Over 400 councils including Barnet will have their climate change actions assessed as part of a new extensive survey.

Climate Emergency UK said this is the first time a comprehensive list of the actions councils can take to tackle the climate emergency has been created.

Annie Pickering, co-director at Climate Emergency UK, said: “There are 409 local authorities in the UK and we’ve got 90 questions, so that gives you a scale of how big this is.

“Up to 30 per cent of emissions are within the scope and influence of local authorities in the UK.

“We want to see councils are really doing everything they can within their powers to tackle the climate emergency.

“Some councils are already doing a really good job and these scorecards will highlight that.

“There are some councils who claim to be doing a good job, but perhaps that won’t be reflected in the scorecards,” she said.

She said the results will help hold councils to account and to encourage them to do more.

This is the second survey by the group, the first assessed council’s planned actions.

“Although the topics are similar the questions have changed [this time] because we want to be able to measure actual actions,” she added.

“So rather than saying ‘how are you going to decarbonise transport?’.

“You’ve got a whole question on measurable actions that councils might have done to decarbonise transport, such as are they supporting shared bike or scooter schemes, and what is their busridership for the area.”

Annie Pickering said the research carried out for each question found that at least one council has been able to take a specific action.

“So they aren’t impossible metrics that we’re looking at, some might be hard and a challenge but we’re saying what is possible from councils rather than expecting them to do something that they simply don’t have the power to do,” she said.

“So it’s more tangible and has measurable actions this time.”

Climate Emergency UK methodology will score each council on seven sections: Buildings & Heatings, Transport, Governance & Finance, Planning, Biodiversity, Collaboration & Engagement and Waste Reduction & Food.

The scores will be based on publicly available information from the councils (including freedom of information requests) and national data sets.

There will be a three stage marking process, starting with volunteers generating a draft score, then a Right of Reply will be offered for all the councils.

“So they can respond to and let us know if we made any errors, if we have misunderstood something, or in a rare case where we’ve given them a mark they don’t agree with,” Annie Pickering said.

“The third stage has a much smaller team of volunteers for a better standardisation who review and audit the two marks and give the final score.”

Climate Emergency UK will start scoring councils in January and the Scorecard results will be published in Autumn 2023.

Volunteers who wish to help with the marking can find more information here.

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