SECA held a Knowledge Sharing session on 29 January with Don von Rohland, Outreach Director at Climate Emergency UK, offering into a deep dive into their latest Council Climate Action Scorecards and arguing that devolution offers a vital opportunity to campaign for more climate action. This blog by Thalia Griffiths outlines what we learned
Climate action can be a challenge for councils struggling with a chronic lack of funds and a lack of policy direction from central government. Climate Emergency UK (CEUK)’s Council Climate Action Scorecards aim to alleviate some of the problem by highlighting best practice and enabling councils to compare their performance to other similar bodies.
CEUK Outreach Director Don von Rohland told our latest Knowledge Sharing session that the second set of scorecards, released last year, had received a more positive reception from councils than the first dataset in 2023.
The 2025 Scorecards offered the opportunity for the first time to compare past performance, “so it’s no longer just about tracking what councils are doing and what they’re not doing, but also having a clear picture of where they’re making progress and where climate action is falling back and regressing,” Don said.
Best practice
Don gave the example of Rother District Council, whose new climate officer discovered the scorecards and used them to create a climate action plan and then as a database to find out which councils to ask for advice on specific policies. One result of the climate plan has been that Rother has raised minimum standards for new housing developments, and the council’s score was among the most improved nationally.
Other examples of good practice Don cited were Wokingham, the most improved unitary local authority, where the council has supported residents to buy solar panels, and funded surplus food redistribution, and new residential developments no longer have minimum parking space allowances, in order to encourage car sharing and greater use of public transport. Winchester, the top scoring district council nationally, has included a check on whether rented home meet minimum energy efficiency standards in its checks on private landlords. Winchester scored below the UK average for Waste Reduction & Food, but has since introduced food waste recycling.
Don said the second set of scorecards had received a significantly more positive response from councils, who were seeing them more as a useful resource and less as a tool for criticism. For instance he said several councils had found out about carbon literacy training from the scorecards and introduced it for their councillors. He described the 2025 version as more nuanced than its predecessor, allowing the process to highlight where councils were doing well. Councils have said the scorecards have helped them with their strategic planning, with identifying “low hanging fruit” that can be fixed straight away, with identifying gaps in their climate action, and with improving communication where they’re doing something but not reporting it.
The scorecards have also proved valuable to local campaigners, in giving them ammunition for their approaches to councils and enabling them to zoom in on specific issues like school streets or pesticide use and see what comparable councils are doing.
CEUK has produced a Campaigner’s Guide which details the steps to understand the Scorecards, ask a question at a full council meeting, engage in constructive dialogue and build rapport with your councillor.
CEUK also has a list of 15 ways to improve your council’s climate action that are relatively low-cost and/or don’t require huge amounts of resources. These are the 15 ‘low hanging fruits’ amongst the organisation’s total of 93 actions.
Don said one of the most straightforward things campaigners could do is to submit a public question at a Full Council meeting (written or verbal), for example along the lines of “What did the council take away from their results in the latest Council Climate Action Scorecards from CEUK and what actions are being taken as a result?”.
English Devolution
While local government is in flux as the English Devolution Bill is implemented, Don said it was vital to keep up pressure during the transition and ensure that climate and nature get the attention they so desperately need.
CEUK is supporting the campaign for statutory duties for climate and nature to be included in the Bill, and wants the Scorecards to be used as a basis of evidence to show that a legal duty on climate action (already in place in Scotland and Wales in some form) is necessary in England.
The campaign in 2019 to get councils to declare a climate emergency was overwhelmingly successful, but recent elections have seen new council majorities in some areas who have no interest in climate and nature issues and have even “undeclared” a climate emergency, “so it’s more important than ever that we really use this information and prove the benefits of all these policies,” Don said.
He observed that devolution would be a slow process, with current council structures continuing until elections in 2027, followed by a transition period into 2028. “So there’s really one urgency, that in this two-year transition period, climate action doesn’t get sidelined, and that’s a big risk,” he said. While it’s unlikely to be top of councils’ lists of priorities., “we should be advocating for more climate action and take this as a chance to get good devolution deals that also include extra funding for climate actions, which wasn’t the case before. So it’s more than ever the right time to ask for and campaign for more climate action”.
CEUK is consulting during February on whether to produce another set of scorecards in 2027, which would be the last set with English councils in their current form but would not be comparable to future years.
Further information
You can see Don’s presentation slides here, and watch a recording of the session here, with the passcode g.#7LUcJ
And if you’d like to learn more about how to use the scorecards you can watch CEUK’s video tutorials:
- Exploring the Council Climate Action Scorecards
- Checking your council on the Council Climate Action Scorecards
- Finding best practice on the Council Climate Action Scorecards