Lead Organisation
CDP, supported by SWM
Project Delivery team: Alan Carr (Senior Sustainability Adviser), Louis March-Smith (Project & Data Officer)
Overview
To benchmark local and combined authorities in the East and West Midlands on their progress with taking climate action, in order to provide advice, support and recommendations to help them improve and celebrate success. This project was funded by the Midlands Net Zero Hub, and led by CDP with SWM’s support.
Aims
- To undertake a comprehensive benchmark of local progress on climate action, using CDP’s well-established online portal.
- To provide short reports for each participating authority detailing their successes and recommendations for improvement.
- To author an overarching report summarising the results of the benchmark and to provide a series of recommendations and case studies reflecting good practice.
- To run 12 thematic Roadshows aimed at bringing authorities together so that they can get help on those issues proving to be most challenging, and to learn from peers and other experts.
Outputs produced by SWM
Each authority that participated in the benchmarking exercise (38 out of 73) received a bespoke report (private to them) that included their good practice, our recommendations for improvements and emerging areas of promise.
We brought together the findings from the benchmarking exercise and produced a published report that included strengths and challenges against specific themes, recommendations for authorities alongside top priorities that all authorities should consider before embarking on next steps, eighteen council-led short case studies that demonstrate good practice, and recommendations for both councils and those that support them, including central Government.
We also convened 12 Roadshows that focused on a variety of themes that we identified as being of particular interest to the authorities, or that they were having difficulty in progressing for a variety of reasons.
“At Midlands Net Zero Hub, our goal is to support local authorities to make their net zero projects happen, so we partnered with Sustainability West Midlands and CDP to gain greater understanding of climate action in the Midlands. The reports provided by SWM were vital in helping us build a picture of regional areas of strengths and where additional support is needed. SWM’s proactive approach to the stakeholder engagement aspects of the project also led to a series of fantastic events that were very well received by the local authority officers who attended. The information that we have gathered through this project will be instrumental in driving the Midlands Net Zero Hub’s activity forward over coming years.” Catherine Appleby, Communications and Engagement Manager, Midlands Net Zero Hub.
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.
