DORSET’S Conservative councillors have been told they should be “blowing the trumpet” about their work on climate change.

The comment comes after weeks of negative publicity after a resolution was passed at the April Dorset Council meeting, without debate and no opportunity for amendment, which could make it easier for further fossil-fuel extraction in the county.

It led to climate activists accusing the Conservative-led council of hypocrisy over its own climate declaration with some councillors complaining that the way the motion was handled was un-democratic.

Cllr Spencer Flower, who proposed the motion with the intention of making the country less reliant on foreign imports, has since said his aims have been misunderstood.

At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting housing portfolio holder Graham Carr-Jones suggested a poster campaign to pass on what he described as the “good news” about how the council was tackling the climate and ecological emergency it declared more than three years ago. He said councillors sat in the chamber hearing the good news but the authority also needed to tell the public what it was doing.

The meeting heard about the £5.4m of EU money given to 164 Dorset businesses for “green” projects through the Low Carbon Dorset team which Dorset Council manages and the £19m of Government grant the council has almost now spent, mainly on fitting solar panels to public buildings.

Climate portfolio holder Cllr Ray Bryan took the opportunity to remind colleagues that a new director of climate change has just started work at the council and that £10m in capital funding had been put into this year’s budget for climate actions, together with £750,000 of revenue funding.

“This is a massive step forward in a trying year, financially” he told the meeting.

But he confessed there were problems in trying to buy suitable electric vehicles to replace ageing petrol and diesel vehicles – because of international shortages.

He said the council has also been trying other alternatives, including vehicles run on vegetable-based fuel, and although the heavier electric powered vehicles for rubbish collection had worked well in trials there had been a problem with their range, especially in rural areas.

“Sometimes we weren’t sure whether they would get back,” he admitted.

Cllr Bryan said his solution is hydrogen-powered vehicles which, although expensive to buy, would be cheap to run.

Under his guidance the council has recently given grant aid to a company on the outskirts of Poole aiming to produce so-called ‘green hydrogen”.