Green party councillors in Richmond and Twickenham insist they are making a real difference by winning official support for action on air pollution and climate change.

They point to the fact that all three motions from Green Party councillors were adopted at the Richmond Council meeting earlier this week.

The first was tabled by Cllr Richard Bennett and urged the Council to set itself the goal of reducing dangerous PM2.5 particulate air pollution in the Borough by 2030.

The motion said the Council should also recognise that there are no safe levels for air pollution and that research highlights it has an impact on both physical and mental health.

A second motion from Cllr Andree Frieze called for the Council to back the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill currently before Parliament, which would create a legal requirement on the Government to put in place a strategy to address climate change.

Both Parliament and Richmond Council declared a Climate Emergency in 2019, but the government has so far failed to put in place a strategy to tackle the threat.

Cllr Frieze said: "This Government has not followed up on the declaration of a Climate Emergency by Parliament back in 2019. That's two wasted years of inaction while the planet overheats, the natural world sustains more damage and people suffer the consequences of extreme weather events.

"We are no longer just reading about the potential effects of global warming, we are living through them. And it is a Government failure not to have brought in a strategy to reverse the climate and ecological breakdown we are facing."

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A third motion involved winning Council support to formally oppose moves by the Government to change Election rules, requiring Voter ID at polling stations and watering down the powers of the Electoral Commission watchdog.

Ministers claim voter ID rules need to be tightened up to stop people stealing identities to boost a favoured candidate's chances of success. However, critics say the effect will be to discourage many people from voting at all.

It was tabled by Cllr Monica Saunders, who said: 'The real concerns of voters are not about personation at polling stations - in fact studies show that public confidence in the voting process at polling stations is at its highest ever.

"This Bill contains nothing to address voters' true concerns such as foreign influence in elections, media bias or regulation of political parties spend on campaigns. It is at best an expensive distraction from the real challenges to our democracy, at worse a distortion of our democracy."