When we consider the impacts of a project like the Council Climate Action Scorecards, the obvious benefits are those we see in UK councils as they step up their efforts to decarbonise. On this blog, we’ve also frequently noted tangential effects too, such as better understanding and communication between local authorities and residents.

There’s a third, less obvious benefit, though, as organisations across the world become aware of the project, and are inspired to do something similar. We saw it happen in Canada, and now The Climate Reality Project Europe has taken the idea and adapted it for their own community.

In this post, Gosia Rychlik, a branch manager at the organisation, explains what effects the Scorecards, a joint project between Climate Emergency UK and mySociety, have sparked in Europe.

At The Climate Reality Project Europe, we work with a network of over 5,500 Climate Reality Leaders across the continent, supporting them to turn knowledge into local climate action. While covering the topic of climate emergency declarations and designing tools to help our community engage in the topic more effectively, we came across Climate Emergency UK’s work.

One of the projects was The Council Climate Action Scorecards: they immediately stood out as a transparent, methodic and very practical way to make local climate governance visible and accessible to citizens. The clarity of the methodology and the commitment to accountability deeply resonated with our mission. The project shows how citizens can help assess and encourage local climate action as informed citizens. 

A guidebook adapted for Europe

Inspired by Climate Emergency UK’s work, we created the City Climate Action Assessment Guidebook, launched in autumn 2025 as part of our Citizens for Clean Energy programme. The guidebook takes the idea behind the Scorecards and adapts it for cities across Europe. Despite the differences between datasets and local government systems, the need for transparency and accountability is the same everywhere.

The guidebook provides a clear and simple framework to help citizens see what their cities are doing and where more action is needed. We cover eight key areas: climate commitments, energy, transport, nature, community engagement, governance, and finance. It invites residents to observe, look for information, and start conversations with local councils. Our intention is to encourage citizens to take the first simple step toward better understanding and meaningful local action.

We launched the guidebook with a series of public webinars featuring Climate Emergency UK, Beyond Fossil Fuels and Climate-KIC, reaching Climate Reality Leaders and community organisers from across Europe. 

What we’ve learned and what’s next

From the Scorecards, we learned that transparency and accessibility are key to accelerating local climate progress. We want to encourage citizens to start noticing climate policies (or lack thereof) in the real world and hope this will make them more likely to get involved, when they understand how to interpret their city’s plans and see where gaps exist.

We also learned that local engagement doesn’t always require large-scale campaigns — sometimes it begins with a few citizens paying attention, asking the right questions, and connecting dots between policies and lived experience.

Looking ahead, we hope that more members of our network take the first steps of local climate action with our Guidebook. Ultimately, our goal is the same as the one that inspired us: to empower citizens to hold councils accountable, celebrate progress, and accelerate the transition to climate-neutral, resilient communities.

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Thanks very much to Gosia for sharing these insights: we hope the guidebook has long-lasting and tangible effects.

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Image: Nuno Marques

Campaigning organisation and lobbying group the RBWM Climate Emergency Coalition (CEC), located in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, have been putting the Council Climate Action Scorecards to really good use.

Overall, 14 separate groups make up the CEC, who convene with a shared interest in mitigating climate change and/or protecting and restoring nature. The coalition holds the borough council to account in its stated goal to achieve net zero by 2050 and keep within its carbon budget, and we were pleased to hear all about it from someone involved from the very beginning, Paul Hinton.

Getting things started

First, he told us how the group had come into being:

“In March 2019, a local resident organised a series of climate protests at the town hall in Maidenhead, in response to Greta Thunberg’s solo school strikes outside the Swedish parliament and the establishment of the Fridays for Future movement.

“I attended the first protest with a copy of the Green Party toolkit ‘in my back pocket’, and suggested to some of the others present that we organise a campaign asking the council to declare a climate emergency. That’s how the CEC came into being.

“The campaign was a success. The climate emergency was declared in June 2019, although with a target of net zero by 2050 rather than the 2030 that we had campaigned for, and the borough’s first environment and climate strategy was adopted in December 2020, to run for five years to the end of 2025.

“The council is now developing the second version of its environment and climate strategy, to run until the end of 2035. The CEC is working hard to ensure that the new version is as ambitious as possible.”

Around the same time, Climate Emergency UK was just starting up, initially with the aim of collecting together every UK council’s climate declarations (out of which came CAPE, a joint project from CE UK and mySociety) — so there was an obvious shared interest right away, as Paul explains:

“Members of the CEC attended the first Climate Emergency Conference in Lancaster in March 2019 when it was a grassroots initiative led by Councillor Kevin Frea. We kept informed about CE UK’s activities, and were very pleased to see the genesis of the 2021 Scorecards, even though we didn’t make as much use of them as we might have.”

A long term relationship

There is value in understanding that campaigning for climate action may mean a long-term relationship with your local council. That’s not only because your message might take time to be heard; the campaigners themselves may be learning skills and knowledge. Paul explained that CEC have seen both successes and challenges, due to a number of different factors:

“The Scorecards have become extremely useful as we have gained experience and a better understanding of how to use them. In 2023, we produced an analysis of the RBWM’s climate performance for the newly elected Liberal Democrat council, based on the second iteration of the Scorecards; but there seemed to be no appetite to revisit the 2020-2025 strategy and the resulting action plan, and sadly this had very little impact.

“In 2025 we produced another analysis and report, this time based on the 2021, 2023 and 2025 Scorecards. This report has been extremely impactful for two main reasons. First, the analysis was based on three separate Scorecards results, and a clear trend was emerging so our arguments were stronger. Secondly, we shared the analysis more widely so that the message was more difficult to ignore.

“The report was shared with key cabinet members including the leader and deputy leader of the council. It was also shared with the steering group of the Climate Partnership (CP), a joint council/community organisation set up by the council to further the council’s net zero and nature recovery ambitions in the community. The CP were going to be involved in developing the new environment and climate strategy 2026-2035, and following receipt of the report became fully aware of how the borough’s climate action performance measured up against similar local authorities and what level of ambition would be required to reach their net zero target.

The CEC have played a long game, through changes of leadership and council majorities, seeing changes along the way:

“There have been frustrations over the years with the apparent lack of urgency and recognition of the scale of interventions needed across all council departments, but we have been pleased to see the council’s sustainability team grow, and whilst we recognise the challenges they face in terms of budgets, limited national government support, and perceived lack of a strong public mandate for climate action, we strongly believe that the new strategy should allow for a more ambitious approach, championing action, and providing the borough with clear goals commensurate with addressing the climate crisis.

“The CEC has a greater voice now than perhaps at any time since 2019, and it has been invited to a number of discussions and meetings with the current administration who appear to be much more receptive to the CEC’s input; this includes an upcoming dedicated workshop with council officers to input into developing the strategy and action plans.”

Press coverage

Paul mentioned that part of the CEC’s outreach activities involved sharing the report with the Maidenhead Advertiser, resulting in the publication of an in-depth article. We were interested to hear more about this, and how useful the group had found it to get coverage in the local press.

Paul explained, “The council is developing the second version of its environment and climate strategy, to run until the end of 2035, and we knew that we had to garner wider public awareness and support if they were going to recognise the need to create an ambitious, measurable and impactful strategy which would result in significantly increasing the pace and scale of the actions taken.

“The Maidenhead Advertiser was one of our chosen routes as we made a conscious effort to share our report widely and strategically. We shared a copy with the Editor and chief reporter, and they then wrote the story with one round of consultation with us.”

We wondered whether the CEC would advise other groups across the UK to try for coverage in the local press as a good campaign strategy. Paul thinks so:

“We’ve had no shortage of letters and articles published in the Advertiser, but for some reason a news story seems to have much more impact. The press provides us with the opportunity to inform the public when the council is not meeting the targets it has set itself; even while we continue to work constructively together with councillors and officers.

“Coverage in the local press should always form part of a good campaign strategy, but is even more impactful if used as one of a number of options and routes for getting the message out. Some of the data in the Scorecards is quite technical, and so difficult for those less familiar with it to fully appreciate, so in future we’d also look at issuing a press release in addition to the report itself, covering the main points.”

Thanks to all the CEC’s activity, their report has been shared far and wide — but it had a secondary effect: the council also saw how useful the Scorecards could be in their own work. Paul says that the council have adopted them at community workshops to highlight priority areas for action.

We are glad to hear it — and grateful to the RBWM CEC’s great efforts in putting the Scorecards to good use. Thank you to Paul for sharing his experiences.

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Image: Tom Bastin (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Our partner organisation Climate Emergency UK put us in touch with Mat Allen, based in Northern Ireland. They described him as “one of our most dedicated Scorecards volunteers” — and when we heard what he’s been up to, we could certainly see why.

Volunteering for CE UK is, for many, an opportunity to do something tangible and impactful around climate action. “Getting busy and doing something useful can counter the effects of negative stories,” Mat told us.

So how did it all begin? He explains: “My wife forwarded me a link to an article about CE UK, and I was struck by the importance of somebody taking oversight of the action taking place to address that a third of greenhouse gas emissions that can be influenced by our councils. 

“That is a bit niche, but addressing the climate emergency requires so many things to be done at the local level that I thought this could be something I could usefully contribute to.”

Volunteering as a marker

So Mat got involved. “I signed up to be a marker for CE UK’s 2023 survey, and was assigned a batch of UK councils to score against the criteria laid out in the Buildings and Heating section.” 

There’s no denying that the marking work can be complex, so how did Mat find it? 

“The process was well documented”, he says, “with support from the small CE UK team, and other volunteers available to give guidance when needed. While searching the internet for the evidence that allows marks to be awarded, I found inspiring things happening in councils all over the UK, pockets of brilliance! Some I recommended for inclusion in the Best Practices section of the CE UK website for others to enjoy, and perhaps replicate in their own areas!”

Once the 2023 Scorecards, based on those marks, were published, Mat was able to assess his own region. “The challenge in Northern Ireland became apparent, with much lower scores than the rest of the UK. Our eleven Northern Ireland councils have many challenges — as do all UK councils — with the cost of living crisis putting immense pressure on service delivery, and the level of rates chargeable (yes, we still have rates over here!).

“I made useful contact with my own council, Mid and East Antrim, who gave consideration to our recommended ‘easy wins’ — the actions that can have greatest benefit with least expenditure. They were facing huge financial challenges that year.”

Coming back for more

That was enough to bring Mat back for the next round of work — and this time, he got even more involved!

“I was properly hooked by the time CE UK was seeking volunteers for the 2025 survey, and I signed up as a marker and an auditor, this time in the Transport section. 

“As an auditor, I reviewed the Right to Reply responses made by councils to their initially assigned marks, to determine if scores should be changed based on the new evidence they supplied. This was more challenging, often requiring further online research, and comparison with other councils, to ensure scores were  fair.”

One perhaps unexpected result that we hear from many volunteers is how assessing councils’ climate action can lead to a better understanding of the challenges they face. Mat feels this too:

“I’ve learned a lot while marking and auditing, both about the complexity of council operations, and about successful climate action. The council staff involved are trying their best to do the right things, but surrounded by challenges of understanding and prioritisation. I feel for them, as they try and do right by their ratepayers and the planet!”

Getting the word out there

A small organisation like CE UK doesn’t have a big marketing budget, so anything that helps spread the word is useful, especially from those on the ground who can forge links with their own councils. Mat was able to assist here, too:

“As the release date for the results of the 2025 survey approached, I wanted to get more impact locally than we achieved with the results of the 2023 survey. I signed up as an ambassador for Climate Emergency UK (have yet to be offered a Ferrero Rocher!). 

“Along with my daughter, we decided to act locally, trying to gain traction with my own and the other two County Antrim councils (Antrim and Newtownabbey, and Causeway Coast and Glens), by holding a public launch meeting in Ballymena to publicise our initiative.

“With help and support from CE UK and Friends of the Earth, we held that meeting in June 2025 in Ballymena. The climate change teams from Antrim and Newtownabbey and Mid and East Antrim Councils joined us, as well as Councillor Quigley and residents from all three target council areas. 

“Thanks to the efforts of Councillor McShane from Causeway Coast and Glens Council, we made contact with their newly appointed Climate Change Manager the following day on a Zoom call, and we look forward to ongoing useful engagement with CCC&G! 

“We were pleased to award the ‘Most Improved NI Council’ award to Antrim and Newtownabbey in the presence of our local newspaper, The Ballymena and Antrim Guardian.

“The meeting was worthwhile, helping us at CE UK better understand the challenges these motivated climate teams face, and I hope introducing those folks to useful case studies and information about best practice we can offer.”

Looking to the future

Mat is a great believer in communication, saying, “Perhaps the greatest challenge we all face, and more so in Northern Ireland than elsewhere in the UK, is public engagement, and our councils are important players as they have those everyday interactions and influence with residents and communities.

“The work goes on in councils all over Northern Ireland, and at CE UK we are taking stock and thinking of how we can best help our eleven councils progress essential actions to reduce emissions, bringing communities with them, and prioritising the needs of the vulnerable.”

Mat has found something valuable in CE UK, beyond the ability to get out and do something: a set of data that backs it all up:

“Taking effective action — in anything — is helped by objective measures and targets. Climate Emergency UK is the only organisation offering such measures in the UK, and we research and publish these measures for all councils for free!”

Finally, he says, “We hope to continue engagement with our three Country Antrim councils, and would like to make contact with, and help the other eight Northern Ireland councils add more objectivity, breadth and substance to their climate action plans. 

“We would welcome contacts from the Climate Change Teams and councillors across the province, and we hope to invite more councils to an event to launch the 2027 CE UK Council Climate Action Scorecards!

If you are reading this and you are one of those councils, do drop CE UK an email at declare@climateemergency.uk. 

Many thanks to Mat for sharing his journey as a CE UK Scorecards volunteer — we hope it will inspire others who are wondering how to play their part! CE UK are not currently recruiting for volunteers, but when the next round of activity starts up, you’ll be able to see opportunities on this page.

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Image: K. Mitch Hodge

The Council Climate Action Scorecards are only possible thanks to the work of volunteers, who attend training from Climate Emergency UK before going off to gather the multitude of data required to assess the climate action of every council in the UK.

We’re always keen to hear from volunteers about what motivates them, and any other results that have come from their enhanced understanding of councils and climate action.

And so we were pleased to hear from Lucy Bramley, who first explained how she had come across the Scorecards project. As with so many of the volunteers, Lucy was already involved in climate action, and saw the opportunity to do more.

“I am a Climate Ambassador for the Women’s Institute. We have periodic team calls, and on one of them Don from Climate Emergency UK popped in to tell us about the Action Scorecards.

“I was really keen to find out more, so I asked him to lead a call with others who are also interested in climate change and biodiversity issues in my area. That session made me realise the gulf that exists between councils and residents, even when the residents are environmental activists… and that made me keen to volunteer to support the work of CE UK in shining a light on what our councils are doing — good and bad.”

Lucy took what she learned still further, though, and had a useful route through which to do so:

“I deliver Carbon Literacy training to local authorities for a public sector non-profit. I’m not a full-time employee, but whenever I get to deliver a course, I mention the fact that councils can gauge their own success in their quest to decarbonise, and use their influence to encourage others to do so, by engaging with the Scorecards.

“In fact, most councils seem to have some awareness of the Scorecards, and usually the Climate Change Leaders are most knowledgeable. I have seen the discussion on the Scorecards spark actions which hopefully continue outside the course!”

When asked about longterm outcomes, Lucy says, “I have a much deeper appreciation for the complex and difficult nature of the work that councils have to do.

“I have been frustrated by the impression I get that councils do not seem to work together to share successful strategies, but over time networks do seem to be building.

“The Scorecards are flexible in terms of taking these burgeoning networks on board, and sharing their stories to help amplify local authority challenges and successes. I’d very much like to continue to get as many people as possible to understand and use the Scorecards.”

Many thanks to Lucy for sharing her valuable thoughts and experiences.

Scorecards are a joint project from Climate Emergency UK and mySociety.

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Image: Daria S

The Council Climate Action Scorecards are helping climate officers across the UK to understand which elements of their path to Net Zero are working well, and which areas need improvement.

Marina Ebbage, Procurement Policy Officer at Norfolk County Council, explained the many ways in which Scorecards have helped the authority’s Climate Hub team in their work. She began by explaining how the council came to understand that a council taking climate action is one thing; while communicating that action is something else.

“We first came across the Scorecards following Climate Emergency UK’s assessment in 2021, and through the subsequent publicity which usefully highlighted the areas of work where our actions were not publicly communicated”, says Marina.  

“We’ve found the independent and external assessment of our council’s climate action not only allows us to systematically mark our progress in tackling climate change, but helps us to maintain and strengthen our accountability to the public. 

“The Scorecards have helped us strive for greater transparency and accessibility in our climate action efforts. Following that initial assessment, we realised that a lot of information about the work we were doing was not readily available to the public – hence our initial low score. 

“A key example is our Climate Action Plan, which draws all the information we are doing together on climate-related work and is now publicly available in one place on a dedicated part of the council’s website. Previously, information was in committee papers which are publicly available but often not easy to find, or knowledge was internal rather than shared publicly.

“Since then, we’ve brought together this information and evidence on the council website, making it available and accessible to Norfolk’s citizens and businesses, and indeed more widely.” 

The benefits go more widely than communication, though — they resonate through many aspects of the council’s work, as Marina explains: “We’ve found the Scorecards valuable as a way to check the comprehensiveness of our Action Plan, ensuring that we’re taking a well-rounded approach to addressing climate change. 

“At a senior management level, the Scorecards provide an overarching view of our climate action and comparative performance, which our Climate Board has integrated into its review process, using them to assess our actions and identify areas for improvement.”  

Talking of comparative performance, Marina adds, “We benchmark our performance against other councils. This comparison helps us identify areas where we need to improve and informs discussions with other councils on what further actions we can take.” 

And the bottom line? “Ultimately, the Scorecards have provided a useful means to review and benchmark our climate actions and provided a stimulus to improve the way we communicate what we do to the public.” 

That’s great to hear — and as we near the publication of the 2025 Scorecards, we were gratified to learn that Norfolk see their use into the future: “We plan to continue using the Scorecards as a monitoring tool, ensuring that our climate action remains ambitious, transparent, and effective.”

Thanks very much to Marina for sharing Norfolk County Council’s experience with the Scorecards, which are a joint project between Climate Emergency UK and mySociety.

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Image: Nathan Nelson

The Council Climate Action Scorecards were recently mentioned in East Sussex County Council’s Written Questions (see question 12, on the council’s score for mitigation and adaptation). When we spot that the Scorecards are helping to inform councils’ conversations like this, we often make contact to find out more.

East Sussex were happy to fill us in with more details of how the Scorecards have helped them, and how they’ve been able to feed into the process with their own experiences:

“For local authorities, climate change is an evolving area of work with few statutory responsibilities. As a result, we can struggle to see what ‘good’ looks like, both for individual areas of work and holistically across the council. We’ve therefore found the Climate Action Scorecards useful to help identify areas where we’re doing well and those where we may need to pay more attention. The results of the Scorecards have been briefed to senior officers and elected members.

“Officers have also used the Scorecards as a research tool. When we review an area of work (or our Climate Emergency Strategy as a whole), one of the first questions we ask is what other local authorities are doing. The Scorecards provide an easy way to identify leaders in particular fields for further investigation.

“Finally, the marking process behind the Scorecards has encouraged us to look at our website and the information it provides on our climate change work. As a result, we’ve made changes to place important information front and centre and make the climate change pages easier to navigate.

“Climate Emergency UK have taken an inclusive approach to the Scorecards, and we’ve appreciated the opportunity to attend briefings and feedback on scoring through the right to reply. Through this, we’ve explained some of the issues faced by largely rural authorities such as East Sussex, for example in areas such as public transport.

“We’re pleased to see some of that feedback taken onboard in the latest round of scoring. We hope the CE UK will continue to evolve the scoring criteria to make the exercise even more useful for both local authorities and the public we serve.”

Thanks very much to East Sussex for giving us the view from a County Council. Scorecards are a joint project between Climate Emergency UK and mySociety.

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Image: Neil Mark Thomas

The Council Climate Action Scorecards project, which assesses local councils on their climate action, is only possible thanks to a large number of people who give up their time to volunteer. Their job is to source and analyse data from a variety of places, analysing more than 40 different possible pieces of climate action that councils should be taking on their path to Net Zero. 

It’s very worthwhile work, and the project has tangible results (just see our previous case studies) — which is obviously a great motivator for volunteers to get involved. But going through the process of training, and then the actual marking, has other benefits too: it adds to their knowledge, giving them a new, comprehensive overview of the climate sector and its many component parts.

We spoke to Scarlette, who volunteered as part of the 2025 cohort. Scarlette told us how she got involved, and how it took her down a new avenue.

“I’d been looking for a job in the environment sector following my Masters,” explains Scarlette, “and since this had been a long and slow process, I decided to look for volunteer opportunities to do alongside my temporary job. 

“I came across the advert for the Scorecards and felt it really aligned with my interests, particularly in the area of transport.”

While helping to assess councils’ action on transport, Scarlette came across a novel concept. Question 2.3 in the Scorecards asks “Does the council have enforced school streets across its area?”, with points awarded to councils with more than ten such streets year round, and bonus marks available for those with more than 30.

A school street is a road outside a school that is effectively closed to motorised traffic at drop-off and pick-up times. As the School Streets website notes, such schemes help tackle air pollution and road danger, encourage a healthier lifestyle and active travel to school for families, and lead to a better environment for everyone.

Once Scarlette found out about them, she was keen to get involved:

“I started volunteering as a School Street Marshal at a local school for a six month trial period. Prior to volunteering on the Scorecards I had never heard of the School Street initiative, and certainly wasn’t aware of any near me. The Scorecards led me to seek out this new role, and has encouraged me to get involved further with local campaigns.

“Volunteering with the Scorecards and the School Streets initiative has further cemented my passion for working in the environmental sector. I’ve been able to build on my academic knowledge within environmental law and have had the opportunity to gain more experience working in my local community with an environmental charity. I continue to look for further volunteering opportunities elsewhere to build on these experiences.”

We’re really glad to hear this, and wish Scarlette all the best in finding a permanent role in the environment sector: it certainly sounds like she’s acquiring some really relevant experience.

Scorecards are a joint project from Climate Emergency UK and mySociety.

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Image: Hammersmith and Fulham Council (CC by-nc-nd/2.0)

We spoke to Martin O’Brien at Lewisham Council about the Climate Council Action Scorecards, and the ways in which he’s used them to support his role as Head of Climate Resilience.

The Scorecards assess all UK councils across a large variety of different climate actions, publishing the final marks online, for both councils and the public to see.

So, how do all these numbers actually help a council in their work towards Net Zero? Martin told us that there are three distinct ways in which they’re useful.

“Firstly, I use them to build a sense of what’s going on around climate action, across all local authorities. They help me identify areas where we have gaps in our own action, and the places where we might pick up useful insight, tools and advice from other councils.

“Then they’re also useful for our engagement across the council’s service teams, to spell out and reinforce the connections between what they do and our ambitions on climate action.

“And then finally, they help with our communication and engagement with residents, particularly local activist and environmental groups. They encourage a conversation that acknowledges we can’t do everything, that there are some areas where we are taking meaningful action — but also, areas where we are keen to learn, to expand and improve how we work and what we can achieve.”

Can Martin put any measures to the impact the Scorecards have had for Lewisham?

“It’s hard to translate the benefits into hard facts and figures, but I feel that they’ve given us, as a council, confidence and pride in some of the things we have achieved. They’ve shown that while the scale of the challenge might sometimes feel overwhelming, it’s possible to break it down into achievable steps.

“I don’t always agree with the scoring.  If I’m honest there are times I’m surprised we get a mark (I won’t tell you which ones) and there are other times I’m outraged we don’t (happy to share information about this).  But more often than not when I look at the methodology and the assessments, I can see there’s a potential opportunity to reshape the way we do things for the better.”

Thanks very much to Martin for sharing these insights — it’s always helpful for us to understand exactly how the Scorecards are proving useful. The Climate Council Action Scorecards are a joint project between Climate Emergency UK and mySociety.

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Image: Robin Inkysloth cc by-nc-nd/2.0

Cambridge City Council was the second highest scoring district council in the UK on the Council Climate Action Scorecards, a joint project between mySociety and Climate Emergency UK (CE UK).

Given their success, Climate Change Officer at Cambridge Janet Fogg was keen to tell us how they’ve been using the Scorecards since they were launched. She and CE UK’s Annie spoke over Zoom. 

“I came across the project thanks to CEUK letting us know via email about the Scorecards and the Right of Reply back in 2022. We took part in the Right of Reply that year, before the final Scorecards results came out. 

“I used the 2023 Scorecards in the most recent committee report on our climate action.

With the score that we got, we were keen to let people know about it! Receiving this high score helped us show to people that when we say we are doing everything we can, it’s backed up by evidence: the Scorecard results. 

“Sometimes we get criticism that we don’t talk enough about what we are doing on our climate action, and these Scorecards are a way for us to show what work we are doing, and in an easy way for residents to see and understand, too.”

Janet went on to explain how the Action Scorecards are a useful tool within the council when working with other departments. 

“Having the specific actions laid out in the Scorecards helps me justify and put forward a stronger case that these actions are good to do.They’re not just actions that I think we as a council should do, but best practice, and I can point to other councils that are doing these things. And it’s not just a list, we are all also being measured on whether we do these actions, via the Scorecards, so it’s important we really do implement them. 

“A lot of my work is about dealing with change and change is difficult. Having the Scorecards helps us lay out clearly which actions we want to be doing and the benefit of doing so.”

The Council Climate Action Scorecards results are public for everyone to see. Janet told us how this is one of their most useful benefits.

“Having an external organisation like CE UK giving us feedback on our work is helpful. And I’m happy that it’s not a hidden assessment, it’s really clear for us to see where we got marks and where we didn’t, and see also where other councils scored or not too. 

“The Action Scorecards questions help shape our future work plans. The questions set out what needs doing and we shape our work around this.” 

Cambridge City Council also responded to the latest Right of Reply, ahead of the 2025 Action Scorecards. But they are aware of where improvements can still be made. “As a council we have high ambition but are constrained in some areas such as still being in the process of updating our Local Plan”. 

Thanks to Janet for taking the time to talk to us!

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Image: John Sutton (cc by/sa-2.0)

Kelly Murphy is the Climate Change Officer at Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council, a local authority in Hertfordshire that oversees a mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas.

As Kelly explained, Welwyn Hatfield works collaboratively with nine other authorities within the Hertfordshire Climate Change and Sustainability Partnership (along with County Council and Hertfordshire Futures), where they share information and work collectively to broaden the impact of their Net Zero and sustainability projects. We were keen to hear what part the Council Climate Action Scorecards have played within Welwyn Hatfield.

Kelly explained that, for Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council, one big advantage has been the ability to learn from other authorities: 

“We’ve used the Scorecards to understand what areas we need to improve in, and to research what ‘good’ looks like”, she says. “The transparent scoring meant we could identify local authorities across the UK that had performed highly in specific sections, then research what aspects they were doing well on, and how they were doing it.”

And how does that kind of research translate into action? Kelly gave a perfect example: 

“One section where we could see that we needed to develop our approach was Collaboration and Engagement. Having a climate agenda and taking action is obviously of great importance, but we needed to ensure that they were also being communicated throughout the borough so that residents understood exactly what the council is doing.  

“After researching other local authorities that performed well in this section, and incorporating feedback from a resident survey we conducted, we looked at what was within our budget and officer capacity. 

“We decided the best way to engage with residents, community groups and businesses was the creation of our Welwyn Hatfield Climate Hub, a dedicated space on the One Welwyn Hatfield community website. It’s a single source for everything climate-related in the borough, with progress updates, news, links to relevant reports and policies, educational resources, funding information, notification of relevant events and competitions, a list of community eco groups and so on.”

That sounds like a real step up, and a great response to learning that improvements needed to be made in this area.

Compiling the Scorecards is a significant effort, managed by Climate Emergency UK with trained-up volunteers. But equally, they wouldn’t be possible without buy-in from the councils themselves, who are invited to respond to their marks before the Scorecards go live. We asked Kelly what the council’s experience had been of this process.

“It’s actually been very useful,” she says. “For instance, during the right of reply period, I noted that we had not scored on a number of questions. I knew that marking depends on having publicly available evidence, and when I looked for it I discovered that, in some cases, the information was quite tricky to find. 

“A new sustainable procurement appendix, for example, had been recently added to our procurement and commercial strategy 2021-2025, but unless you knew it was there, you might not scroll all the way down through that document. 

“As a result, I updated the Climate Hub, with a new section specifically on sustainable procurement, including a link to take readers directly to the strategy and ultimately improving accessibility to this information.”

Another benefit was also provided regarding funding, Kelly explains “Climate awareness/literacy training has featured in the Scorecards for the last few years. The fact we had not scored in this area, along with a number of other persuasive reasons, was presented in a report to senior leaders and councillors to request draw down of money from the climate reserves to fund this training.

“Having agreed that providing climate awareness training was a crucial step in supporting, enabling and empowering individuals to take climate action, we collaborated with a private company to offer staff, councillors and our residents bespoke climate awareness training. We are excited to launch this training at the end of the month and look forward to hearing about the positive impacts the training has had both internally within the organisation and externally around the borough.”

It’s wonderful to hear of the tangible results the Scorecards have helped to bring about, thanks to Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council’s positive and proactive attitude. 

Kelly says as we conclude our conversation, “You can’t compare councils like for like — they have different demographics, governance structures, administration, budgets, officer capacity, and so on — so it might have been easy to dismiss the Scorecards. But it’s not a competition, and the Scorecards don’t try to make it one. We’ve embraced the process because climate change has no borders.”

“Ultimately, a platform that flags areas for improvement and signposts to best practice should only been seen positively. It enables us all to move in the same direction towards the same goal.”

We heartily agree! Thanks very much to Kelly for sharing her experiences.

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Image by Jim Osley CC by-sa/2.0.