Unlocking climate adaptation in local authorities

Local authorities are on the frontline when it comes to climate impacts. Extreme weather events affect everyday services, and the costs of dealing with them can impact on budgets.

Discussions at the Commission’s Regional Policy Forum in 2022 revealed that many local authorities were unsure about the best way to develop and structure their climate adaptation plans. This raises the risk of maladaptation, but this can be mitigated through learning from others and by drawing on expertise from across the region.

This peer-to-peer regional learning is at the heart of the Commission’s Climate Adaptation Programme for Local Authorities (CAPLA). CAPLA, endorsed by the Yorkshire Leaders Board in 2022, is a programme of thematic sessions where local authorities can learn from each other. These sessions help participants to pace their work. By breaking the adaptation journeys into manageable steps, local authorities have built their adaptation efforts between sessions and made real progress towards becoming more climate resilient. CAPLA is also a supportive space for local authorities to discuss freely their climate adaptation challenges and ways to effectively overcome them.

In its first year, CAPLA has demonstrated that building connected capacity, expertise and leadership across local authority boundaries could accelerate climate resilience at local but also regional levels. This programme is groundbreaking in England and offers a model that can be easily duplicated by other regions.

Photograph copyright Moorland Roamer / Adobe Stock