Local Government Association

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Published UK-wide research on best practice in climate action

We were appointed by the Local Government Association to work on a national project to capture emerging best practice in tackling climate change. We undertook thorough research to gather insight on how climate change was being communicated by local authorities across the country, as well as exploring the policy context, media agenda and a critical perspective on the effectiveness of the communications response. 


We used this research to identify local authorities who were doing something especially well or innovative to target for an interview. We created a stakeholder matrix to track and record our contact with each local authority and also to ensure we were capturing a range of different authorities across location, type of authority, political control and an urban/rural split. 

We then conducted in-depth interviews with heads of communications on their approach to communicating climate change to identify best practices and ways of working. The compilation of our findings was presented as a resource containing seven distinct and detailed case studies as well as a dedicated section on key learnings with clear step-by-step recommendations for combined authorities signposting to further resources where expertise can be further developed. This resource continues to be shared by the LGA with other local authorities to provide practical tips on how they could improve their approach to communicating climate change. 


Our work was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but we were able to adapt our approach to conduct interviews over a longer period of time to suit the availability of council officers and members. 

Tracking the climate change agenda and the influence of the pandemic on accelerating initiatives such as low traffic neighbourhoods, we were able to pivot to include topical case studies that responded to the impact of COVID-19. To address the inevitable delay in publishing the insights, we suggested packaging the case studies separately so their release could be staggered whilst we compiled the full report. This segmentation of content helped maintain interest in this important topic.


Project Details

Client: Local Government Association

Status: Completed 2021

Team: Filigree

Find out more: Climate Change Communications