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Reform-led council rescinds climate declaration
The Guardian
|July 17, 2025
A Reform-led council is thought to have become the first in the UK to rescind its climate emergency declaration, a move condemned as "a very dark day" for the authority.
Durham county council, which has had an overwhelming Reform majority since the May local elections, passed a motion to rescind the 2019 declaration. More than 300 local authorities have declared a climate emergency.
It voted instead to declare a County Durham care emergency, a move described as "cynical and insulting" by the Liberal Democrat councillor Mark Wilkes.
Wilkes said the council's climate action had helped save more than £13m in the last year alone. He added that stopping work on tackling the climate crisis would risk the loss of external funding, meaning less money for care.
During a sometimes fractious and bad-tempered debate yesterday, the Reform council leader, Andrew Husband, said the authority was now driven by data and common sense.
This story is from the July 17, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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