We have a letter in this week’s Camden New Journal (22 April) about the Hampstead & Kilburn Hustings: read more here.

We had a great turn out at the Hampstead & Kilburn Hustings last Wednesday 14 April at St Stephen’s Church on Rosslyn Hill - almost 200 people attended, and all six prospective parliamentary candidates for the constituency answered questions on environmental issues.

The event was co-organised with eco groups from across Camden and our stall (pictured, right) attracted interest from candidates, who were given a copy of our Friends of the Earth Election 2010 Manifesto Recommendations (PDF).

Questions were submitted to the candidates from Camden Friends of the Earth, Transition Belsize, Camden Greenpeace, Camden Cyclists, and members of the public were invited to ask questions on the night.

Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time for all questions to be asked, but they have been sent to candidates to answer via email. The candidates (in alphabetical order) are: Bea Campbell (Green), Ed Fordham (Liberal Democrat), Glenda Jackson (Labour), Magnus Nielsen (UKIP), Tamsin Omond (The Commons), Chris Philp (Conservative).

We’ll add a document with all the questions and candidates’ answers from the hustings to this page as soon as we have them! You can also put your questions to the candidates now on the Ask the Climate Question YouTube channel.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the hustings - to Natasha for being our Green Princess! - and to everyone who helped organise and made it into a successful evening! For more photos from the event please see the Transition Belsize photo album.

Susan, Jess, Prashant, Jim, Iris and Michele made a deputation to Camden Council at the full council meeting on March 1 about the Get Serious about CO2 campaign. Due to the closeness of the election the deputation requested that all the parties make a commitment to the ‘Get Serious’ targets in their manifestos. You can read our deputation statement or see a video of our deputation (starts 16 mins in) on the Camden Council website.

The leader of the council, Keith Moffitt, (who previously had a 20-year career with British Coal!) responded supportively to the deputation. We are now following up with the individual parties to keep the process going.

On Thursday 4 March local groups from across London (including Southwark, Kensingon, Chelsea & Westminster, Hackney, Dagenham and Barnet) met at head office for the London Local Groups Forum meeting.

We spoke about what local groups were up to, what campaigns we were working on: all groups were working on Get Serious or Fix the Food Chain, or both (like us!). We heard about some interesting projects including Southwark’s Homes Going Green and the High Barnet Green Home Zone, and how Hackney local group had divided their group into sub-groups for people interested in public speaking, street stalls and research.

For campaigning during the run-up to elections on May 6 there’s a new website http://election.foe.co.uk which includes a blog and resources for election campaigning and an online action to co-sign a letter to party leaders calling for determined action to tackle climate change - if you haven’t signed this already please do!

We spoke about London strategies: Boris Johnson has just released his draft climate change strategy, but it’s not good enough! His CO2 emissions reductions target is 38% by 2020 (FoE are calling for at least 40% by 2020). His draft transport plan, also recently released, removes lots of good measures proposed by Ken Livingstone e.g. road traffic reduction targets have been removed. All the draft London strategies will be up for public examination in June, July, September, October this year, and we’ll be responding to them as a local group.

The next London Local Groups Forum meeting is on Saturday 5 June at Bonhill House, EC2A 4BX from 9.30am (light breakfast included!) preceeding the Greater South East Regional Gathering. All local group members are welcome to join - find out more and book your place.