Climate action for councils should be 'legal duty'

Climate Emergency UK (CE UK) has published their first analysis report of their Council Climate Action Scorecards, which identifies the key characteristics of councils that encourage further climate action.

CE UK is a not-for-profit organisation campaigning for councils to significantly reduce their area-wide emissions.

The analysis is called “Scorecards Successes: What factors enable climate action within UK local authorities?,” and comes six months after the launch of the organisation's Scorecard scheme.

The report's findings focus on what councils can do to improve their climate action delivery, which CE UK claim would be more easily facilitated if such actions were mandatory.

One of the report's core recommendations is that climate action must be a statutory for UK councils.

It also found that political leadership, good governance and external funding are the factors that have the biggest impact on enabling climate action within local authorities.

CE UK has called for climate action to be a legal duty, as this would help councils to better deliver on net zero and implement these main impactful factors of good climate action, found in the report.

A statutory duty is likely to include the requirement for all councils to have a named lead councillor for climate, ring-fenced funding for climate action and guidance for councils on what to do and how to report and measure their net zero work.

Isaac Beevor, partnerships director at CE UK said: “Despite many councils being underfunded and overstretched, this report highlights some of the most effective actions councils can and are already taking to have the biggest positive impact on their climate action delivery.

"But, effective reporting, leadership and funding for net zero work at a council level would be much easier if climate action were a statutory duty for UK councils, like social care and waste and recycling.”

 CE UK will publish the next Council Climate Action Scorecards in 2025, and will be the first time councils’ scorecards will be able to be compared against the previous Action Scorecards from 2023.