Good governance matters more than money for council climate action

In our recently published report Accelerating Local Climate Action,we found that English councils with more spending power per capita score higher in our holistic assessment of local councils climate action, the . For every £200 per capita increase in a council’s spending power is associated with a 0.8% improvement in its Climate Scorecard performance.

Whilst this might not be news to many councils, our report also found that good governance and wider public support for climate action had a bigger impact on councils’ Scorecard results than their spending power.

Below, I will focus on how councils can better deliver on their commitments to climate action through good governance and encouraging public support for climate action, evermore relevant in a time of English devolution.

Good governance matters

As I wrote previously, following the first Action Scorecards publication in 2023, good governance is key for embedding ways of working, and projects run or supported by the council that have a positive impact on improving residents’ lives and their environment. In our latest report, written for Climate Emergency UK by Dr Liam Clegg, Senior Lecturer at the University of York and Peter Eckersley, Associate Professor at Nottingham Business School, we found that councils with a named cabinet or committee portfolio lead for climate led to a 5.3 percentage point increase in English councils’ climate action.

This chimes with previous analysis by sustainability consultants Anthesis, which named having a climate change focussed portfolio role the top factor in influencing successful climate action among UK councils. 86% of UK councils already have this Portfolio role, so there’s every chance this could reach 100% with the remaining councils taking this significant step to boost their action on sustainability.

Furthermore, under local government reorganisation, ensuring all new authorities create this role in their cabinet and committees would be crucial in ensuring climate action continues, with oversight and accountability on climate action and adaptation embedded from their creation.

Residents are part of good governance

Good governance is also about how the council engages with its residents, many of whom were the driving force behind councils declaring and writing climate emergency action plans. Dr Clegg and Dr Eckersley found that where there was 1 percentage point in local support for net zero policies, there was also a 2 percentage point improvement in a council’s Scorecards result. This shows that working with, not against, residents can enhance councils’ ability to deliver the urgent climate action we need, and even more so during this transitional period in local government.

We cover this in more detail in the Collaboration & Engagement section of the Action Scorecards, asking questions and showcasing best practice examples of effective ways councils can embed wider support for climate action across the community. For example, good engagement with anchor organisations such as health institutions, schools, cultural institutions and local businesses embeds wider support for climate action in the community. And, if the council has

We know that local government faces significant challenges in delivering anything more than their statutory requirements. Therefore, a key recommendation of this report is for climate action to be a statutory duty for English local government. This would provide the guidance and greater funding for cash-strapped councils to better measure, report and deliver this much needed work.

Until this happens, alongside lobbying the national government for this statutory duty and further funding and powers, I’d encourage councils to learn from each other, via the Action Scorecards, and embed good governance for climate action in their councils. This will not only help councils reach their net zero targets, but also embed climate action within the new authorities that are being created with local government reorganisation.