If you harbour ideas about how the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole conurbation can work towards addressing climate change, the council would like to hear from you.

BCP Council recently launched a new survey, which is asking for residents’ views on where and how urban areas can be improved by urban greening. The survey considers the effects of climate change and the support that BCP Council could provide homeowners in the future to help make the area greener.

Earlier this year, BCP Council approved its new Green Infrastructure Strategy, which sets out its ambitions for investing in green infrastructure across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole over the next 10 years. This strategy, aims to encourage healthy living and wellbeing; strengthen resilience to climate change; support nature and biodiversity; and support economic recovery, prosperity and place making.

One of the key principles in achieving this is through ‘Greening the Urban Environment’, which includes greener streets, green roofs and walls, greener public realm areas and embedding green infrastructure in new housing.

Cllr Mark Anderson, portfolio holder for Environment and Place, said: “We know that in some areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, accessibility to green space is limited, whilst in other areas there are issues with flooding or lack of street trees. With this in mind, we want to understand the level of support of urban greening and we need the public’s help in identifying urban areas which could benefit from becoming greener.

“Whilst the public realm improvements are very important, urban greening where we live is where we can all make a difference to address the climate and ecological emergency in some small way. This could be by introducing window boxes, bird boxes or making our gardens more welcoming to wildlife. We know around 24 per cent of land in Bournemouth, Christchurch Poole is in residential gardens, which is why it is important that we all play our part in making our gardens greener and wildlife friendly, where possible.

“I’m proud of our Green Infrastructure Strategy, which clearly sets our ambitions for the next 10 years, but there is still much work to build upon to deliver the strategy, and that is why this survey is so important.”

The survey closes on Monday 5 December. You can take part by visiting https://haveyoursay.bcpcouncil.gov.uk/green-strategy or by emailing environment@bcpcouncil.gov.uk