In a speech introducing his political agenda, the (in-all-likelihood) future Prime Minister Andy Burnham discussed changes to the whipping system in Westminster, with promises of “letting MPs be authentic representatives and not using the whip system to create fear or close down debate”.

This is a theme he covered at more length in his book (co-authored with Steve Rotheram) Head North. Their argument is that the whipping system fits into the wider problem of centralisation in British politics, where tight central control over how MPs vote moves power towards an even smaller number of people, who make worse decisions because the wider expertise of the party’s MPs are excluded from the process. Moving power away from MPs throws away the knowledge of place that those MPs represent. 

Here are three practical reforms to parliamentary whipping that address this complaint:

• Define the whip – give a clear scope and bounds to acceptable and unacceptable approaches
• Co-produce the whip – involve the parliamentary party in shaping the party line
• Publish the whip – produce clear public justification for voting instructions

These are reforms that can be implemented by any party without changes to parliamentary processes, but would be improved by changes to parliamentary processes to entrench and support them. 

What is the whip?

In the House of Commons, most votes are “whipped”, meaning MPs are expected to vote in accordance with the instructions the party has given.

There are different schools of thought on what the balance should be between parties and MPs. MPs are elected as individuals, but usually as part of a party with manifesto promises. As such, party discipline is not inherently illegitimate: there is a democratic argument that parties act as an intermediary that can keep their MPs aligned with the public mandate they got in the election. 

In this argument, MPs acting as completely free agents is bad for public accountability. Unlike parties, voters have no mechanisms between elections to keep MPs aligned with election promises, and very poor ones at elections, which work better as an informed choice between party agendas rather than 650 separate elections. 

That said, there is a big gap between this justification for the whip and how it works in practice. Burnham’s complaint is that in practice the whip is not forcing unruly MPs in line with their constituents: it’s doing the opposite. Party discipline goes far beyond just issues that were part of the manifesto and centralises decision making power in ways that make how MPs vote more distant from their constituencies:

“The minute [MPs] walk through the door to take their seats, the power given to them by the public is removed and effectively handed to a small number of their elected colleagues and many more unelected advisers who set the party lines and positions for which they are required to vote. 

“As a result, the whip system disempowers MPs, diminishes their status and, over time, disconnects them from their constituents. It makes you say things you’re not sure about and vote for things you don’t believe in. At its worst, the whip system unfairly makes good people seem like frauds.” 

There is room for these different perspectives on the whip to be reconciled through approaches that remain disciplined and cohesive, but that are also more transparent and emerge from more collaborative approaches to politics. 

Define the whip

A simple first step would be to write down what the expected “bounds” of party management are. 

This would be a statement that itemises political consequences the whip may impose (e.g. an ongoing pattern making it less likely that an MP will be chosen for government roles), versus approaches to party discipline on voting that would not be acceptable (such as denying absence slips, suspension from the party, losing funding for constituency projects, or intimidation). 

This could also set the scope for when the party has the clearest legitimate interest in whipping (votes related to manifesto issues), and confirm rules that there are certain votes (conscience votes, votes on house matters) where either the party might not take a position, or where there are no sanctions attached to not following that position. 

This should be an easy win, and is mostly restating what should already be good practice, or returning to an earlier set of norms. As Philip Cowley notes there’s been a substantial increase in MPs being suspended from the party for voting against the whip, with none in ten years of the Blair government compared to eleven in the first year of the Starmer government. A statement returning to that Blair-era norm would be a substantial reset in relations between the leadership and the parliamentary party. 

Writing the rules down is also part of making Parliament more normal. The “Whips” are a combination of what could boringly be called “party managers”, and a more secretive role, where the ambiguity allows them to contribute to the worst aspects of Parliamentary culture. The threats, bullying and blackmail are always said to be a thing of the past, but where “the past” becomes ever more recent as new stories surface. Greater transparency helps shift this balance, establishing party managers as a legitimate part of the Parliamentary system, whose actions are aligned with an effective and professional working culture. 

This step would, however, not be enough to address Burnham’s objections to the outcomes of the whipping system. To engage with the substance of the complaint means changing not just how whips behave, but how the decisions on the party line are made. 

Co-produce the whip

The substance of Burnham’s complaint is not just that he was told what to do, but he was told to do the wrong thing because the parliamentary party was not involved in setting the policy. 

As he put it, “the government I served in would have helped itself if it had trusted the majority feeling in the [Parliamentary Labour Party] rather than continue to force on it the preferred position of a small number of people at the heart of government.” What we need are approaches that mean the parliamentary party is more involved in setting the line it is then expected to follow. Here we can look to the German Parliament for useful approaches. 

The “free mandate” of German MPs to vote in accordance with their conscience is constitutionally protected. However, in practice, this ends up in a very similar place to the UK Parliament, where MPs almost always vote along party lines. The big difference between these systems is that in Germany the “party line” is not purely dictated by the leadership, but emerges from processes involving party MPs. 

In the German system, MPs in each party form working groups that shadow parliamentary committees. These are substantial policy-making bodies for the party, provided with parliamentary resources and researchers to support their work. 

If we shifted towards a similar system, MPs would develop deeper policy expertise and be more directly involved in shaping the party position on that area or piece of legislation, while MPs not part of that area defer to the process and wisdom of their more engaged colleagues. This reflects the party discipline that is important to clear lines of accountability to voters, while addressing the complaint that centralisation of decision-making throws away the intelligence and moral sense of MPs. 

Aspects of this happen already, and a step a new government could take is to take more formal notice of working groups, encouraging them to form through expectations that the whips office and ministers will engage with them. In time, more parliamentary resources could be made available to parties to support these groups. Another intermediate approach would be to allow the parliamentary party to select its membership on public bill committees, which in theory review legislation but in practice the whips select against members with specialisms in the area to maintain central control of the process. 

MPs are responsible for how they vote, but are judged collectively. The goal for MPs should be higher than the right to say “I didn’t agree with that decision”. This might be satisfying personally, but doesn’t help the people affected by bad decisions (and is unlikely to be electorally rewarded). The goal is to advocate and demand processes that lead to good collective decisions. 

Whether that’s the German model, an evolution of bill committees or something entirely new, the question is not just how we move away from centralising structures, but what new ones we need in their place that act as a counter pressure to government departments in the legislative process. 

Publish the whip

If parties are going to instruct MPs how to vote, they should tell us they’re doing that. Obviously we know in the abstract that most votes are whipped, but in the public record only the votes of individuals are visible.

It’s not that knowing the party instructions would excuse a bad result (MPs are ultimately responsible for how they vote), but it would play an important public education role in both how Parliament works and the quality of the decision making process. 

One of the long running effects of TheyWorkForYou has been to encourage MPs to make more public justifications of how they vote. Publishing the whip would be an extension of that, encouraging parties to make full descriptions of their reasons for votes. This would be a good incentive to move towards a more co-produced process, where the work of producing recommendations has public as well as internal outputs. 

We think greater transparency is the friend of better processes — helping draw power away from centralised and secretive processes towards those that need to explain and justify themselves in public. It’s also popular: 62% of the public agreed that parties should be public with how they instruct their MPs to vote. Committing to publish the whipping information would represent a public commitment to a new way of working, that helps encourage and entrench better practice. 

Building what comes next

Party discipline is a key feature of modern parliamentary democracy, but the specifics of “the whip” in the House of Commons are not. It has changed over time, and can be changed again.  Other places do things differently, and we can look there for ideas about how things can change.

The challenge for Burnham (and for Labour MPs who want to seize the opportunity) is to go beyond just minimising the drawbacks of the current system. What’s needed is to define the new institutions and processes that deliver the goals of a collaborative approach to politics, making the most out of the judgement and skills of MPs, to raise the standard of how decisions are made in Parliament. 

Header image: House of Commons Division Lobby | @House of Commons | House of Commons | Flickr 

In a recent blog post, we set out why proposals to reduce the Freedom of Information cost limit would reduce government transparency, without meaningfully reducing the burden on public authorities, since then the opposition to the move has grown. 

What’s the problem?

On 18 March 2026, The Financial Times reported that the government is considering lowering the cost limit for FOI (and therefore increasing the amount of FOI requests that can be rejected). The justification given for this is rising request volumes,  financial pressure on departmental budgets, and a mooted national security question (paywalled link).

What people are saying

Across our FOI network and beyond, these arguments have been widely challenged. In his initial blog post, journalist George Greenwood argues that the risks being cited are already well understood and already addressed within existing FOI exemptions. He goes further in the Times (paywalled), describing the proposals as a “democratic retreat” that would make it harder to uncover government wrongdoing and major public scandals. 

Looking at the cost argument, Jenna Corderoy’s piece for Democracy for Sale highlights how departments have spent significant sums fighting FOI requests in tribunal, often unsuccessfully. This shows that some of the highest costs of the FOI system are not just from processing requests, but are the result of  departmental decisions to resist disclosure in the first place.

Claire Miller’s #FOIFriday roundup questions whether FOI admin costs are significant in the context of overall public spending, and highlights evidence that lowering cost limits is unlikely to reduce overall workload. Instead, Claire points to the role of internal reviews, complaints, and inefficient handling as key drivers of cost, and emphasises the benefits of proactive publication and better systems.

Editorial and institutional voices have also weighed in. A Sunday Times editorial (paywalled) frames the proposals as part of a broader pattern of excessive government secrecy, warning that lowering the cost limit would create a “serious democratic deficit”. The Society of Editors has similarly warned that restricting FOI would damage press freedom and make it harder for journalists to hold power to account.

Sector-specific responses highlight the wider impact. The Committee for Academic Freedom have written that lowering the cost limit would disproportionately affect complex, investigative requests, and in a university setting transparency is already hard-won, so scrutiny efforts should be supported, not diminished. The Press Gazette has argued that reducing the cost limit would put public interest information “beyond scrutiny”.

The story has reached elected representatives too: last week local councillors in North Yorkshire raised concerns about how a possible cost limit reduction would negatively impact local government transparency.

What are the real problems, and where can solutions be found?

The current debate reflects real pressures within the system, but the response from across the FOI community and beyond is clear that restricting access to information is not the answer. 

If the aim is to reduce cost and pressure, there are better ways to do it. Efforts to reduce access to information risk introducing larger costs elsewhere, including from inefficiency, poor decision-making, and reduced public trust. Better proactive disclosure from authorities will mean fewer requests need to be made, and fewer fights at tribunal level would save the government money. 

Transparency is not a “nice to have” that can be scaled back when budgets are tight.  It is an essential component of public services that work in the public interest. Governments that think they cannot afford transparency will be surprised at the corruption and inefficiency they will need to afford in its absence.

We’ll be continuing to write and campaign on this issue, make sure you’re signed up to our mailing list if you want to be notified of any developments. 

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

As part of our WhoFundsThem work we want to make better information available about money in politics. 

Last year we released a report Beyond Transparency – looking at the UK Parliament’s register of financial interests, and wider arguments about how we fund politics. 

Today we’re releasing a follow-up report: Leaky Pipes (read online or download as a PDF). This covers what we’ve learned (and what we think could be better) about the systems for reporting election donations. You can also re-watch the launch event on YouTube. 

This report started because we were a bit confused about the different ways data could be declared and reported.  And to be honest, we’re still a bit confused – but we have more diagrams to explain why. 

What we explore in this report are the multiple routes for declarations, different thresholds for disclosure, and uneven public access. This makes cross-checking difficult and leaves gaps where information can vanish depending on how a donation flows (direct to candidate vs via party), how large it is, and whether the candidate wins.

The result is that candidates and agents face complex reporting requirements, electoral administrators hold paper-heavy returns that are hard to inspect, and the public (and sometimes regulators) struggle to build a consistent picture of who is funding whom.

From this, we’ve made recommendations on making reporting easier to do correctly, faster to publish, and simpler to scrutinise:

• Move to a “report once” process that informs multiple systems
• Harmonise public disclosure at £1,000
• Create a comprehensive public database above that threshold
• Create a safe private database below the threshold for research and evaluation purposes

Building on this, we suggest three practical avenues for follow-up work that would strengthen the case for reform and help design better systems:

• User research and prototyping to map how a “report once” service would work for candidates, agents, administrators, Parliament, and the Electoral Commission. 
• Sampling local authority returns to demonstrate the scale and type of inconsistencies between routes.
• Exploring a data-sharing agreement for controlled research access to the Electoral Commission’s small-donor/return data.

The report can be read online or downloaded as a PDF.

Header image: Photo by Meg on Unsplash

The UK has two Freedom of Information laws – one that covers Scottish public authorities and one that covers public authorities in the rest of the UK. While similar to the UK law in many respects, we think there are a number of practical ways the Scottish system improves on the wider system of FOI in the UK. 

While being better than the UK law is a good start, our sights should be set a lot higher than that: Freedom of Information needs to keep pace with how the world has changed, the changing ways public services are delivered, and huge shifts in how information can be stored and shared. 

Currently there is a Private Member’s Bill going through the Scottish Parliament with a combination of practical fix-ups to problems that have emerged, and bigger picture changes to encourage better proactive publication of information.

Last month, the Scottish Parliament’s Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee invited views on the Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill, which aims to modernise and strengthen the existing law. Our submission welcomed the Bill as a timely and proportionate improvement to an already effective system.

In addition to our written evidence, we were delighted to be invited to give oral evidence to the committee. You can watch Alex’s evidence session here.

Overall we’re really supportive of this effort to update the FOI system in Scotland, and as Alex said to the committee, we’re especially pleased to see proposals for a new proactive publication duty. 

This change would help public bodies make information available as a matter of course, reducing the need for requests and ensuring that information, once released, is accessible to everyone. In our research on fragmented public data, we’ve shown how better coordination and consistent publication practices can unlock huge public value. The Bill’s provisions around proactive publication are a welcome step towards achieving this.

This feels like a key moment for transparency enthusiasts to unite around the opportunity to make Scotland’s FOI system even better, and we’re delighted to play our part.

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Image: Chris Flexen

To rebuild public trust in our political system we need better data, stronger checks, tighter rules and ultimately, systematic reform.

Over the last few months, 50 volunteers helped the TheyWorkForYou team go through the Register of Members’ Financial Interests (RMFI), line by line, for all 650 MPs. We were looking for specific bits of information, but also to more generally understand the state of the Register and how rules on transparency are working in practice. 

• Read the report here
• Join us for the launch event at 1pm today

We have many ideas on how to improve that transparency, but the goal is not ‘just’ good documentation of office holders’ conflicts of interest: rather, the minimisation and elimination of those interests in the first place. To better align politicians’ behaviour with public expectations, there is no substitute for a stricter set of rules around MPs’ financial interests. 

As such, we are making four categories of recommendations, stepping from incremental change to improve data collection, to systemic reform of the funding landscape. 

1. Better data collection to achieve more accurate interests information
2. Stronger checks to make sure the interests information is reliable
3. Tighter rules so there are fewer unacceptable interests in the first place
4. Systematic reform to decrease the role of money in the political system.

As part of this project we have also added two new features to TheyWorkForYou:

• Election registers – adding more details and summaries to disclosures made after the last election.
• Highlighted interests – bringing together interests related to industries with low public support and governments of not free countries and offering MPs opportunity for additional context.

Over the next few months, we will release follow-on work from this project, including adding Registers of Interests for the devolved parliaments to TheyWorkForYou, releasing more information on APPGs, and a blog series on conflicts of interest declared in Parliament. 

For now, do read the report. We’ll also be discussing our findings with Chris Cook of the Financial Times and Rose Whiffen from Transparency International today at 1pm: reserve your spot here.

The first register of All Party Parliamentary Groups since the general election has just been published, and 519 of the 553 groups have vanished, leaving just 34. 

What is an APPG?

All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) are self-selecting groups of MPs and Lords with an interest in a particular policy area. Most groups are supported by a secretariat, which is usually a charity, membership body or consultancy organisation.

The logic behind APPGs is to create legitimate avenues for experts and interested parties from outside Parliament to discuss policy with MPs and Lords – but unfortunately they can also be vehicles for corruption. 

Our WhoFundsThem project is going to be taking a closer look at APPGs, to see which MPs are members (this information is currently not published) and a closer look at the organisations providing secretariat support. We have also updated our public APPGs spreadsheet with the new register. 

So why have so many groups disappeared?

A change in rules last year meant that we saw a huge drop-off from the 800+ groups registered in March to around 450 in April, and then a steady increase to 553 by the end of May. The 28th August edition has just 34 registered groups.

Since the general election, we think are there are three factors that might be influencing the dramatic decline in registered groups:

1. New officer rule – there’s a new rule that MPs are now only allowed to be an officer of a maximum of six groups.
2. The reduced size of the opposition – the ‘all party’ nature of APPGs means that they must have at least one member of the official opposition as an officer. Before Parliament was dissolved for the election in May, the then Labour opposition had 206 MPs. Now, the Conservative opposition has 121 MPs. Conservative Lords are allowed to be officers of APPGs, but the APPG Chair must be an MP.
3. Summer recess admin delay – in order to meet the deadline for this register, groups had to hold their new AGM to elect officers before summer recess began on 30 July. This gave them just a couple of weeks after the election, which was a hectic time, especially for the majority of MPs who were new to Parliament, and busy setting up their offices.

What next?

Given that we’ve just had one register, we can’t be sure which of these factors is having the biggest effect, but a second edition of the register should help us to understand the scale of the admin delay problem. 

We expect a large number of groups will have used the summer to get established and recruit officers and members – but they will need to hold an AGM fairly soon after Parliament returns next week in order to make the new register, which should be published in about six weeks’ time.

We’ll be looking in detail at the work of these groups, and the people behind them, in our project WhoFundsThem. Please consider donating to help us do more of this work. 

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

At the end of November, we were delighted to be joined by over 80 people at our webinar about making local climate data more useful. The recording is now available on YouTube, but we also wanted to capture the key messages from our speakers.

Anna Powell-Smith, from the Centre for Public Data, highlighted the key recommendations from the Unlocking Fragmented Data report, published jointly with mySociety earlier this year. These are:

1. A collaborative (but required) data standard to agree the data and format that is expected. 
2. An online central repository of the location of the published data, so that data users can find it easily.
3. Support from the data convener to make publication simple and effective.

Alex Parsons, mySociety’s Senior Researcher, gave the example of trying to build a comprehensive database of council home EPC standards. This data is already published by all local authorities, but because it is published in a variety of formats and locations, it can’t be easily joined up. This data was compiled by volunteers through FOI requests (in order to get standard formats) for the 2023 Council Climate Action Scorecards, and the results were covered in the Financial Times. It was not ‘new’ data, it was just the first time it had been collated and compared.

Eoin Devane from the Climate Change Committee stressed that data is essential for their work, and that their recent reports highlight the many data gaps that still exist in assessing the UK’s progress towards our 2050 net zero target. Contextualising the need for this data, Eoin also pointed to the CCC’s calls for more clarity on the role of local government, and on bodies like the Local Net Zero Forum.

Julia Cushion. This then led onto my section, highlighting the types of climate data we need, which we have covered in a previous blog post. I also spoke about the supporting factors for these:

• Echoing Eoin, more clarity from on the powers of local government for net zero delivery. This is also a key ask of the Blueprint Coalition
• More transparency around the Local Net Zero Forum and how this acts as a connection between national and local government 
• Greater coherence around the role of Oflog, especially how they prioritise their metrics
• More involvement from the Central Digital and Data Office, who could play an important convening role 

Next, we had our first councillor – Joe Porter, District Councillor for Brown Edge and Endon – who emphasised the importance of local councils as key players in climate action. Reflecting on Staffordshire Moorlands’ efforts, he discussed their annual Climate Change Report, emphasising the significance of monitoring progress, engaging with communities, and setting ambitious targets for carbon neutrality and nature restoration.

Minesh Parekh, a Labour and Cooperative councillor from Sheffield, echoed the sentiments on the imperative need for councils to lead in addressing the climate crisis. He emphasised the criticality of data in guiding decision-making at the local level. Minesh pointed out the disparity in information available to local councils compared to Members of Parliament, stressing the need for more localised data and resources to support informed decision-making on climate initiatives.

We rounded off the hour with a quick Q&A, which brought out the importance of sharing best practices, expertise, and data among councils through platforms like the Environmental Data Network. The councillors highlighted the significance of collaboration and the exchange of information to address challenges, bridge data gaps, and achieve more substantial climate action goals.

Thanks to those who joined us, and we hope to see you at a future event soon. To stay updated on our climate programme, you can sign up to our newsletter.

Photo by Benjamin Elliott on Unsplash

Over the summer, we were invited to be a part of the Local Mission Zero Network consultation, and we’re thrilled that our key fragmented data policy recommendations have been included in the new report, as well as recognition for some of our wider work on climate. 

Rt Hon Chris Skidmore OBE MP, former Net Zero Review Chair and one of the co-authors of the report, said:

“The Local Mission Zero Network’s first report, The Future Is Local, sets out over thirty recommendations to further the Net Zero Review’s local delivery mission. It’s clear that if central government won’t step up, it should get out of the way and allow local and regional leaders to forge ahead with their positive vision to achieve local Net Zero in partnership with communities up and down the country. Unleashing their ambition is the most effective way to harness the economic and regional growth opportunities that Net Zero can unlock.

I’d like to thank MySociety for their involvement in the network and also for their input in making key recommendations on the need for better data and information to achieve Net zero.”

The report, co-authored with Lord Ben Houchen, released today, is “intended not only to highlight the continued challenges facing the local delivery of net zero, it also seeks to frame these challenges into a new framework for ensuring local authorities and regions have the certainty to achieve their net zero ambitions”. It is a much needed intervention, and makes clear that “in the current policy environment, and ahead of the next General Election, greater certainty over local net zero is essential”.

Within Recommendation 1, Introduce a Local Net Zero Charter to agree responsibilities and enhance partnership between the UK government, devolved governments and regional, city and local authorities, there are three specific recommendations relating to our fragmented data work:

1f) A Local Net Zero Data and Reporting Framework should be established, in order to provide consistency and increase integrity for reporting across local authorities.

1g) The Net Zero Review recommended that ONS should collect more forms of net zero related data, and this network maintains that net zero will be better delivered the more we know, and where we know action needs to take place.

1h) The need for open source and operable data is also important, if we are to encourage better uses of AI and future systems thinking. This data to be held in a central repository, supported by a central government data convenor.

In the Unlocking the value of fragmented public data report we published last year, we stress the importance of local climate data being published in a way that is useful, ultimately creating positive feedback loops across the economy. It’s great to see the report emphasise this:

“The challenge of fragmented and inoperable data standards is not merely a matter for more effective local authority performance. The future of energy system planning could be better forecast if several datasets were better aligned.” 

The body of the report also highlights our conclusions about the kinds of climate data we need:

more about how  local authorities reflect on their own progress. In these instances, free text which we can semantically search, is often most helpful. We need data around:

• Personnel, systems & processes to manage climate monitoring and reporting. This helps us to understand who is doing the work, and how resource allocation happens. 
• Progress since the last reporting period, and key areas of focus for the period ahead. This gives a vital sense of context and perspective from inside the reporting body, and helps situate the scale of work undertaken against work yet to be done.

Finally, our CAPE project was mentioned as “effective monitor[ing]”, and we were so pleased to see the work we do with Climate Emergency UK to create the Climate Scorecards recognised: “By simplifying complex data, it allowed stakeholders to identify gaps and progress in climate initiatives, empowering communities to advocate for change”.

If you’d like to read the report in full, you can find it here. You may even want to share some of the recommendations from the report with your MP, which you could do using our service WriteToThem. 

Any questions for our policy team? Get in touch: policy@mysociety.org 

Image: Minku Kang on Unsplash

We’re delighted to announce that mySociety has joined the Blueprint Coalition – an influential group of local government organisations, environmental groups, and research institutions working together to deliver local climate action with a joined-up approach. 

The Coalition works across sectoral, geographical and party boundaries to make change happen. We’re excited to join the other members in calling upon the government to provide the crucial support local authorities need to deliver on tackling the climate crisis.

About mySociety

Becoming a part of the Blueprint Coalition isn’t just a milestone; it’s a commitment to a cause larger than ourselves. As mySociety joins hands with like-minded organisations, we are poised to make significant progress in our aim to make climate-related data more accessible. We believe that more information makes for better-informed action, so everything we do puts richer, more usable data into the open, where everyone can use it. 

Our Climate, Transparency and Democracy streams consist of a number of services (such as CAPE, Climate Scorecards, TheyWorkForYou, WriteToThem, and WhatDoTheyKnow) which we bring to the Coalition alongside our research, policy and advocacy work. Our policy work has been focusing on the issue of fragmented data, and we’re excited to be planning a webinar on this topic with the Coalition – watch this space!

About the Blueprint Coalition

In December 2020, the Blueprint Coalition published a comprehensive manifesto that serves as a roadmap to expedite climate action and usher in a green recovery at the local level. It outlines the national leadership, policies, powers, and funding required to empower local authorities in making impactful changes on a substantial scale. Drawing on the first-hand experiences of local authorities that have declared climate emergencies, this blueprint serves as a guiding light for collective action towards a sustainable future.

A defining feature of the Blueprint Coalition is its central ethos of fostering partnerships between civil society, national and local governments. Recognising that achieving net zero carbon emissions requires the collaboration of all levels of governance, the Coalition’s work serves as a testament to the power of collaboration.

The Coalition partners include: 

• Ashden
• Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Transport and Planning (ADEPT)
• Centre for Alternative Technology
• Climate Emergency UK
• Friends of the Earth
• Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment (Imperial College London)
• London Environment Directors’ Network (LEDNet)
• Place-based Climate Action Network (PCAN) at LSE
• Solace

• in addition to support from London Councils and Green Alliance.

If you’d like to show your support for the Coalition, you can sign up here. And to stay updated on our Climate programme, you can sign up to our newsletter.

Any other questions or comments? Get in touch with Julia, our Policy & Advocacy Manager.

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Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. See page for author.

We’ve recently published a report on fragmented data and local councils’ climate action. Download it here.

At all levels of government, and across the UK, there is growing recognition of the importance of local government in achieving the UK’s climate commitments. From this, there is a growing need to understand the impact of the interventions taking place at a local authority level, and as such, there are growing calls from central government and civil society for more climate data publishing. 

We recognise that these calls for more data do not always take into account the resources needed from within authorities to prepare this data, nor how to make the data useful to the authorities that published it in the first place.

More data publishing makes the climate data ecosystem richer, but smarter data publishing makes it more useful. If we replicate the history of previous central mandates to publish information, we will repeat mistakes that found local authorities using limited resources to put out data in ways that are far too costly to bring together and build upon.

We call this problem fragmented public data, and believe that a little bit more coordination and central support can supercharge the value of the data that local government produces. We need better tools and a better understanding of the skills and resources available to council staff. A realistic analysis of resource limitations of local government, and working with council staff who produce the data, will create more useful results, than a ‘best practice’ that requires obstructively high levels of technical skill. 

Central government has a role in providing more than an edict to publish: it must offer the support and resources to facilitate cooperation and publication of data spread over hundreds of local authorities. Net zero data publication does not have to be a burden. Together, civil society, central and local governments can come together to create a data ecosystem that is greater than the sum of its parts.  To build that ecosystem, we propose the following key principles:

• A collaborative (but compulsory) data standard to agree the data and format that is expected.
• A central repository of the location of the published data, which is kept up to date with new releases of data.
• Support from a data convener to make publication simple – such as, through validation and publication tools, coordinating data submissions, and technical support.

Take action

• Read the full report written by mySociety and the Centre for Public Data
• Sign up for our climate newsletter
• Contact Julia, our Policy and Advocacy Manager, to see how to implement our recommendations in your local area