From Local Carbon Frameworks to Council Frameworks on Climate Change

How Government is empowering local government to take action on climate change

Many local authorities are enthusiastic about playing their part in meeting our carbon mitigation targets and have already set in place stretching ambitions and policies for reducing emissions in their area – and are making a difference.

As part of the Government’s localism drive, we want authorities to be enabled to do much more and to set the agenda. Government should not get in the way.

In 2010-11 the Government ran a pilot programme with nine local authority areas to co-design a series of Local Carbon Frameworks to identify what works at what spatial level and to develop templates for action on carbon by all local authorities. See the Energy Saving Trust: evaluation of the Local Carbon Framework pilots web page for details.

The resulting lessons from the programme provide a practical basis for the development of the Local Government Association’s Council Framework for Climate Change. This Framework seeks to act as a local action plan on delivering reductions in carbon emissions, encapsulating the varying portfolios of carbon reduction measures relevant to individual or grouped councils.

Councils are encouraged to view the published outputs below and contact direct any of the projects that are of particular interest. In addition, the successor to the Nottingham Declaration - ‘Climate Local’ will be building on the portfolio of work generated by the Local Carbon Framework programme.

The outputs from the Local Carbon Framework programme are:

• Local Carbon Framework pilots evaluation report which reviews how the 30 LCF pilot authorities approached developing a low carbon council framework and provides examples of innovative approaches and best practice - available on the CAG Consultants: evaluation of the Local Carbon Framework pilots website
   
• Two reports by the Energy Saving Trust:
  Local Carbon Framework pilot: Baseline data and methodology review (links to Energy Saving Trust website) - provides local authorities with an analysis of and recommendations for data and software tools which can help them in their work on carbon reduction, and
  Local authority large scale retrofit: A review of finance models (links to Energy Saving Trust website) which local authorities can use to identify the features and benefits of various finance models and the risks and issues arising from each 

The nine pilot authority areas (comprising of 30 local authorities) listed below, were chosen to explore innovative and differing spatial approaches to carbon reduction:

1. Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset
2. Bristol City Council
3. London Borough of Haringey
4. Leeds City Region: comprising: Leeds City, Barnsley, Bradford, Calderdale, Craven, Harrogate, Kirklees, Selby, Wakefield, York, North Yorkshire County Council
5. Manchester City Region: comprising: Manchester City, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan
6. Northumberland County Council
7. Nottingham City Council
8. Oxford City Council
9. Plymouth City Council

 Local Carbon Framework projects

• Local Carbon Framework pilots with links to outputs