Lessons learned

Climate Emergency Community Partnership
(case study 1)

Experience so far has highlighted the importance of involving the community in key decision making processes in order to ensure they have agency over the partnership and that it is able to deliver in line with their needs and expectations. This is vital in order to ensure the partnership is independent from the council, whilst still being largely supported by it initially. For example, when exploring options for how to structure the partnership, it became clear that there were several different ways that this could be done, each with their own merits and drawbacks. Rather than the council making this decision, two online community workshops were held to facilitate discussion and deliberation around different options, with presentations about each option being given by three speakers.

Another challenge is reaching out to elements of the community that have to date been harder to reach with the climate emergency agenda, such as businesses and young people, rather than just the typical activist usually involved in environmental groups. Initial efforts have therefore focused on establishing relationships with the Forest Economic Partnership, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Local Enterprise Partnership, and local education providers such as Hartpury University and College.

Council offices decarbonisation
(case study 2)

Although the project has yet been completed, a few lessons have already been learnt along the way. One is the importance of ensuring sufficient time is allocated in the project time line for applying to the distribution network operator for a new connection for renewable energy generation.

Whilst the solar PV system will not be exporting electricity to the grid, connection applications to the district network operator for new generation can still take up to 45 day. However, this was not originally known or accounted for, therefore potentially causing a slight delay to project delivery.