Make It Local: Acting on climate change

Government must empower local climate action that can hit net zero by 2050 for a third of the cost and twice the returns. It can do this by:

1. Accelerating local climate action on ten missions: public trust, adaptation, retrofit social and fuel poor homes, public buildings, local energy generation and use, whole place transport, jobs and growth, the natural world, placemaking, and finance.
2. Putting in place a national climate action framework with policy, regulatory, and investment certainty to reach the target before 2050, with set milestones and a clear role and the core funding for councils leading local climate action.
3. Translating missions to reality through local climate action agreements underpinned by multi-year place-based funding allocations, reviewed, and adapted across the several spending review periods up to 2050.
4. Introducing a local climate action test ensuring all government policy and funding decisions – from housing to skills - contribute to local climate action.
5. Building capability and capacity in councils by working with councils and the LGA on the comprehensive support helping all councils lead, innovate and act on climate change.

Climate ranks high in peoples’ priorities. Eight in 10 people are concerned by it, three quarters want to deliver net zero by 2050, and half want to bring that target forward. Councils recognise the urgency and scale, over 300 have declared climate emergencies.

Climate change is here, now. In the UK we have experienced heat waves, fire, drought, flash flooding, land slips. Extreme weather events will become more intense and frequent, hardening opinion as the changing climate rocks the foundations of livelihoods.

Polling consistently shows the public want to see rapid action, to be supported to take their own action, and to feel the benefits of that action. Change is not always easy; public trust and inclusivity are critical, and councils are better able to facilitate this locally.

Climate change is creating a new era of opportunity, as the mission for safeguarding a habitable future brings about the best in innovation and creativity. Countries and companies are scrambling to lead the greatest growth opportunity since the industrial revolution. 

Human ingenuity has created technologies that harness abundant, free, clean energy within the wind, water, and sun to power every aspect of our way of life. Technology will continue to get better and cheaper. But having technology is one thing, deploying it everywhere is another. On this councils are critical.

National action is essential in setting the framework and taking the big decisions. But the complexity of transition in our 51 cities, 935 towns and 6,000 villages cannot be managed from a Whitehall desk. The transition will be different in each place, for instance how we move about, how we heat our homes and water, how we generate and connect to power varies between urban and rural, coastal and inland, large city and small town.

Only councils working locally with partners can embed and connect this creativity and ingenuity into the everyday lives of people in the real world.

National and local government should work to accelerate local climate action on 10 missions. This includes to:

Build public trust and inclusivity. Step up engagement on the community benefit of climate action, national clarity reinforced locally by programmes building trust, providing advice, confidence, and street-by-street help for households climate action journey.

Rapidly retrofit social and fuel poor homes. Bring forward all funding for retrofitting social and fuel poor homes, devolving the majority to councils to accelerate retrofit homes with purpose of pump-priming markets, hit fuel poverty targets, and reducing public spending.

One public estate retrofit. Bring forward investments into whole-place retrofitting of local public buildings – councils, schools, hospitals – into single scaled programmes, and in a way that helps stimulate market for commercial properties, from hotels to business parks.

Local energy revolution. Establish a pipeline of projects for local energy generation, capture and use – local grids - with councils; and bring about cooperation between councils and electricity system to enable local connections and target larger grid infrastructure investments.

Electric and people powered transport. Bring about a whole-place transport by devolving to councils the means to locally mix active travel, electric vehicles, and public transport. Support councils wanting demand management schemes such as workplace parking levy, congestion and clear air zones.

Grow the natural world everywhere. Ask all policy and programmes to protect and grow biodiversity, not just planning. Empower councils to drive nature recovery, anchoring local nature recovery strategies to shape and connect all public environment spending in places.

Place-making to reduce emissions and raise adaptation. Expand the Future Homes Standard into place-making on climate action – such as canopy cover, water efficiency, green infrastructure. Remove the viability loophole so councils can enforce higher standards.

Jobs, opportunity, workforce. Enable councils to link skills, careers advice and employment interventions with national reform and local climate action and job creation. Move now to grow qualification and skills needed across the workforce, including in councils.

Funding and finance. Reform public funding for local climate action, first by providing long-term core funding certainty to councils, and wider place-based allocations that focus on accelerating change, adding value, and enabling private and blended finance models.

Accelerating local adaptation. Prioritise adaptation alongside net zero in everything. Mobilise a five-year local adaptation accelerator programme, enabling councils to lay the foundations for long-term adaptation safeguarding people and places.

Net zero has momentum. And every sector is united in its call for clarity, certainty, and a long-term plan up to 2050. But currently our approach is fragmented and uncertain. Around 60 percent of UK emissions still require a tangible decarbonisation plan.

For councils, it is unclear how their effort fits into a national plan. They receive no core funding for climate activity, instead, councils are forced into competing for small pots from a labyrinth of schemes that come and go over time.

Take heat networks for instance, there are four schemes. For retrofitting homes and buildings, there are six schemes. For decarbonising transport, there are nine schemes. For woodland and trees, there are eight schemes.

The model has not worked. Too many centrally controlled programmes remain underspent and underwhelming. Some interventions even contradict others, for instance spending on social housing decarbonisation fund undermined by cuts via the social housing rent cap.

The approach burdens councils. It fuels uncertainty, and reduces flexibility, many places getting no funding at all. Crucially it is an unattractive context to private finance.

The offer from councils is enormous, as leaders, enablers, conveners, asset holders, service deliverers, and problem solvers. Councils have direct influence over a third of emissions from an area, some impact on over 80 per cent, and are leading some of the most innovative and transformative projects in the world.

But it is only the start. Empowered local action would be game-changing, for instance:

Innovate UK found targeted local action is more efficient at deploying technologies and leading behaviour change.

In modelling interventions in heat, buildings, and travel, they concluded local action would hit net zero by 2050 while saving taxpayers around £140 billion when compared to national approaches and returning an additional £400 billion in wider co-benefits.

A finding reflected by relative success of more local schemes; the Green Homes Grant local authority delivery scheme achieved more than the national voucher scheme.

Clarity of purpose must be matched by clarity of process because different places are at different starting points, with different strengths, opportunities, and barriers.

Central and local government should agree a way forward that gives every council what it needs to build on its own strengths today, to accelerate climate action everywhere into the future. 

There are fewer than ten spending reviews until 2050. A process centred around the spending review milestones should start as soon as possible. There are different ways to approach this, one option is given below:

National framework backing local action

Climate action is dependent on coordination of interventions at all levels. An approach should include:

• empowering local climate action within a single national framework providing clarity on roles and responsibilities between local and national government over time
• adequate and stable core funding for all councils to take forward climate action across their own services
• a local climate ‘test’ applied to all government decisions – from housing to skills - that guarantees support, rather than conflict, with local climate action
• duties on public sector partners and relevant regulated private sector partners, such as utilities companies, to cooperate with local climate action
• supporting delivery by pooling resource, capacity, and technical expertise, and creating comprehensive sector-led support offer with the LGA.

Local climate action accelerator agreements

Within a national framework the government should strike accelerator agreements with every council – or group of councils - as soon as possible, and no later than April 2025. They would each be unique, but should all:

• accelerate local action on priorities determined by councils, building on existing experience and strengths
• provide multi-year place-based funding allocations underpinning action with certainty for longer-term and explore fiscal freedoms
• agree ambitious but deliverable outcomes, with a focus on maximising impact and flexibility for councils in how they are met
• develop every council’s own capability and capability to lead action across all issues.

Local climate action agreements

Within the national framework, the government should then expand on accelerator agreements with wide-ranging deals with every council – or group of councils – as soon as areas are ready and no later than April 2030. They would each be unique, but should all:

• deliver climate action across all key mission areas within an area, as determined by councils
• provide multi-year place-based funding allocations with signals for longer-term commitments and appropriate fiscal freedoms
• aggregate projects into programmes to pool resources and attract private investment
• enter a process of regular review, refunding, and adaptation at every spending review up to 2050.

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