Lobby For Change

Izzy: Hello and welcome to the Carbon Copy podcast. I’m Isabelle Sparrow and today my special guest co-host is Annie Pickering, Operations Director at Climate Emergency UK.  

Annie: Hello! 

Izzy: Climate Emergency UK are working with us this year alongside the Carbon Literacy Project and WWF UK to help inspire more action for climate and nature through our campaign 25 Big Local Actions in 2025. This podcast series do something bigger, accompanies the campaign and every two weeks we’re exploring a different way you can make positive change happen where you live or work. We’ve already covered some amazing stories and projects so go back and take a listen if you’ve missed any and subscribe to hear the next ones as soon as they land. 

Today’s episode is called Lobby for Change. Annie, can you start off by introducing the work that Climate Emergency UK does and tell us a bit more about how this relates to the topic of lobbying? 

Annie: Yes, I’m Annie, I’m the Operations Director at Climate Emergency UK and thanks for having me. I guess to be brief, the scorecards are a lobbying tool, so what we do using volunteers and a detailed three-stage marking process which councils have some involvement in, we assess and measure every local authority, so it’s 391 this year and combined authorities, on their climate action across the UK on the understanding that you can’t change what you can’t measure. So the act in and of itself is kind of a lobbying tool to some extent to encourage councils to know where they’re at and improve but it’s also a tool for residents to use to see where they’ve scored well, where their local councils scored well, where other councils have scored well and think, “Oh hang on, why is Cambridge so much better than Peterborough? They’re not that different, why can’t we do better?” And they’re also a tool that we use a little bit at our national level because it’s the only UK-wide picture on council climate action. So one of the big things we’ve noticed is in general the scores aren’t that high and we think one of those reasons is because there’s not a legal statutory duty for councils to take action on climate, so everything they’re doing they’re kind of searching for funding from elsewhere and it’s all kind of quite tight in terms of financing resourcing. So we’re also using them to lobby for change at a national level. 

Izzy: Amazing and we’ll talk a lot more about how people are using them in different areas later in the episode but first we’re going to go to our first guest, his name is Claude Hendrickson an MBE. He is a community leader based in Leeds and he’s one of eight inspiring change makers that are leading the We’re Right Here campaign. 

Claude: We’re Right Here and the Community Act is about trying to empower local people, grassroots people to take more of a role in solving issues in their communities, whether it be around anti-social behavior, whether it be around isolation for communities, whether it’s around youth and community. So it’s very much about empowering local people to take control of assets, take control of land, to make sure that services that are being delivered in the community are for the community. People want power at grassroots, people you know if there’s shops and there’s buildings up for grabs rather than giving them to big developers who just don’t care for the community how about empowering the local community to take control of their assets and build community wealth and build services that they require for their community. 

Izzy: So the We’re Right Here campaign is not specifically focused on climate or nature but as we’ve said many many times on this podcast and elsewhere the things that are good for climate are often really good for communities too and vice versa. So we spoke to another of the We’re Right Here community leaders, Charlotte Hollins, about what the campaign is asking for and just in case you notice any strange noises on this clip Charlotte was chatting to us from Ford Hill Farm which is the UK’s first community owned farm and there were some very vocal cows in the background. 

Charlotte: As communities we’re right here, we’re already doing it, we’re already making amazing things happen at the ground roots. What we need is to be empowered more in that space. As we were during Covid you know the government said God if you can get on and do it please help solve these problems and then what happens is things start to become really centralised again and actually what we’re calling for through the We’re Right Here campaign is to empower us down at community roots and neighbourhood level to make decisions in our area which are best for us. So there are three kind of core asks that are within that kind of that campaign for community power. The first one is the community right to buy. So communities can prove that an asset is of community value to them. When that asset comes on the open market they have legal right to first refusal on that asset at a fair market value price. So that’s ask number one. The other two community rights that we’re asking for is a community right to shape public services and the community right to manage finances. The way that these two community rights could be put into practice is through something called the community covenant which very simply is a neighbourhood level partnership agreement or power sharing agreement between a community anchor organisation or a group of organisations within the local community where decision making power is devolved from the local authority to that neighbourhood, to that community. And the idea is that we want the central government to kind of put this into legislation because you can do it without legislation. We’re doing it in market rating but it’s because we’ve got a willing council that is open to listening to the community, that is happy to share power and decision making and sees the huge value in that. Not every council is as forward thinking unfortunately as that or some parts of the council might be but then there are pushes and pulls in other parts of the council that stop that process happening and that’s why legislation is needed so that it enforces councils to listen to communities to share that power and to work with communities. 

Annie: Just to kind of give a bit of a bigger picture people often say that the UK is one of the most centralised places in Europe in terms of how we’re governed and I do think any attempts to try and give more power to a local level is really important. Residents know what is happening locally and what issues need to be resolved and also councils can be part of that. 

Izzy: Yeah absolutely and I kind of feel like you know the thing that we hear all the time in the media and you’ve alluded to as well is that councils are super stretched, their budgets are not going far enough, they cannot do all the things that is expected of them and actually this is perfect because it is taking that responsibility and therefore that budgetary kind of need and putting it somewhere else and allowing for other people to act when the council literally can’t. 

Annie: Yeah our founder Kevin Freer was a councillor in Lancaster and he said the same thing you know like councils don’t have that much money but like there’s a wealth of resources locally whether you’ve got like a local university, the like small businesses, whoever who are probably wanting similar outcomes to the council you know safer places, cleaner communities so it’s really important to work with those people and yeah be innovative and inventive and make the most of it. 

Izzy: You’re listening to Do Something Bigger from the Carbon Copy podcast. Carbon Copy is a UK charity inspiring more big thinking local action for climate and nature. We’re nearly halfway through our year-long campaign 25 Big Local Actions in 2025 and we’ve shared some absolutely brilliant stories on the podcast over the last few months. If you’ve missed any of the episodes you can find them all on our website or wherever you get your podcasts so do check out the show notes if you’d like to hear more. 

Izzy: Another campaign that aims to enable more local voices to be heard is Zero Hour, the campaign seeking government support for the climate and nature bill. We spoke to Allan Gray, political communications manager at Zero Hour to understand more about the bill and why it’s necessary. 

Allan: Basically what we’re trying to do is to bring the climate change act the environment bill up to date because these legislations were right for the times that they were passed but since we’ve had international agreements like the Paris agreement to try and aim to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees, had agreements like the Montreal Kunming Agreement which is all about trying to restore nature and protect as much as we can. This is the moment to try and bring the most up-to-date science and bring it into UK legislation. So the way that we went about it is we basically started by creating a bill with scientists with experts which is sort of the formation and the foundations of the bill itself and then we worked with people of all political stripes, all different political parties to essentially build up as much support as we can and the final sort of two elements of the bill that are also critically important is it’s also about a joint-up approach to climate and nature. Even myself I realised I fell into speaking about one nature international agreement and one climate one and actually increasingly the knowledge says that you should be interconnected so this legislation brings those together and says actually to be much more work between DEFRA, the Department of Environment and Rural Affairs and Farming and DESNES, the Department for Net-Zero and Energy Security and then the final element which probably feels more important than ever is the people element of it which is we’re looking to bring climate and nature assemblies to help inform how do we deliver this because I’m sure lots of people feel this way of it can sometimes feel polarising when you speak about net-zero or you speak about climate targets or you speak about rewilding it can feel really polarising and actually we don’t want to shy away from that we actually want to embrace that and say communities should have a say they should be able to actually come in these climate nature assemblies and say I’m concerned about this how do we mitigate that how is my voice going to be included so that the how we deliver it is part of this legislative path because currently we pass legislation the people who are elected say yes or no but how it’s delivered sometimes isn’t quite what people thought they were signing up to. 

Izzy: Annie I think there’s a lot in there which relates to your work at Climate Emergency UK certainly from a council perspective their scorecards are showing what they have said that they’re going to do and then what they’re actually doing and there’s also this piece about citizen assemblies and the importance of having plans and policies in place that reflect the needs of the specific location so that harks back to what we were just talking about with the We’re Right Here campaign as well so how do you see this coming through from the local authorities you work with and how can things improve? 

Annie: So when we published them in 2023 the average score was around 30% and the scorecards that have literally come out a few days ago on the 17th of June it’s a similar story although they are improving a little bit although I will give some credit to like local councils because often they’re leading the way and parliament is following so there’s kind of two examples I wanted to cover which we look at in our scorecards one of them is biodiversity net gain so it’s now a UK-wide policy that kind of all councils have to consider how new development and houses and buildings are going to actively support biodiversity rather than like potentially harm it and that was originally started in some councils in the West Midlands kind of as a trial and then was rolled out further and there’s another example where you can see kind of councils are sometimes going ahead of national policy so councils can require all new builds to be built to a net zero standard and in our last score cards only 14% of UK councils had done that so you could see kind of okay councils aren’t doing enough it’s only 14% but actually they’re doing more than kind of the government minimum requirement which is really positive and I think I’m right in saying that in our next score cards that number is a little bit higher so there’s definitely things that councils are doing and kind of leading it forward both in terms of actual implementation and like working more effectively with residents. 

Izzy: Allan mentioned that a lot of this stuff is already being done at the national level as well and we’ve signed up to all these various agreements and things like that but there isn’t that kind of legal impetus which is what the CAN Bill is trying to achieve and it kind of sounds like a very similar situation locally as well and is there anything that you can see working on that local level to kind of push the councils that haven’t taken those steps further and to get them to move at the same rate as maybe the ones that are a bit higher performing. 

Annie: Yeah we’re pushing a little bit for councils to have a legal duty to act on climate so the Greater London Authority already has that and we’re hopeful or would encourage that to happen for all of the other combined authority mayors that we’re going to get and kind of as Alan was saying having that legal impetus to do something on climate will generate further action but also crucially for us we want that to be funded so councils aren’t looking for funding to do work that they know their residents want them to do and they know that would kind of reduce traffic and make homes warmer and cheaper to heat but they don’t have the funding so wanting to provide a kind of longer term funding that comes with the legal requirements as well so this work can I guess be a bit more nationwide rather than just dependent on one particular council or one really good active group in the local community we want to see it across the whole of the UK. 

Izzy: The We’re Right Here campaign is similarly about empowering people locally and it does sound like a fantastic idea in principle but again it’s about potentially moving decision making away from those people that are currently holding that responsibility and I wondered whether they might also feel reluctant to part ways with it. I asked Charlotte what the biggest barriers were to the Community Act being passed. 

Charlotte: I think the central government are scared of pushing too much power down but I think they understand the power that is there within communities. The difficulty is in mentally being comfortable with it. There’s no real difficulty in putting it into legislation but I think being comfortable in putting it in legislation, being comfortable in empowering communities is a brave step and I think that’s where it’s going to probably be transition rather than having some transformative legislation coming it’s going to be transitioning and that’s why it’s really important that those people who are running projects like this on the ground who are doing amazing things and have these fantastic collaborations and are power sharing and are listening to each other. We need to share those stories because that’s what gives central government and others the trust that it works and they need to trust our communities more because communities have lost trust in government and one of the amazing things that this can do is it can start to rebuild that trust in government but government have got to be brave to take that step to trusting us as people, as citizens to make our lives better ourselves and they’ve got to empower us to do that. 

Annie: Yeah I really like what Charlotte was saying and it’s about culture change right and kind of what I said before about the UK currently being so centralised and like giving that power to other people but it’s not just about kind of empowering residents. I think councils and councillors themselves you know they’re hard-working people they are not experts in everything and getting them to understand you know how they can be innovative and inventive within the constraints that exist for them but also how they can work with other people and I think really representing their residents so perhaps it might mean you’re going against your party line at a local level but that’s because you’re doing something that’s in the best interests of your residents and I guess the other thing I just wanted to touch upon is I think in order to give trust to local government or to communities there needs to be an element of transparency and I think that’s one of the reasons why we also do the scorecards because it’s really hard for residents to engage in their council if they don’t know what they’re doing and yes a lot of people have lost a lot of trust in government although often when you look at the stats the trust in local government is higher than national so that does mean there’s kind of space and opportunity to build on that but that needs to be coupled with yeah an understanding of what the council can do transparency and what they’re actually doing and then understanding how they can best engage and that’s kind of what we hope the scorecards does in kind of showing residents what their council is up to and what they can do with that knowledge. 

Izzy: The trust thing works both ways right? So communities need to know what their leaders both locally and nationally are up to. And equally politicians need to be reassured that putting more decision making power into the hands of residents is the right thing to do. There is another aspect to this as well, which is linked to this around the influence that local people can and should have on the decisions of their political representatives. Allan from Zero Hour told us about their new campaign, which aiming to show MPs the enormous mandate for climate action. 

Allan: We’ve launched 650 constituency open letters they’re unique to each constituency in the country and they’re directed at the prime minister and what we’re trying to do is to essentially give the government the real sense of there is a huge amount of support not just amongst individuals but amongst councils, local organizations, local faith groups, even local sports clubs and local community groups from all parts of the country saying we’re behind you if you do this we’ve got your back if you go further we will have your back and it’s trying to give them the confidence that there isn’t a risk in doing this. 

Politics can deliver the change but it actually starts local. I did it in my own council, I was like I don’t think the government are going to deliver this legislation right now so I’m going to get my council to give that confidence to say cross party motion we believe we should be doing more and now we have the London Assembly, Manchester City Council, Birmingham City Council, one of the biggest local authorities in Europe saying let’s do it like we’re behind you if you back that. That’s how I first got involved in the campaign and I feel like it’s a really good place for people to start. You can sign the open letter and if you want to do something else you can say the government might not, I might not believe the government will but I believe my parish council might listen to me if I say, do you back us meeting our international targets and then you get them and then they speak to a regional council and it grows and then suddenly you realize my voice and my Neighbour’s voice actually can trickle into something that shows a mandate for what changes on the Westminster level and I live in the northeast of Scotland so I feel very far away from what happens in Westminster but that’s a way that I can see my voice matter because I started something by speaking to six people to ten people to the council and now I’m here speaking about a national debate that took place for five hours in Westminster. That didn’t happen because we went straight to the top it started because we started in my own community. 

Annie: So what Alan was talking about I think is something really interesting in terms of like how change happens and I think it’s good to give it in a bit of context. In the UK there is no like formal link between your like local councils, your town parish councils, your mayor if you’ve got one and then parliament like technically they are separate things but that doesn’t mean they don’t talk to each other and it doesn’t mean you can’t use local structures to influence national policy and I think what zero hours are doing and what other campaigns sometimes do but I think others could do more is kind of make the most of that and you know working from the bottom up to national because it really does work as the zero hours campaign has shown so far but I think often because there isn’t that like formal legal link between them people kind of forget that actually that is a one way to influence change. 

Izzy: Yeah definitely that’s very it’s a very good point to make I think it’s probably also part of the reason that people don’t feel like it’s necessary to vote in their local elections and get involved in local politics. So if you are listening and feel like what our guests have been talking about makes sense and resonates with you, what can you do? How can you add your voice to these campaigns? I asked Claude what he’d recommend. 

Claude: Firstly with members of the community visit our website have a look at what we’re doing and sign up. Councillors, lobby the government for the community act that we’ve proposed I know there’s a Devolution white paper that’s gone out. All voices count, if you can’t do anything if you don’t have the time you know it might be just sending a letter to your local MP supporting what We’re Right Here is doing and the need for a Community Act. You’ve got a voice you do have a voice you do have a say. I often say to politicians that you know you was a member of a community before you was a politician you know we all want our children to grow up in a better world, you know it’s something we all want it’s not just one group of people want it. 

Annie: Yeah I agree with Claude. I’ll tell you a little bit about how you can get involved with our work. So yeah the 2025 action scorecards have just launched only a couple of days ago so it’s the second time we’ve measured all councils on the climate action you can yeah check out your council see how they’ve scored also see how they compared have they improved since 2023 or have they not done as well. We’ve also got an online session on the 26th of June which is going to cover it a bit more detail at what the scorecards show some of the major trends and how you can use the scorecards in your campaigning and if you’re interested in doing a lot more we run something called the Local Climate Academy which is a six week course and we’ve got different ones for council, council like councillors, council staff and local residents to really dive into the detail of like what is local government what powers do they have what can they do for the climate and therefore what are they doing according to our scorecards and how might you kind of get them to shift and improve in certain areas. 

Izzy: So finally we should hear from Allan again at Zero Hour about how to show your support for the CAN bill. 

Allan: We have as I said 650 open letters from every constituency in the country it takes two minutes to sign it and it’s at zerohour.uk. The open letter is how do you very quickly you’re on the commute you’re on your lunch break I can show my support in a very quick way. If you’ve got more time it also funnels into lots of other ways you can help with pre-drafted texts for how do you might approach your MP, tools for how you might meet your MP, how can you share this, how can you get materials to actually speak to your neighbours or community groups, how do you speak to your council about these issues. So we have lots of tools. The TCC, they’ve got a mass lobby that’s coming up in July where people are meeting their MP either in their constituency or joining with other campaigners either in the Scottish, Welsh or UK parliament. There’s a thing called the Knowledge Hub which gives you a way to actually look at your community and actually look at the actions your MP’s taken because it’s all about building this rapport with your MP and it’s not starting from a demand of we need you to do this thing it starts from a place of finding what their shared interests are, finding actually what do you have in common and meeting them there through calls for climate nature action. If your MP is just like shutting the door and he’s repeating a party line, the open letter is a way to say this is a community concern this isn’t a political one so hopefully we can get through to people that way. 

Izzy: So, as usual we are going to finish today’s episode, Lobby for Change with a recap of some of the things we’ve learned. Annie do you want to kick us off? 

Annie: Yeah I think it’s been really good that in this episode we’ve talked a lot about kind of yeah how you can lobby and advocate for change but not just at a national level. I think to be honest most people care most about where they live but talking about what’s happening in Westminster or kind of international treaties can sometimes feel quite remote so I think it’s really important that we’ve had the people on today talking about what can we do in our local area but also what you’re doing in your local area for systemic and structural change because that is going to have a much bigger impact on our carbon emissions and our quality of life if we’re doing that kind of effective change so you know you’re spending your time stopping you know no new oil or gas fields across the whole of the UK or the single-use plastic ban like that impact is far greater than you yourself reducing your petrol by a tiny amount or by not buying this one thing that’s single-use plastic. That kind of action at a local-ish level can happen quicker than at a national international level so I think that definitely at least for me gives me some hope to think you know we can actually make a difference and I think the scorecards and a lot of the work we’ve talked about today really does show that like despite maybe the picture not always looking good across the whole of the UK there are pockets and they’re different pockets and they’re doing really great but different things. 

Izzy: Yeah absolutely I think there’s a really important message in there about you can feel very easily miserable to be frank, when you’re looking at the national picture but there is so much happening on a local level and there’s so many people who care about this stuff and are willing to do stuff to make it better. There are lots of ways to get involved at different levels of involvement as well which is really nice to see so if you are someone who is super, super busy and you know you’ve got kids or you’ve got a really hard job or whatever there are still little bits and pieces that you can get involved with you can sign one of the Zero Hour open letters you can just have a quick look at the We’re Right Here campaign’s website resources you can go have a quick look at your council scorecard you don’t need to be all in all the time there are ways to kind of contribute in a small way or you can be all in all the time and there are lots of ways to do that as well which I think is great there’s an opportunity for everybody here. Thanks so much Annie for your time today it’s been really great hearing about the latest climate action scorecards and how people can use these to influence change in their local area. Is there anything else that you want to highlight that Climate Emergency UK is working on at the moment before we go? 

Annie: Yeah the things we’re working on is like I said we’re pushing a little bit for a climate statutory duty to be fully funded and Southeast Climate Action Alliance have actually done some great work at that level in terms of getting their councils to support this and their MPs so if you’re interested and kind of like what the Zero Hour campaign is doing, feel free to support those calls that are happening at a local and almost national level at the moment but I also wanted to say that now we’ve got the next scorecards out the 2025 action scorecards if you’re interested in understanding more about what your council is or isn’t doing on climate action and how you might want to use the scorecards and other resources for change we can come and run a workshop with you, your community group multiple local groups in a local area to kind of look at a local level what it is that’s happening and how you might want to bring about some changes there so just get in touch with us on all the usual social media channels or website or email if you want to talk. 

Izzy: And all the links will be in the show notes as always. 

You’ve been listening to Do Something Bigger, from the Carbon Copy Podcast. This episode was written and presented by me, Isabelle Sparrow, and my special guest co-host today has been Annie Pickering, Operations Director at Climate Emergency UK. If you’d like to know more about the Council Climate Action Scorecards, or any of the other campaigns and organisations featured in this episode, just head to the show notes for all the relevant links. Our next episode is Use Less Plastic, when we’ll be unwrapping the issues with experts Natalie Fée, Victoria Coe and Daniel Webb. Until then, goodbye!