A four-year plan to reduce the county council's carbon emissions to help tackle climate change and support the authority in achieving a net zero carbon target by 2050 has been launched.

The plan will also have wider benefits working with partners to help residents and businesses achieve their carbon reduction goals.

It has set out a series of actions up to 2025 to cut carbon further, improve air quality, reduce waste, improve the natural environment and support people in changing their behaviour to become more environmentally friendly.

Proposed actions in the plan include increasing the number of electric vehicle charging points across the county, improving the energy efficiency of all council owned buildings and further increasing recycling rates.

In addition, the county council will explore options to use low carbon vehicles in its own fleet and with bus operators, improve natural habitats maintained by the county council through initiatives such as tree planting and increase climate change awareness with employees and in county schools.

Since it declared a climate change emergency a year ago, the county council has cut its carbon emissions by a quarter. This has been achieved mainly by transferring all corporate council buildings, maintained schools, streetlights and traffic signals to run on renewable energy.

In its first climate change annual report, the county council details steps it has taken to cut carbon emissions. The Climate Change Draft Action Plan and annual report will be discussed at next week's cabinet meeting.

Staffordshire County Council's cabinet member for environment, infrastructure and climate change, Simon Tagg said: "We have made significant steps over the last year to set us in the right direction to achieve our net zero target.

"Now we are stepping up to advance this work by setting out a broad range of actions we are confident we can achieve over the next four years. It is crucial that this is a collective effort with our residents, schools, businesses and district and borough council partners.

"Since we declared a climate change emergency, we have demonstrated our commitment and drive to improve our environment. We understand that huge challenges lie ahead but are confident we can overcome these and deliver for our communities."