Lead Organisation
Sustainability West Midlands
Project Manager: Anna Bright (Chief Executive)
Overview
The Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy (BEIS) has provided all 38 Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England with funding to develop an energy strategy for their area. Worcestershire LEP commissioned one of our members, Encraft, to write the strategy for the area and SWM worked in partnership with them to run three stakeholder workshops. SWM also led on the conduction of six interviews that took place after the workshops to engage in-depth with individuals who could not attend the workshops. This involved asking a series of questions to drill deep into the expertise of key local stakeholders. Along with contributing our thoughts on the draft strategy, we also circulated a consultation to key stakeholders so that they could feed in their comments before the final version was developed in December 2018.
Aims of the workshops
- Learn more about the Worcestershire LEP energy strategy, including its context, vision and progress.
- Contribute to the development of the energy strategy, including an opportunity to feed in local knowledge and project activity.
- Network with colleagues and ask questions about the strategy when required.
Results and achievements
- Highlighted the area’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats around low carbon energy.
- Generated scores of ideas reflecting practitioner viewpoints on how the LEP should embrace the energy agenda once the strategy is completed.
- Helped the LEP to focus its future energy activity around the priorities of energy efficiency, fuel poverty, electric transport, energy supply and demand, renewables and other areas.
- Provided the LEP with a repository of local organisations that are both experts on the energy agenda and passionate about a low carbon energy future.
- Built on, and shared knowledge of, existing leading practice.
“So that this strategy is fit for purpose, reflecting local needs and can enable economic growth, we needed to ensure that we engaged the views of as wide a range of stakeholders and experts in the low carbon energy sector across the county as possible. We were pleased to work with SWM who enabled this engagement to happen in an open and structured way with a wide range of relevant stakeholders. Moreover, given their vast experience and excellent track record, we could trust them to ensure that all feedback was captured and fed into the development of the strategy”
– Luke Willetts, Director of Operations, Worcestershire LEP.
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Lead Organisation
Sustainability West Midlands
Project Manager: Simon Slater (formerly Chief Executive)
Overview
Sustainable development is a complex agenda, how can it be interpreted and practically applied by regional, public sector organizations? SWM set out to answer this question in the context of Advantage West Midlands (AWM). The aim of this was to help build the understanding, confidence, and capacity of regional organizations to practically integrate sustainable development into their strategic and operational processes.
The aim of this work was to take national good practice, in the form of the Sustainable Development Action Plans (SDAP) required to be produced and reported on annually by Government Departments to the Sustainable Development Commission, and adapt for regional public bodies such as AWM.
Results and achievements
- AWM moved from the bottom to the top of the league table of corporate sustainability performance within the RDA network
- The creation of a board champion for future generations to chair the new sustainability sub-committee of the board to measure the progress of the SDAP
- Creation of small sustainability team of staff and co-located staff within AWM to drive ‘mainstreaming’
- Using the opportunity to refresh the economic strategy to produce the UK’s first low carbon regional economic strategy
- Internal environmental management system that led to operational savings from waste and energy efficiency measures
- Sustainability criteria built into funding investments, business support, and land and property development. This included a new carbon reduction target and reporting measures
- Developing a new sustainability standard for large sites, that was incorporated into Regional Planning Guidance
- Tailored training and support for the board, staff and partners to help them deliver their role in the SDAP
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For further information on the project or to work with us in one of a variety of ways, please contact the SWM team at enquiries@swm.org.uk.
