Tackling the causes of climate change requires decisive action and political leadership at a global scale, but it also relies on collective change by individuals, supported by local initiatives. Last year, DG Cities worked on a project with the Local Government Association to understand the range of neighbourhood approaches to decarbonisation. Head of Research and Service Design, Ed Houghton revisits some of the case studies.

Three-quarters of the way through 2023, its clear that this has been a record-breaking year for the climate, for all the wrong reasons. July was the hottest month on record: temperatures in China hit a high of 52.2 °C, while in the US, the city of Phoenix experienced an astonishing 31 days of temperatures at or above 43.3°C, smashing the 18-day record set in 1974. In the southern hemisphere, where winter replenishes vital Antarctic Sea ice, this June saw ice cover 4.5 million square miles of ocean around the continent, nearly a million square miles less than the average from over 40 years of observations. In Greece, Canada and China, some of the worst wildfires in living memory have ravaged communities, displacing people and damaging local diversity and wildlife.

While the UK escaped record-breaking heat, this June was still the hottest in the country since records began. And in the UK, like much of the globe, climate change isn’t only increasing the likelihood of extreme heat events – this July was also one of the wettest on record. The unpredictability of weather and climate is set to continue. Its is therefore critical that we not only limit harmful emissions, but also start to build resilience in our infrastructure and communities to adapt to our changing climate.

How does this start at a local level?

Adapting to tackle climate change, and supporting communities in learning and developing new approaches, is one strategy to mitigate its future impacts. Towards the end of last year, DG Cities worked with the Local Government Association (LGA) to undertake a deep dive into local decarbonisation strategies to understand how approaches are being designed and delivered across key themes. These included housing and energy decarbonisation, transport, and service delivery. We wanted to understand some of the best practices of leaders in the field, as well as to draw out some key lessons to help ensure others across the network can build and develop their own successful projects in the future.

We cast our net wide to explore approaches from across the UK, looking at rural and urban communities, making sure we drew from a range of projects that reflect the diversity of approaches and challenges local authorities are experiencing. The studies captured examples of real projects delivering tangible change, and we think, reflect a real richness of insights that help to showcase some of the work underway to tackle climate change.

One important strand of our work at DG Cities is neighbourhood decarbonisation: bringing together an understanding of a council’s assets with the social value proposition of retrofit, and aligning the different steps needed to improve an area. The team has been reflecting on examples from our LGA project that really stood out, and there are a couple that we think demonstrate how action in this area is delivering tangible differences to communities.

Leeds City Council: the Neighbourhood Retrofit Programme

One major challenge for local authorities is how to retrofit social housing to meet the target of EPC C minimum, and to do this in a systematic and evidence-based way. The team at Leeds City Council developed a Priority Neighbourhoods approach, in which they drew on a set of key performance indicators to help identify where retrofit interventions should be targeted. But it wasn’t only at the identification stage where this played out – the team also directed their resources to transform communities through focused action, channelling funding, such as ECO and regional funding, to create a big impact over a short period. By doing so, the team was able to reduce the costs of regeneration work, and create campaigns in local areas to build buy-in and demonstrate impact.

Hampshire County Council: the Greening Campaign

Community engagement and support was a common theme across the case studies we developed. Those we spoke with reflected on the value that community participation brings to the design and delivery of projects – and to helping to ensure success. One example of this was the Hampshire County Council programme, delivered in partnership with the Greening Campaign. Through targeted support, intervention design with community members, and simple, repeatable activities, the group leveraged community interest to deliver projects that tackled real issues for local residents. These included improving recycling rates, supporting local wildlife and highlighting the value of home retrofit to homeowners. Through this work, Hampshire County Council has been able to trial new approaches to building community participation through behaviour change programmes – it is now at the stage of seeking further funding to grow these activities and create lasting impact.

It will take real leadership, innovation, and collaboration to navigate the universal challenges of climate change, however they present locally. But through our research, it was encouraging to reflect that all of this and more is already happening in local authorities, that at a community level, things are already changing across the UK.  

Read more of the case studies here.