Climate Change

Elected Member Champion - Cllr Neil Clarke

The EM IEP climate change programme is delivered through Climate East Midlands. The partnership comprises local authorities and other partners, including the Environment Agency and Natural England. Climate East Midlands is one of a family of twelve Climate Change Partnerships in the English regions and the devolved administrations that are supported by central government.
For full information about the partnership's activities, please visit:
www.climate-em.org.uk

Climate East Midlands produces a quarterly newsletter - the Wrapper. To sign up to receive a regular copy please visit the following page and enter your name and email address.
http://www.climate-em.org.uk/news/

Skills Programme
The current programme is supported by Communities and Local Government department (CLG) who have provided £950k for the East Midlands, as part of a national programme, with all English regions receiving a similar sum. This builds on the Climate Change Best Practice programme, which was funded by the Department for Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) which will be completed by March 2011.

The Skills Programme will build skills and capacity across a range of local authority responsibilities needed to tackle climate change. Broadly, the funding is to support the decentralisation of power to the local level by:

• enhancing the skills and knowledge planners need, including planning for increased renewable energy supply
• encouraging local communities to take positive action on climate change.
Through collaborative projects, it may be used to support local authorities for the following purposes:
• facilitating the delivery of increased renewable energy supply through the activities of planning departments
• allowing planning departments to promote better community engagement in the planning process, including renewables
• helping local authorities more broadly, including training for members and on adaptation to climate change

East Midlands Programme
The programme comprises the seven strands below. Some are more developed than others. An up to date version of the programme will be maintained on the Climate East Midlands website.

1. Planners' Climate Change Toolkit
2. Community Skills
3. Inspiring Leaders
4. Cutting Costs and Carbon
5. Schools Collaboration on Resource Efficiency (SCoRE)
6. Well Adapting East Midlands
7. Climate Peer Reviews

Best Practice Programme (2008/11)
As part of the regional Programme of Action, the two main strands of the 2008/11 EM IEP programme were region-wide projects aimed at achieving the regional adaptation and carbon dioxide reduction targets (own estate) by March 2011.

Adaptation
The Planning to Adapt project aimed to achieve an average of Level 2 (measured against the Local and Regional Adaptation Partnership guidance) across all local authorities in the region by March 2010 and an average of Level 3 by March 2011, with no authority having achieved less than Level 2. This has been achieved.

This means that local authorities have made a public commitment to identifying and managing climate related risk, that they have undertaken a comprehensive risk based assessment of vulnerabilities and opportunities to weather and climate, both now and in the future, and have identified priority risks for their services. They have identified the most effective adaptive responses and have started incorporating these in to council strategies, plans, partnerships and operations (such as planning, flood management, economic development, social care, services for children, transport etc). Appropriate adaptive responses have started to be implemented in some priority areas. In their role as community leaders, authorities have started working with their LSPs, encouraging identification of major weather and climate vulnerabilities and opportunities that affect the delivery of the LSP's objectives

Most authorities have also started embedding climate impacts and risks across council decision making and have developed comprehensive adaptation action plans to deliver the necessary steps to achieve the existing objectives set out in council strategies, plans, investment decisions and partnership arrangements in light of projected climate change. Authorities are implementing appropriate adaptive responses in all priority areas.

Some authorities are moving towards Level 4 by implementing comprehensive adaptation action plans across the local authority area, in liaison with LSP partners, and putting in place a robust process for regular and continual monitoring and review.

This regional approach has proved beneficial in terms of sharing the workload and providing mutual support in developing the project. A common methodology has been developed for undertaking risk assessments, which have been carried out for main service areas in all local authorities and for the objectives in the sustainable community strategies.

The project was developed on the back of the nine Local Climate Impact Profiles, one for each city and county across the region. These short research projects developed by the UK Climate Impacts Programme investigated the impacts of recent severe weather on public services and helped service managers and decision makers to understand what they may need to do differently in order to adapt to the future climate. The LCLIP projects also engaged with Local Strategic Partnership members, including the NHS, Police, Fire Service, Universities, Probation Service, etc.

Support to the project has been carried out by Climate Adaptation Project Officers, recent graduates or post graduates, recruited through Studentforce.

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions
All local authorities, fire and rescue services and the Peak District National Park have now had the opportunity to take part in a Carbon Trust Local Authority Carbon Management Programme (LACM), either through the Carbon Trust's main programme or funded by the East Midlands bespoke programme, through by EM IEP.

One of the region's targets was to make the opportunity available for all local authorities, fire and rescue authorities and the Peak District National Park to undertake a carbon management programme. It was recognised that the full Carbon Trust LACM was not suitable for smaller authorities, so a lighter bespoke programme was developed. In particular relevant tools were selected for the authorities to use and the programme was tightly steered with ‘hands-on support' as a strong feature. Districts in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, and the Leicestershire Fire and Rescue service took part in a pilot during 2009/10. Almost £2million year on year savings were identified from the pilot, and £250k worth of savings have already been implemented, with two authorities still to report.

The programme was deemed to be successful and Phase 2, six districts from Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire, plus the Peak District National Park have just completed their programme and have identified almost £1million year on year savings.
In the East Midlands, the two phases have cost £170k for £3million year on year savings, providing all of the measures can be funded and implemented. This programme is now being rolled out nationally by the Carbon Trust.