Francis Heil (Associate Director – Climate Change & Resilience, AtkinsRéalis, and Member of the London Climate Change Partnership                            HRSC0071

Supplementary written evidence submitted by Francis Heil

Climate Adaptation & Resilience Partnerships in England

London Climate Change Partnership

The London Climate Change Partnership (LCCP) is an example of effective partnership working to advance climate adaptation & resilience.

LCCP is comprised of public, private and community sector organisations that have a role to play in preparing London for extreme weather today and climate change in the future. We have worked to increase climate resilience within and between sectors in London since 2001. In that time we have made a lot of progress and collectively understand more now about the city’s vulnerabilities and the impacts we expect climate change to have. But there is still much to do. We welcome the participation of experts, researchers, and policy makers from across sectors to help fulfil our vision of a well-adapting London. Our terms of reference can be found here.

Some background to Climate Adaptation & Resilience Partnerships

Several adaptation partnerships across the country were in existence over 15 years ago – in a variety of forms, often receiving government funding. However, government priorities changed and funding was withdrawn around 14 years ago. At this point the Environment Agency London Division stepped in to continue to fund the LCCP, and then the Mayor of London took this on in around 2012. Currently the Mayor provides a small operational budget and 0.5 FTE to run the LCCP partnership.

The LCCP is aware of a partnership in the North east adaptNE.org which is no longer operational.

In the East of England there is a functional partnership focussed on marine adaptation - the MCCI (Marine Climate Change Impacts).

Other partnerships exist but usually have a wider focus on Net Zero and sustainability rather than a specific focus on climate adaptation & resilience (e.g. Bristol Green Capital Partnership).

The value of partnerships

We wish to promote the potential value of partnership working and potential value of the LCCP. We know that no single organisation holds the key to resilience and that problems such as overheating have high levels of interdependency across multiple sectors. Partnerships provide the possibility of joint work on issues and for partners to learn from each other.

The LCCP has been responsible for some ground breaking past work e.g. our heat thresholds work, our work with the business community in Victoria to assess how district greening can support UHI mitigation efforts, and our showcasing of good practice of partners such as the adaptation and resilience planning of the City of London Corporation, and our support to networks such as London Councils as they deliver their adaptation work through the Resilient and Green climate programme.  

The events the LCCP hold help bring partners together and share best practice plus raise the awareness of adaptation across London. We also issue a monthly newsletter to a list of over 250 named individuals across London highlighting adaptation news, events, and research.  

We hope to keep growing the partnership and our work with a new Chair and Deputy Chair in place in 2023.

More information about our work / projects can be found here.

November 2023