Common experiences across many local authorities

Declaring a climate emergency is a political decision for local authorities and is driven by the elected members and public interest. After the political commitment, relevant local authority officers are appointed to be responsible for coordinating climate action in their local authorities.

There are not any distinct national policies to accelerate local authorities’ climate action. The UK’s Net Zero by 2050 pledge is influencing at a high level some of the local authorities that have decided to address the carbon emissions of their wider area.

Building a successful climate action plan involves engaging with several departments within the local authority such as housing, transport and ecology. Each team brings their own expertise into the planning process and will hold some level of power and influence over climate action in the local authority. 

It is important to define where in their local area the local authorities have control and influence in order to build a realistic action plan. Local authorities will not have the power to directly control all carbon emissions in their wider area, but they can promote change through indirect action, influence and encouragement.

Change in political leadership after elections may affect climate action in the local authorities due to conflicting aspirations between the parties. Officers have found that establishing cross-party councillor working groups early on can mitigate this risk and ensure unanimous decision making within the process.

Carbon emissions data scarcity or storage in a format that cannot be processed is a common issue that local authorities are facing. As a result, carbon footprint baselining can be challenging. Local authorities have found that carbon emissions datasets from BEIS  can be used instead of their missing data.

Local authorities generally prefer creating their climate action plans using in-house expertise as they have a better understanding of where the majority of emissions are coming from and know the challenges and opportunities in their local area better. Well-resourced local authorities with dedicated energy and sustainability teams (usually larger local authorities) are able to create their climate action plans with minimal external input; however, local authorities with fewer human resources need to get external support from consultants to finalise their plans.

In building their climate action plans, local authorities place a high importance on:

• regular engagement with the councillors through working groups
  regular engagement with the other relevant departments within the local authority through working groups
  engagement with the local community (local organisations and citizens) through public consultation events in person and online

Wider engagement is important to encourage input and ensure approval along the process of creating the climate action plan.

Local authorities work collaboratively and share learnings and expertise with each other on technological know-how, best practices and things to avoid when creating a climate action plan. Usually the larger, more advanced local authorities are the ones who share their capabilities and lead by example, having a positive effect on smaller, less advanced local authorities. Sharing is done on both an informal (one-to-one) basis and formally (for example through networks).

Differences in approaches between local authorities

For some local authorities, the declaration of climate emergency has been essential for taking action and creating climate strategies to reduce their carbon footprint. For others, it was a political decision with minimal influence on their plans to tackle the impact of climate change in their area and formalised work they were already doing.

Some local authorities focus their decarbonisation strategies on reducing their corporate carbon emissions, whereas others decide to develop action plans for both their own local authority and county-wide targets. The latter are usually larger local authorities that have larger teams of in-house staff and expertise required to support emissions reduction in their wider area.

Given their budget constraints, many local authorities rely on government funding to prepare and execute their climate action plans. Other local authorities are self-funding their decarbonisation activities, using EU funding or exploring more innovative financing solutions or investment opportunities. Avenues explored include special purpose vehicles (SPVs), Heat-as-a-Service business models and even crowdfunding.

Only a small number of local authorities are well resourced and have teams of dedicated energy and sustainability experts. The resource-constrained local authorities often lack the human capital to support climate action in their wider area and rely on external expertise, resource and guidance.

Some local authorities have sought tailored consultancy support to develop their plans, whereas others have been able to largely develop them in-house.

Public consultation was recognised as an important component of developing a plan but approaches and levels of success varied. Many local authorities reported successful public consultation exercises with feedback gathered and fed into the process. A smaller number of local authorities struggled to properly plan and execute sufficient consultations to get the required input, and there were concerns it could be seen as tokenism. In some cases, consultation exercises seemed to be focused on gathering input to shape policies – in other instances, they seemed more focused on getting public approval.

Partnership working with external organisations was common but, again, with varying levels of success. Some local authorities commented that partners’ input and/or close partnership working was essential in forming their plans. Others reported issues with this joint working, such as a lack of understanding between local authorities and distribution network operators.

Timescales to develop climate action plans vary. For most local authorities, the period between declaration of a climate emergency and development of an action plan was between several months and 2 years. However, some organisations have been developing climate plans for years and recent work could build upon this. The detail and scope of climate plans was not assessed as part of this project, and it is possible that this may vary based on the length of time taken to develop plans

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