Herefordshire Council: Adapting Herefordshire to Climate Change

Lead Organisation

Sustainability West Midlands
Project Manager: Alan Carr (Senior Sustainability Adviser)
Outputs can be found here

Overview

Using our experience of supporting local authorities with climate change adaptation, SWM was commissioned by Herefordshire Council to produce a Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the county, develop a Climate Impact Assessment that focuses on how the county has been affected by severe weather in the past 15 years, and a Technical Report that analyses how climate change may affect Herefordshire in future.

Aims

• To produce a Climate Change Impact Assessment report, analysing how severe weather has impacted on Herefordshire, including a detailed spreadsheet logging all recorded events in the past 15 years.
• To analyse UK Climate Change Projections to gain a clearer picture of how Herefordshire’s climate may change over the course of this century; we worked with our Associate Ailsa Gibson to do this.
• To develop a Climate Change Adaptation Plan in response to this which details how we feel Herefordshire’s people, businesses, infrastructure, natural environment and services need to respond to deal with climate change impacts.
• To engage with many stakeholders across the county to upskill them on climate change adaptation and extract their views on climate risk, impact and response

Outputs

You can find the outputs listed below on the Herefordshire Council website

Through extensive engagement and research, the following outputs have been delivered:

• The publication of a Severe Weather Impact Assessment for Herefordshire.
• A database of severe weather events that informed the above.
• A Technical Report outlining the future climate change projections for Herefordshire.
• The main resource: a Climate Change Adaptation Plan for Herefordshire.
• Hyperlinks to the above outputs will be included when they are published, post-cabinet sign-off.

By way of stakeholder engagement, we:

• Ran an in-person workshop with ~30 stakeholders to introduce the importance of climate adaptation and to hear how they have been impacted by severe weather and what they believe needs to be done to effectively adapt to climate change.
• Conducted ~20 one-to-one online meetings with various stakeholders both internal to the council and from other organisations to ask in-depth questions about climate adaptation, by way of a follow-up to the workshop.
• Ran an online engagement session with community group representatives to find out how climate change and severe weather is affecting them on the ground.
• Ran an in-person workshop with ~20 elected council members to hear their thoughts on the draft climate change adaptation plan.
• Presented at the Herefordshire Climate and Nature Board about the project and the key elements of the draft plan.
• Ran a webinar coinciding with the publication of the aforementioned plans to disseminate the key findings to stakeholders from across the county.

“It has been a great pleasure working with SWM on this important piece of work. The Climate Change Adaptation Plan that SWM produced for Herefordshire has helped to provide us with a clearer picture of what is needed, and will enable us to prioritise our next steps in rising to meet the challenges of a changing climate. Most impressive was SWM’s approach to stakeholder engagement and we were thrilled with the number of people they managed to engage with. Furthermore, SWM’s approach to their initial bid, project management, organisation and communication has proved them to be a reliable and dependable organisation to work with, and we look forward to strengthening our relationship with them in the future.” – Mary Burton, Sustainability and Climate Change Officer, Herefordshire Council.

Download the full case study

For further information on the project or to work with us in one of a variety of ways, please see our consultancy page or contact the SWM team on enquiries@swm.org.uk.