-
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.
—
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.
—
-
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.
—
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!
—
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.
—
Image by Jim Osley CC by-sa/2.0.
-
Following a call out by Climate Emergency UK (CE UK) to councils across the UK that were using the Scorecards, we were grateful that Gedling Borough Council responded and wanted to talk more. Annie from CE UK spoke to Sim Duhra, their Climate Change Manager, and learned about the current and potential uses of the Scorecards as they see it.
“I started in this role at the end of 2022, so it wasn’t long after — Spring 2023 — that I was receiving emails from CE UK about the Right of Reply process for the first Council Climate Action Scorecards. I completed the Right of Reply both in 2023 and the most recent one; I have attended their webinars and made use of their website, too.
“Gedling Borough Council is currently reviewing their Carbon Management Strategy and Action Plan and we are looking at how we can make our own actions SMARTer. The Scorecards offer further scrutiny, clarity and focus on those seven sections that we can learn from.”
Sim then went to talk more about how the Action Scorecards are useful, even for a small borough council.
“I appreciate that it is an independent piece of work, the Scorecards. You are a completely separate organisation from the council. The comparison tool is interesting and we have made use of this too to see what other local authorities are doing. Although, we are a small borough council, and if we had more capacity, both in terms of staff and funding then we would be able to incorporate more best practice into our work in terms of climate action.
“Although we could improve in some sections we are progressing in others, such as Collaboration & Engagement. The Planning section is useful as it is a good way to start a conversation with internal departments about what they are doing in relation to climate action within Planning. The questions and topics in the Scorecards give you gravitas to approach different departments internally and engage in conversation about what can be done in these departments for relevant bits of climate action.
“We know that there is so much more than we need to do as a council on our journey to Net Zero, whilst also recognising that some things are out of our control in terms of the funding and resources that are available to us.
“We appreciate that a lot of work goes into the Scorecards, including from councils when they respond to the Right of Reply and the FOI requests, but we do get something out of this work we put in which we recognise.”
It was wonderful to put a human face to one of the many local councils in the UK and we really appreciate the time Sim took to talk to us: thank you! Scorecards are a joint project between mySociety and CE UK.
—
Image: Alan Murray-Rust (CC by-sa/2.0)
-
In many of our recent case studies, we’ve seen how councils benefit from the Council Climate Action Scorecards — but they are also of use to campaigners and residents who would like to fully understand, or perhaps get involved in, their local authority’s climate action.
We heard from a Cirencester resident about how information on their council’s climate action led them working together. It all began when they used the right that everyone has, to ask a question of their council:
“I used the Scorecard ratings of Cotswold District Council’s climate performance as the basis of a public question, which I put to a full council meeting last February (2024).
“This led to a one-to-one with the council’s Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Sustainability, and an initiative to form a residents’ group which would work directly with the council on specific climate issues.
“And so Cotswold Climate Action Network (C-CAN) was formed! There are currently 12 of us (ten residents and two councillors), my fellow residents being recruited by invitation from other Facebook-based climate action groups in the Cirencester area. We meet every eight weeks or so at the council offices and talk on WhatsApp in between.”
Great stuff — so what sort of things is the group achieving together?
“We’ve set up a number of sub-groups. One collaborates directly with the council on retrofit — that is, the adaptation of existing housing to be more efficient — together with the council’s newly appointed Retrofit Officer.
“Another works on Public Transport and Active Travel, then we have a dedicated member area for 16-18s.”
Are there plans to grow?
“Yes! We’ve just launched a Facebook page to promote what we’re doing and recruit more members from across the Cotswolds. The aim is to widen our involvement in more climate and sustainability issues over whose outcome the council has influence.
“It’s really empowering: our group has the opportunity to be involved, and directly influence, Cotswold District Council’s climate actions. And it all began with that question based on the Scorecards.”
We’re so pleased to see the Scorecards inspiring a resident to ask questions, and leading to such constructive collaboration with their council. Scorecards are a joint project between Climate Emergency UK and mySociety.
—
Image: Matt Seymour
-
The Council Climate Action Scorecards are having tangible effects in councils across the UK, encouraging better, more effective climate action.
We recently asked councils to let us know what the Scorecards have done for them, and Luke Waddington, Climate and Environment Project Officer at South Cambridge District Council, answered the call. Pleasingly, the Scorecards have brought about carbon literacy training right across their workforce.
As Luke explains, “In 2022 we received the climate scorecard for South Cambs, and it highlighted several areas for improvement in our Climate Action Plan.
“One of the gaps it identified was around climate awareness training for staff and councillors. Previously, we’d purchased externally provided carbon literacy training for a small number of colleagues within the Climate and Environment (C&E) team. While this helped to improve knowledge within the team, it wasn’t reaching colleagues in the wider organisation. Although these colleagues would come across climate change in their day-to-day roles, they weren’t necessarily fully equipped to champion it throughout their work.
“So, once CE UK highlighted this gap through the Scorecards, we were able to make the case to senior colleagues that there was a need for, and value in, investing staff time into skills and training on climate change.
“As a result, our 2023 business plan included an action to investigate and improve staff training on climate change. This culminated in an ongoing programme of Carbon Literacy training sessions, open to all colleagues and delivered by members of the Climate and Environment Team.
“We also recognise the need to provide Carbon Literacy training for councillors, and so held our first a member training session in November 2024.”
That’s a great throughline from the Scorecards to positive impact.
“Thanks to the Scorecards identifying this gap, our training programme is now helping us to embed an understanding of climate change throughout the organisation, stimulating climate action. And to prove it, we’ve been awarded Bronze Carbon Literate Organisation status — and are working toward Silver status.
“88 colleagues have now received carbon literacy training across the council, from new starters to our Chief Executive. These colleagues are now able to take their learning into their service areas and make changes or take actions to reduce their work-based emissions. Many of our departments have a large influence not only over carbon emissions produced by the organisation, but also those in the wider district.
“For instance, planning officers who are more aware of the impacts of climate change feel more empowered to encourage developers to incorporate more sustainable design and construction methods. Newbuild housing officers can better improve the sustainable credentials of the council houses they build, and our business support team are better equipped to advise local enterprises on the benefits and advantages of carbon reduction for their business.
“Furthermore, having the training delivered internally by colleagues strengthens ties between the C&E team and other departments, opening dialogue between us and making us more accessible for colleagues seeking advice on carbon reduction at home or within the workplace. Basically, helping to break down silos.”
Thanks so much to Luke for sharing the experiences from South Cambs: it’s great to see such a direct and positive impact. The Scorecards are a joint project between mySociety and Climate Emergency UK.
—
Image: Chris (CC by-sa/2.0)
-
The Council Climate Action Scorecards, a joint project between mySociety and Climate Emergency UK, have a twofold impact. On the one hand, they help people understand what their local council is doing to achieve their Net Zero targets; on the other, they help councils themselves to put their own action in context.
When we saw that Colchester City Council were referring to the Climate Action Scorecards in their Environment and Sustainability meetings, we were keen to find out more — and Ben Plummer, Climate Emergency Officer at Colchester, was happy to fill us in on the details.
Ben said, “The Scorecards give some external critique of our work, which I think is important and ultimately helps raise awareness of what we’re doing.”
That awareness has spread internally within the council, and externally among residents — so it’s win/win!
Plan for success
Ben has been aware of the Scorecards since the very beginnings of the project, which was then assessing councils on their Action Plans rather than their actual activities. That iteration, he says, was “really useful, especially alongside CE UK’s previous guide to structuring a good Climate Action Plan. They helped us put together a plan that was more informative and useful for residents.
“When the Action Scorecards followed, they were important for seeing if action plans translated into action being taken on the ground.”
Internal knowledge-sharing
And how has this information been used internally?
Ben says, “For both the Action Plan Scorecards, and the Action Scorecards, we produced a summary of results which we shared with councillors and presented to our Environment and Sustainability Panel.
“Using the Scorecards, we could show councillors where there was room for improvement, and where we were making progress on actions where we may not have met the criteria to get the mark at the time.”
Indeed, reading through the council minutes, you can see that they’ve noted the activity for which they had scored well, such as on the energy performance of the council’s housing stock; work on developing sustainable travel methods such as electric scooters and an electric car club; and efforts to phase out use of glyphosate and reduce mowing of green spaces.
At the same time, the report noted some action that could improve their progress to Net Zero, including the creation of a more detailed greenhouse gas emission report; training members on carbon literacy; and using peat-free compost in parks, among others.
The Scorecards continue to be a useful resource, says Ben: “I use them when we’re planning new projects or developing existing ones, to identify what other councils are doing in the space.
“On a couple of occasions I’ve been able to reach out to councils where I’ve found examples of good practice to discuss projects they are doing in more detail.
Peer support
“Having the database of Scorecards has certainly made it easier to find good practice and help reduce the time scouring the internet for local authority climate action!
“Additionally, the external critique — and recognition — from the Scorecards just helps to raise awareness of what we could be doing as a local authority at a more senior level with staff and councillors.”
The expert advice that went into creating the Scorecards methodology has not gone unnoticed. “Having that expert involvement of key environmental organisations gives them a respected feel and supports claims we might be making for more action to be taken in particular areas where we had low scores.”
Ben finishes by saying, “Without the Scorecards, we councils might not get held to account as much as we should. Having them there can help senior staff pay a bit more attention to the climate agenda!”
That’s great to hear — and indicates that the Scorecards are working exactly as planned. Thanks very much to Ben for sharing Colchester’s experience.
—
Image: Marek Studzinski
-
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.
—
