-
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.
—
-
Bracknell Forest Council don’t just comply with the Council Climate Action Scorecards marking — they proactively publish all the relevant information on their website.
Climate Emergency UK’s assessment of all UK councils on the actions they’ve taken towards net zero is a complex process that involves seeking the required evidence from each council. As you can imagine, when we discovered that Bracknell Forest had put it all in one place ready for the marking process, we were very impressed.
We spoke to Will Barnes, Climate Change Officer, to find out more. How did the council first come across the Scorecards?
“Originally, it was one of our councillors who brought them to the attention of council officers. With climate change being a top priority for the council, both councillors and officers have gone on to take a particular interest in the Scorecards methodology and results.”
As Will continues, he confirms our belief that the Scorecards are not just a useful tool for the public: they also provide an invaluable service for councils themselves.
“We now use the Scorecards as one way of having our climate action independently and externally assessed.
“We use it as a way of marking our progress on tackling climate change as a council, and benchmarking ourselves against how other single tier councils are doing, and what they are doing too.
“To support this process, we have been centralising answers and evidence on the council website to assist the scorecard markers and to make this information available to the public too.”
We are so impressed to hear this, on many levels. Of course, we’re very grateful that the work of assessing the council has been made easier; but we also admire the transparency with which Bracknell Forest has approached the project, for the benefit of the public.
We’ve heard how the Scorecards help the council and the general public. There’s one more person benefitting — Will himself.
“Having started in my role as Climate Change Officer four months ago, I’ve found that the Scorecards have helped me to understand the climate action already taking place across all corners of the council.
“They’ve also helped me to identify potential opportunities for further projects which we could implement in support of our ambition to be net zero by as close to 2030 as possible.
The climate change team work to embed and promote sustainable practices and initiatives across the council, and the Scorecards have provided us with ideas for action and have supported us to put projects forward to various teams for consideration.
“In doing so, they’ve played a part in the progress that has been made on a range of projects since the 2023 Scorecards. For instance, we now have a social value policy in place that aligns procurement and contracting activity with our commitment to address the climate emergency and achieve net-zero carbon emissions.
“One of the workstreams of our new business change project is focused on delivering carbon awareness training across council teams, and the Public Protection Partnership (PPP) have developed a project plan to enforce the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES) for privately rented domestic properties in the borough.
“Projects like these will help us to achieve our ambitions of tackling climate change and reducing emissions in Bracknell Forest.”
That’s great — thanks very much to Will for sharing his experiences. We don’t think we’ve come across any other councils proactively publishing their evidence like this before, but as we hope this case study shows, it’s beneficial all round. Perhaps others will follow where Bracknell Forest leads. We hope so!
—
Image: Alan Hunt (CC BY-SA 2.0)
-
Prefer to watch this post as a video? Scroll down to the end.
—
The Council Climate Action Scorecards are compiled by a cohort of volunteers, trained up by Climate Emergency UK. They’re currently recruiting for the next round of marking, so if that sounds like something you’d like to be involved with, check out the details here.
The knowledge that volunteers acquire isn’t just applicable to the Scorecards: it upskills them for life, empowering them to apply their knowledge to informed climate action. In that way, the benefits of the Scorecards project are more longlasting, and spread further than we might have expected!
Fiona Dyer was part of the volunteer cohort of 2023, and she shared her journey from climate-concerned to climate-informed. Her story can inspire us all — especially those who may be feeling powerless or hopeless in the face of the climate crisis.
Fiona explains: “At the start of the COVID pandemic I had to retire early from the NHS to look after my mum. I had more time to read, and the more I read, the more concerned I felt about the impact global heating and biodiversity loss was going to have on my children’s future. Across the world people were already suffering.
“I heard about the CE UK Scorecards project from a friend, and decided volunteering would be something positive I could do that I could fit around my other commitments. I doubted whether my computing skills would be adequate, but the CE UK team was friendly and supportive, and we volunteers learnt from each other via a chat forum.
“Reading through councils’ climate action plans to find information was challenging at times, but it also gave me a good understanding of the scope, powers and potential influence councils have to help communities mitigate and adapt to the challenges that lie ahead.”
So, that’s where it started — but it’s certainly not where it ended! Fiona goes on to tell us how she could bring that acquired knowledge to a whole new arena.
“I went on to join Climate Action Durham (CAD), and learned that they’d held a Citizens’ Forum on Climate Action the year before, in collaboration with Durham County Council.
“I suggested we used the Scorecards at the next forum, as up to date, publicly available research that would give us a better understanding of the breadth of topics councils should be addressing, as well as performance data.
“It was agreed that by using the Scorecards we could more easily assess the council’s climate response plan: its strengths and weaknesses, how it compared with similar and neighbouring councils and how we could gauge improvement over time.
“The citizens’ forum was held in the autumn, timed to be just after the publication of the Scorecards. As we had already established a ‘critical friend’ type relationship with the council, it was agreed that the introduction to the forum would be given by myself, alongside the council’s Neighbourhoods and Climate Change Corporate Director.
“My presentation was a combination of some of the council’s own slides and slides I created using Scorecards data, chosen to highlight issues that would help focus discussion in the work groups that followed.
“I would not have had the confidence to do this without my experience of being a Scorecards volunteer, as I have no previous experience in this area. It was also an opportunity for me to champion the broader agenda of increasing local democracy. “
That’s the increased confidence that knowledge can bring. And then, as Fiona explains, the event itself was enriched and informed by the Scorecards data.
“The Citizens’ Forum on Climate Action was open to anyone who wanted to attend. People were asked to choose the work group they wanted to be part of in advance: these broadly aligned with the Scorecard categories and they were given the link to the Scorecards website.
“The questions and scores in each of the Scorecards categories enabled us to be more effective in scrutinising the council’s performance.
“The council said they welcomed CAD’s involvement in consulting the public on its climate plans and being held to account in a constructive way.”
And from this one day emerged some longterm outcomes:
“The feedback from the forum work groups was written up in detail as a report, including nine specific recommendations. Where possible I used my Scorecards knowledge to cite examples of good practice by other councils for each recommendation, these were included as footnote references.
“For example, Bristol use an Eco Impact Checklist that is applied to all their new projects. This report was shared with the council and made available to the public via the CAD website.
“CAD members who facilitated the groups in the forum have continued to work with the relevant councillors, to varying degrees, as the next iteration of their climate plan is being developed. We will see how many of the recommendations are included in the new plan when it is published later this year.
“As a group we intend to continue supporting, lobbying and campaigning where it is needed. We have just set up Durham Climate Hub, part of a national network of climate emergency centres and are continuing to work with the council’s community engagement officer. In the run up to this year’s forum we plan to hold sessions in the Hub on some of the forum themes to increase interest and participation from a broader section of the public.
“I have suggested CE UKs training to various other groups, one of which I have co-hosted with CE UK using my local knowledge. It feels good to be playing my part in raising awareness of the challenges we face and working creatively with other people to improve local resilience, not forgetting the bigger picture and fundamental need for system change.”
Fiona’s account is a phenomenal example of how citizens can work together with their local councils to understand, oversee and encourage better climate action. It shows how the Scorecards training has a ripple effect that is tangible and longlasting.
Big thanks to Fiona for sharing her experience — we hope it will inspire others who are looking for a way to take practical and productive action on climate issues.
—
Image: David Ross
-
Canada differs from the UK in many ways: obviously it’s vastly bigger, extending across many more latitudes; its climate, nature and terrains vary hugely; its cities are more dispersed and diverse — and accordingly, the challenges the two countries face around tackling the climate emergency are different, too.
But there are some significant ways in which we are alike, too, as we learned when we chatted with Hannah Muhajarine, National Campaign Manager at the Climate Reality Project Canada.
Climate Reality, like mySociety and Climate Emergency UK, have identified local councils — or municipal governments as they’re called in Canada — as crucial contributors to our respective countries’ decarbonisation. Both sides run projects that monitor the climate action of these authorities, helping citizens to keep an eye on their progress.
“Scorecards helped us reimagine both our content and project design.”
Hannah first heard about the Council Climate Action Scorecards on the Local Zero podcast, and immediately saw the parallels between our two projects. Not only that — she understood that Climate Reality could learn from our project, adopting some of the Scorecards’ approaches.
We were keen to hear how the Scorecards have encouraged Climate Reality to enrich and broaden their own work in monitoring climate action at the local level. So, first of all, what is Climate Reality?
“We’re the Canadian branch of The Climate Reality Project, which is an international climate organisation,” explained Hannah.”We work by training citizens on climate advocacy, education, and communication.
“This includes supporting a network of Community Climate Hubs across Canada, which mobilise citizens to get involved in local climate advocacy targeting city and town councils.
“These grassroots groups get involved in a variety of projects, including making sure that climate is a priority during municipal elections and budget-setting; participating in public consultations relating to climate; campaigning to get their council to declare a climate emergency; organising campaigns; hosting community-facing public events on climate, and more.”
All good stuff, but a lot more hands-on advocacy than we’ve been doing over here. So, where are the links with the Scorecards project?
“To support the Hubs and their local advocacy work, since 2018 Climate Reality has led a project called the National Climate League (NCL), where we trained volunteers to collect data every year on a set of climate-related indicators measuring climate progress at the local level across Canada”.
Ah yes, the overlaps certainly begin to become obvious — in fact, that’s exactly what Climate Emergency UK did for the UK Scorecards. So, what sort of data were Climate Reality collecting?
“For example, the number of Passive Certified buildings within municipal limits, the number of transit trips per year, household waste per year… we also tracked a smaller number of policies, like climate plans and climate targets, adaptation plans, green building policies and so on.”
And, like the Scorecards, all this information was a useful way of letting the public know how their local government was getting on: “Climate Reality staff would pull together the volunteer-collected data each year and publish it in a report, with data visualisations comparing municipalities across the range of indicators, the results of our policy scan, and case studies of top-performing municipalities.”
“Learning about the Scorecards provided a great inspiration, and a specific model for us to work towards.”
Hannah goes on, “In the spring of 2023, we’d just launched the fifth edition. We were interested in re-evaluating the design of the project, and especially expanding the policy aspect.”
This was great timing: “It was around then that I heard about the Scorecards on an episode of the Local Zero podcast. I was really excited, since the project had many parallels to ours, but featured more detailed and extensive criteria — plus it was a bit larger scale in terms of volunteer participants and the number of councils covered, and it used the scoring method to compare councils with one another, which we hadn’t previously considered.”
What great synchronicity. So, what changes did Climate Reality make, inspired by the Scorecards?
Hannah explains, “Scorecards helped us reimagine both our content and project design. For example, we introduced more extensive and in-depth training for volunteers. Inspired by the way that Climate Emergency UK work, we identified volunteers with key skills, and harnessed them to help with data verification.
You also influenced us to add questions around retrofit programmes, support for low-income homeowners and rental housing; renewable energy targets; and community climate action funding.”
And so, what were the outcomes of these changes?
“We were able to recruit 51 volunteers to participate in data collection this year, and collect data for 53 municipalities across Canada, which is a great expansion on the project compared to last year.
“Plus, the new version of the NCL includes 21 policy questions, each with several sub-questions. So we’re now tracking things like climate plans, community greenhouse gas reduction targets, citizens’ climate advisory committees, mode-share targets, curbside composting programmes, and more.“We’re hoping the new Scorecards-informed version of the NCL will provide a great boost in terms of the data and information available to our network of climate advocates, and give them a new tool they can use to engage in local climate advocacy, targeting city councils, towns, and even other jurisdictions perhaps — as well as communicating with their community about how their city/town compares to others on climate.
“My hope is that expanding and strengthening the policy element of the NCL — which the Scorecards helped us do — will really help boost local advocates’ policy literacy, help them identify specific policies, targets and programmes that other municipalities have implemented and which they might like to build a campaign around and encourage their municipality to adopt. They’ll be able to evaluate their council’s climate plans and targets against what has actually been implemented and what the outcomes have been — in other words, they’ll be empowered to draw the connection between policy and action, just as the Scorecards have done.”
Climate Reality won’t actually be scoring the municipalities this year, though Hannah says it’s a consideration for future iterations. “As you all know, there are challenges with designing an objective, properly weighted scoring system, so we decided we didn’t have the capacity to go all in on trying to design something this year, but it would be something we’d like to do in the future. Obviously it is a really good method for translating a lot of detailed, diverse policy information into something that can provide an at a glance comparison.
“Overall, learning about the Scorecards and connecting with Climate Emergency UK provided a great inspiration, and a specific model for us to work towards, as well as really helpful advice on specific shared challenges.”We are very gratified to hear that. It is always wonderful to connect with other projects around the world that are working towards similar aims by similar means, and to exchange ideas. Thanks very much to Hannah for telling us all about it.
—
Image: Will Clewis