The solution

Climate Emergency Community Partnership
(case study 1)

Forest of Dean Climate Action will bring together residents, businesses, environmental groups and organisations in key sectors such as health, education, housing and farming from across the district, and help coordinate a district wide response to the climate emergency. It will utilise the wide range of skills, knowledge, and connections present within the community to help deliver the necessary change.

Forest of Dean District Council are currently in the process of creating a steering group made up of key stakeholders within the district, in order to help guide and set the direction for the partnership. It is anticipated that working groups will then be set up to work on specific projects, and that these will be made up of a combination of council officers, volunteers from the steering group and wider community, and potentially some paid staff (dependent on funding being secured).

The partnership will then also then look to engage with the district’s wider resident base in order to gain a wide range of perspectives to ensure a just transition, and help to translate initiatives into local community action where appropriate.

Council offices decarbonisation
(case study 2)

A coordinated approach between different teams within the council, including estates, sustainability, finance and procurement, and the involvement of cabinet members in regular progress meetings enabled a plan to take shape that would deliver the necessary savings in carbon emissions and electricity bills. Following an energy audit and recommendations report by an energy consultancy in 2020, a £126,000 grant from the Government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme managed by Salix Finance was secured in January 2021 to part fund the project.

The project includes a range of measures, the main one being the installation of a solar photovoltaic renewable electricity system on the building’s large south-facing roof. The grant award meant that a battery storage element could also be incorporated into the system, enabling greater potential electricity savings than first estimated. The project also includes a range of other measures, such as fitting seven day timers on printers in the office, replacing existing lighting in the building with LEDs, and installing some automatic lighting controls. The work is set to be completed by September 2021.​