There are lots of opportunities to engage in local democracy in your area to support community energy and climate emergency initiatives

What can I do?

  • Meet your parish, town and county councillors to ask what is being done to tackle the climate emergency and encourage them to do more.
  • Attend your Community Forum/Community Area Board and  raise the need for community energy and other climate action initiatives in your local area.
  • Attend relevant council meetings. Just attending shows public support and interest, even if you don’t want to make a statement or ask a question.
  • Get involved in consultation around your council’s Local Plan.
  • Get involved in developing Neighbourhood plans. These are officially recognised and provide a legally robust opportunity for communities to produce positive and ambitious sustainable energy plans. The Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) offers sustainable neighbourhood planning support to help groups include a strategy for energy transition in their plans.
  • Contact your MP. You can find yours on the They Work For You website, which shows contact details, voting record, and links to their website. You can email them (remember to attach your postal address, so they know you live in their constituency) or, even better, arrange to go and talk to them at one of their surgeries. For a good simple (but slightly out of date) guide to lobbying MPs on climate change, see the Campaign Against Climate Change.