West Suffolk's climate change journey
Environment and Sustainability Working Group 2023
In June 2023 a Sustainability and Environment Working Group was set up to review the council’s progress on its action. In 2024 an annual progress report and updated action plan, was approved by Cabinet: Annual Environment and Climate Change Report 2024–2025
Environment and Climate Change Taskforce 2020
One of the first acts of the new Cabinet in July 2020, was to set up a taskforce to strengthen and move further forward the ground-breaking work the authority is already doing. The work of that taskforce has produced a road map of around 50 initiatives, agreed by the Cabinet, to build on the already successful work we have been leading on to tackle climate change and reduce greenhouse gases. Read more about our longer term initiatives and the taskforce’s findings: CAB/WS/20/045 - West Suffolk Environment and Climate Change Taskforce - Final Report
The task force looked at a range of actions and opportunities across the themes to meet the target for greenhouse gas reduction, improving air quality, environment and biodiversity. The themes and measures include:
- travel and transport – for example moving to alternative fuels, route optimisation for waste vehicles and installing more EV charging points
- use of renewables – increasing council’s investment in renewables and continuing to support businesses to install solar on their premises
- housing (including planning) - for example identify rented properties that fail Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) and ensuring properties are brought up to standard as well as using the local plan process to improve the environmental performance of new homes
- green spaces and biodiversity - for example develop a West Suffolk Wide Green Infrastructure Strategy (GIS) which will include identification of opportunities for restoration, biodiversity net gain and ecosystem services. Review the maintenance regimes of grass areas owned by the council in order to increase biodiversity
- waste and recycling – continue to work to reduce waste, increase recycling and address litter.
Climate and Biodiversity Emergency Declaration 2019
In September 2019, West Suffolk Council declared a climate emergency and Cabinet established an Environment and Climate Change Taskforce to look at the impacts of adverse environmental factors and climate change in detail.
The following reports contain details on the declaration:
- Proposal to Establish a West Suffolk Environment and Climate Change Taskforce
- Council minutes Thursday 19 September 2019
Partnership working
We are also a member of the Suffolk Climate Change Partnership which consists of all Suffolk’s local authorities, working with local organisations including Groundwork East, the Environment Agency, Community Energy England, the Greater South East Net Zero Hub and the University of Suffolk. The partnership shares best practice and also delivers on the ground projects that support communities, schools and businesses to improve their resilience to a changing climate and move towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
In supporting the wider plan for all of Suffolk, West Suffolk Council has declared a climate and biodiversity emergency and focused on its own practices and priorities as an organisation. Environmental resilience is one of West Suffolk Council’s strategic priorities and locally we are working hard towards making our own operations net zero as quickly as possible. Following a review in 2025, which took into account available budgets and new operational requirements such as introducing the new national recycling requirements in a rural area, we updated our original target with a fully-costed and detailed roadmap. This shows how it is technically feasible to get the council’s own operations to net zero by 2039. This new roadmap will now be used to guide future investment decisions by the council.
The council’s activities to reduce the carbon emitted by third parties (off site renewable energy investments, grant schemes, recycling rates, and so on) already prevent at least 7,000 tonnes of carbon a year from entering the atmosphere. Cumulatively our projects save more carbon indirectly than the council emits directly per year. Each year we publish an environmental statement that outlines our progress to net zero along with updates to our action plan which can be viewed on our Tackling climate change page.
Through this collaboration and engagement we:
- have developed a dedicated Sustainable Suffolk website which provides information to residents about how they can reduce their carbon emissions through advice and behaviour change campaigns
- work with residents to implement our climate action plan through conferences for local community action groups and resident workshops such as The Strategy Room
- work closely with Public Health Suffolk who sit on the Suffolk Climate Change, Environment and Energy Board and are part of our Greener Travel, Collaboration and Sustainable Homes theme groups. This makes sure that health and equality are embedded across our work. Our Keep the Heat project enables communities to provide support and advice to help combat fuel poverty and lower household emissions. Over 1,800 homes have been surveyed by more than 150 community groups since 2022
- provide funding for community climate action through the Suffolk Climate Action Community Match Fund. Since 2023, £300,000 of match funding has enabled community projects totalling £921,891 to be delivered
- partner with cultural institutions to encourage action towards net zero, through initiatives such as Landscape Rebels with Ipswich Museum, Flux and Light exhibition at The Bank Arts Centre and Our Home, Our Planet, Our Earth youth perform festival at The New Wolsey Theatre
- fund a Sustainable Schools Programme which provides free energy auditing for secondary schools, support for School Climate Action Plans, and the ‘Solar Up’ scheme to provide free solar power for secondary schools. We also run an annual Suffolk Youth Climate Conference with over 500 students having attended since 2023
- provide decarbonisation advice and accreditation to small and medium businesses through the Carbon Charter, including energy audits, carbon literacy training, as well as behavioural change initiatives such as the ‘25 by 25’ campaign.
