a subject matter expert joined them. Each breakout room were given a different topic from the plan. The team members then led the discussion by asking the forum members to consider two main questions (each specific to their relevant topic).

Listed below are the topics and questions the forum considered in their breakout rooms, along with the main feedback for each question below them:

The members debated the two questions; giving half hour consideration for each question before the team facilitator recorded the feedback on the power point slides. The feedback captured was then presented back to the groups in the main online ‘room’.

The members had the chance to debate each topic and the points raised in the summary feedback. The forum members also expressed they would like to keep the momentum going with some expert led webinars over the summer.

The forum finished on time and the members were thanked for attending online.

End