Councillors Climate Support Network

Establishing a Climate Emergency support network

Following up on interest from several councils who enquired about support available for action around the climate emergency, including seeking to understand the potential of developing a network, Devon Communities Together (DCT) collaboratively designed a survey to better understand the range of current actions undertaken and the needs and demands of councils across Devon. In December 2020 and January 2021 107 total responses were received to this survey (from 97 unique councils).

Full survey findings can be found by clicking the link below:

 Council Climate Survey

The findings showed strong support for developing a network and primary support needs named were:

  • a) Community engagement and consultation to develop future plans.
  • b) Support in creating baseline analysis of CO2 emissions in their community.

Devon Communities Together hosted three events in 2021 (in April, July and November) via Zoom. These events had over 200 attendees (mostly councillors, clerks and members of associated working groups), and had space for expert speakers, as well as collective conversation and peer learning.

Clicking the below links will lead to videos of our speakers.

We also discussed stakeholder mapping and community engagement, and video case studies of community engagement activities are available on the playlist here.

The scale and diversity of challenges which needed to be addressed was overwhelming: 37% network attendees said they were ‘not confident’ or ‘not very confident’ on the climate emergency, 42% said they were confident (knowledgeable on some areas), and 21% said they were very confident. This diversity of experience laid an ideal platform for peer-support. All communities were welcome to encourage fruitful inter-council conversations, and 42% of attendees represented communities of less than 1,000 people and this network would've been valuable for the stretched resources of smaller community councils.

The network was an emerging and developing project. While we were not able to secure funding to continue the network, DCT continue to support councillors, village halls and others in Devon on their climate action planning journey. If you are interested please contact info@devoncommunities.org.uk

There are a wealth of resources on the internet to start addressing issues in your community. Below are some links we have found useful:

- Devon Communities Together's YouTube channel features presentations from our past network event speakers

Devon Climate Emergency Website

- Carbon calculator calibrated for parish/town councils

- A mapping tool for local councils with a wide range of applications

- Carbon literacy toolkits developed for local authorities