Agenda item

The Chair invited Cllr Liz Green, Climate Change Lead, and Grace Abel (GA), Programme Manager, to introduce the report.

Cllr Green highlighted the impressive level of engagement by councils with the LGA’s Climate Change Sector Support Programme and thanked the team of officers for all their efforts. She highlighted the following: (i) the Net Zero Innovation Programme (NZIP) which partners researchers at University College London with council officers to work on the climate emergency (a video about NZIP was shown); and (ii) Work was beginning to try and mainstream consideration of the climate emergency across all council departments.

Cllr Green appealed to members to provide examples from their councils of where the LGA could provide useful improvement support on climate change.

Members’ comments and questions:

·       Could the LGA help to bring councils together to set up buying groups to secure discounted prices on, for example, low carbon fuel such as HVO, which are currently significantly more expensive than traditional diesel? GA reported that transport action learning sets had been developed by the LGA in the last few months and there was more scope to develop these further with councils and peers, including looking at buying groups

·       It was considered key in terms of securing council buy in to be able to demonstrate concrete benefits, both financial and through carbon emission reductions. How effective was the NZIP project at aggregating metrics on these measures? GA said that a Greenhouse Gas Accounting Tool had been developed by the LGA working with Local Partnerships to measure councils’ emissions and this was constantly being developed and updated, for example through adding a waste emissions calculator in January. A ‘scatter tool’ was also available which estimated emissions from the wider community. Cllr Green urged members to make their case studies of successful emission reduction and co-benefits available to the LGA for inclusion on the case studies database, in addition to LG Inform, and suggested members think about doing a session at the Innovation Zone at the LGA Annual Conference

·       It was suggested that officers contact council public health teams about their experiences with mainstreaming and embedding their work into all council activity. Climate change work needed to go on a similar journey. Cllr Green agreed that it would be beneficial to talk to public health teams about their experiences.

Decision:

Improvement and Innovation Board:

1.     noted the update on the actions taken under the LGA’s Climate Change Sector Support Programme in 2022/23 and endorsed the forthcoming activity to take place from April 2023.

2.     noted the significant demand for support by councils in this area.