Terms of Reference and Ways of Working

The Lancashire Environment Forum will seek to act as a unified voice for the environment in Lancashire and beyond, and aims to be a source of expertise on the environment.

• The Lancashire Environment Forum will be part of the Lancashire Partnership and will support the Partnership Vision as set out in the Sustainable Community Strategy, “Ambition Lancashire.”

• The Lancashire Environment Forum will identify relevant long term direction of travel measures and targets to be included in the relevant chapters of Ambition Lancashire. It will contribute to the achievement of Ambition Lancashire outcomes and to any future review of the Strategy.

• The Chair, or other representative as agreed by the group, will be a member of the Lancashire Partnership Board to represent the interests of the theme and to work with other Board members across the Partnership to achieve better outcomes for the residents of Lancashire.

• The Lancashire Environment Forum will monitor targets within the Local Area Agreement that have been agreed with the group’s member organisations and will provide reports to the Lancashire Partnership Executive and Performance Group as required.

• The Lancashire Environment Forum will be responsible for managing performance in relation to the agreed LAA targets, with member organisations taking appropriate action in consultation and partnership with each other.

Ways of Working

The principles for the way the Environment Forum will work are as follows:

• The Environment Agency and Lancashire County Council will fund and service the administration of the Environment Forum for Central Area (which covers the county of Lancashire, and small parts of Merseyside, North Yorkshire and Cumbria) including recording and communicating all decisions.

  The costs and administration of the Forum will be divided between the two organisations on a 6 monthly rotating basis.

• Decisions will be arrived at via consensus wherever possible. Where decisions involve changes to mainstream services affecting particular organisations, those decisions must be referred back for agreement to individual organisations.

• Nominations for Chair and Vice Chair will be made from the Forum every three years.

• The Environment Forum members must be committed to, prepare for and attend meetings. To be most effective, continuity of attendance would be expected.

• The Environment Forum Chair and Vice Chair, will have the right to remove members from the Environment Forum (e.g. for low attendance) in consultation with the Environment Agency, County Council and Forum members.

• The Environment Forum will draw upon members and non-members as appropriate, to assist with the implementation of the work programme.

• Members will represent their sector / field of expertise and provide a balanced perspective to the Forum.

• Members must declare when there may be conflict of interests.

• The Environment Forum will meet approximately 4 times per year dependent on business need.

• All communications and meeting details will be published on a dedicated website to keep members up to date with the forum’s activities and wider environment issues.

• We will consider holding an annual Lancashire Environment Conference that will be open to any agency with an interest in Lancashire’s environment. The conference will provide an area for debating the Forum’s work programme over the past 12 months, and a look ahead over the next 12 months. We will review this in 6 months time.