A town council has listened to calls from residents and declared a climate emergency.

Lyme Regis Town Council joins Bridport and Beaminster in a bid to reduce its carbon emissions after the motion was put forward by Cllr Bawden following a request from resident Simon West.

The motion outlines nine things the council should agree to, including pledging to make Lyme Regis Town Council carbon neutral by 2030 and prepare a report within six months with the actions the council will take.

At a recent meeting of the town council’s strategy and finance committee, Mr West Said: “I would like to thank Cllr Bawden for putting forward the climate change motion that I requested at the last full council meeting and I would like to request that all councillors vote in favour of this motion, simply because I cannot solve climate change, Lyme Regis can’t solve climate change, it’s going to take everybody and by you voting for declaring a climate emergency, you will be sending a clear signal you are part of the solution.

“I realise that it may be difficult to see exactly what the council can do and there may be things that are way beyond the remit of the council. However, I am prepared to put my efforts in to this, I have started forming a one planet working group, which will bring together all of the existing groups within Lyme Regis who are working to help solve some of the issues of climate change and make sure the people in Lyme Regis are involved in this, not just looking to the council to solve everything, but to be part of it with a group, so I ask again, please vote in favour.”

Other residents also spoke in the public forum, asking the councillor to declare a climate emergency.

Cllr Jeff Scowen said: “I certainly support this. We are in the vanguard of green issues and plastic free so I certainly think we should recommend this.”

Cllr Brian Larcombe, mayor of Lyme Regis, outlined some of the things the town council are already doing, which include the move towards an electronic office, water points on the seafront and looking at ways the offices could be greener when they are refurbished.

Cllr Bawden said: “Plastic Free Lyme Regis and Turn Lyme Green have been extremely active in galvanizing local support for a lot of initiatives.

“The businesses agree that going green is good for business, some of them do it off their own back because they believe in it. Some of them know it brings them good support from visitors and their staff like to be educated in what they can do more to be more environmentally friendly.

“Lyme Forward, Lyme Regis Development Trust, Lyme Regis Society - they are all very keen to work together to work with Simon’s one planet group to coordinate community effort in this and not duplicate.

“I would urge for people to support this motion, support the signing up to the Be the Change Initiative because that enables us to have a mechanism whereby we can measure, monitor and motivate everybody to do more.”

Cllr Bawden explained that the UN’s Be the Change Initiative has a set of goals and the council would be committing to make pledges to hit the targets within each goal.

“There’s an example of planting apple trees in the community orchard, that specific project would hit one of the sustainable development targets,” she said.

Councillors voted to accept the motion, with three councillors sitting on the one planet working party.