Collaboration & Engagement

Criteria met if the council website has climate pages that are easy for residents to find and include information about what residents can do to reduce their carbon emissions.

Information about what residents can do must include links to council initiatives for further support. For example, a suggestion to reduce food waste could include a link to order a food waste caddy.

Criteria met if the council has published a climate action plan that covers the area and includes references to SMART targets since September 2015.

Points awarded for each of the following criteria:
- The council has published an annual report since 1st January 2023
- The annual report is easy to read
- The annual report includes reporting on progress towards the council's climate action plan SMART targets.

Criteria met if the council has sent a letter or had a meeting with national or devolved governments calling for the government to take further action, or asking for councils to receive more funding, powers and climate resources to take climate action since 1st January 2023.

The criteria will be met if councils have worked on specific, climate-related issues, provided climate is cited as a reason to take action. For example, asking for measures to improve local bus provision will meet the criteria if reducing carbon emissions is cited as a reason to do so.

Two-tier criteria
First tier criteria met if the council is a member of any one of the following organisations or has contributed to one case study of the following organisations.

Second tier criteria met if the council:
- is a member of 3 or more of the following organisations
- has contributed to case studies with 3 or more of the following organisations.
- any combination of the above.

Membership organisations:
- UK100 (Including the Countryside Climate Network)
- ADEPT
- Blueprint Coalition
- ICLEI
- Carbon Neutral Cities
- UK Green Building Council
- Sustainable Scotland Network
- Carbon Disclosure Project (including submitting to the CDP since 2019)

Case studies:
- Friends of the Earth & Ashden case studies
- LGA (Local Government Association) climate change case studies
- UK100 case studies
- WRAP case studies

Two-tier criteria
First tier criteria met if the council has established a way for residents to influence the implementation of the council's climate action. This may be through:
- a community engagement group
- introducing community, resident or activist representation on a council climate change committee/group
- convening or using a local climate action network to improve the implementation of their climate action plan
- broader forms of community engagement work such as a series of workshops across the area for different groups of residents.

Second tier criteria met if there is an overarching framework such as a dedicated climate public engagement plan to inform this work.

Two-tier criteria
First tier criteria met if the council's ongoing engagement (under 5a) specifically aims to engage those most affected by climate change and climate action policies.

Second tier criteria met if the council's climate action plan has undergone an equalities impact assessment to identify who is most affected by climate change and climate action policies.

Criteria met for a ring-fenced fund that a council has created to spend on climate action locally, either in partnership with the council or for other organisations or volunteer and community groups. The fund must fulfill the following criteria:
- The fund is at least £10k in size. Where the overall amount of funding has not been stated, it will be assumed that funds awarding individual grants over £1k in size have a total fund of at least £10k.
- The fund is accessible to community groups, including, where relevant, parish councils.
- The funding has been open to applications at some point since 1st January 2023, in order to include funds released in waves that may not be open at the time of marking.

Criteria met if there is a partnership between the council and local sports, arts and cultural partnerships, provided the partnership includes any one of the following: funding for climate work, evidence of co-creation with community groups, the decarbonisation of cultural buildings including targets, initiatives that encourage behaviour change such as sustainable travel incentives, or a focus on climate justice.

Criteria met if the council supports schools or other education settings by running any of the following schemes in more than one school:
- EnergySparks or equivalent auditing schemes which require local authority support.
- Solar Schools or other visible low-carbon interventions.
- Democratic engagement work in schools or other education settings to connect young people to climate decision making, including establishing youth climate panels or parliaments and holding youth climate summits for schools in the area.

Criteria met if the council provides support or free tailored advice to businesses in the local area to decarbonise, including through collaborative measures with local businesses, other local authorities, or via the Local Enterprise Partnership.

Criteria met if the council has passed a motion to ban high carbon advertising on ad sites it controls by introducing a low carbon advertising and sponsorship policy or similar, or updated their existing advertising and sponsorship policies to include high carbon products.

To meet the criteria, the council needs to have either:
- An employee representative (trade union or equivalent form of staff representation) sitting on the Climate Action Working Group (or equivalent).
- An agreement between the council and employee representative body (including recognised trade union) making explicit reference to contributing to climate change related work.
- Employee representatives bodies were consulted during the development of the Climate Action Plan and there are plans in place to continue engaging employee representative bodies in matters relating to the implementation of the Climate Action Plan.