Apologies to Cllr McKeown for pronouncing his name wrongly in this video! Here’s a better pronunciation. 

The Council Climate Action Scorecards is a joint project between mySociety and Climate Emergency UK.

Annie from Climate Emergency UK chatted to Cllr Mike McKeown, Cabinet Lead for Climate Change and Sustainability at Cotswold District Council, about how they’ve used the Scorecards to improve their climate action — and some of the barriers they still face from a national level in delivering Net Zero. 

How does AI know so much?

We always begin by asking how people first come across our sites, and the answers are rarely surprising: through word of mouth, via the events we do, et cetera. But Councillor McKeown’s answer was a new one on us:

“I first discovered the Scorecards via Chat GPT. I use AI a lot in my day job and when I was elected a councillor in May 2023, I asked Chat GPT for an assessment of my councils’ climate action. It came back with quite a detailed answer, so I asked it where it got this information from, and it explained that this information was found from the Council Climate Action Scorecards site.”

Good to know the robots are on board! But no matter how people find the Scorecards, the result is the same: a rich source of useful and applicable data.    

Looking inwards and outwards

“I’ve used the Scorecards in two main ways,” explains Councillor McKeown. “Firstly, to create pressure for, and focus on, our work on climate action. I presented the Scorecards at a council cabinet meeting and showed how our results compared across other councils in Gloucestershire. This was a useful level set for our council to see where we actually sat and how we could improve. 

“It is helpful to be able to point to an independent assessment of our council’s climate action, and use the ranking that the Scorecards give us as a way to push for further actions in areas where we didn’t do so well. 

“I know myself and some of the councillors were surprised when the Scorecards came out that we didn’t have a higher score. And this reaction has been used to drive our work to ensure that our score will improve for the next Scorecards. We’ve used the Scorecards at a senior management level to see a general oversight of where we’re at, as well as at a micro level, to understand specific project work with staff.” 

A framework for action

How does the council keep track of work at every level?

“We’ve set up a Climate Board as a way to review and monitor it. I brought it in after participating in the Climate Leadership Academy by UK100, who recommend a Climate Board within councils. It’s basically a series of regular meetings with senior officers from across the council. 

“One of the resources we used to review our climate work is the Scorecards. We use them as a framework to see what our current answers are and what we need to do to improve. We also plan to use the Scorecards going forward to monitor our progress.”

Real life results

Have there been any positive impacts yet?

“Yes – I’d like to share a climate project of ours which links directly to one of the Scorecards questions. We’ve secured funding from the South West Net Zero Hub to employ a retrofit officer. They’re going to be going out into the community to talk to residents and work with them to understand what retrofit is and encourage them to take the next steps to make a difference to their homes. 

“We’re also part of a partnership with all other district councils in Gloucestershire and other public sector organisations, called Climate Leadership Gloucestershire. As part of this, we have launched the retrofit centre. 

“This is a website that provides advice to residents on how to retrofit their homes. They can either use the site to create their own retrofit plan through the website portal, or they can reach out to be connected with a person who can come and do an assessment of their home in person. The site also includes a list of trusted suppliers for different aspects of home retrofit work.” 

The solution for a more effective transition

Councillor McKeown then went on to explain some of the barriers to council climate action and suggested a solution. 

“For so much of our work, the biggest barrier is resource rather than money. Often we don’t have the people able to deliver the work — so funding that doesn’t include the budget to cover additional staff to deliver the work isn’t as helpful. 

“For example, we’re seeing if we can extend the deadline by which we have to spend some funding from the Department of Transport on installing EV chargers. Many of the car parks in our area have national monument status — lots of Roman ruins! — so they require additional planning permission which takes time to secure. We do want to install the EV chargers and we’re sure the Department of Transport won’t want the money back, but we need more time to actually install them. 

“This is just one example of why a fully funded statutory duty would be so helpful for councils to more effectively deliver Net Zero. Currently, so much of what councils do for Net Zero is as a result of goodwill: it is beyond our statutory duty and we do it because we and our residents care.”

Many thanks to Councillor McKeown for sharing his experiences. 

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Image: Stergios K