Planning to Adapt project

The Planning to Adapt project aims to achieve an average of level 2 (measured against the Local and Regional Adaptation Partnership guidance) across all local authorities in the region by March 2010 and an average of level 3 by March 2011, with no authority having achieved less than level 2.  The project has developed on the back of the nine Local Climate Impact Profiles, one for each city and county across the region. These short research projects developed by the UK Climate Impacts Programme investigated the impacts of recent severe weather on public services and helped service managers and decision makers to understand what they may need to do differently in order to adapt to the future climate.  The LCLIP projects also engaged with Local Strategic Partnership members, including the NHS, Police, Fire Service, Universities, Probation Service, etc.

This regional approach has proved beneficial in terms of sharing the workload and providing mutual support in developing the project.  A common methodology has been developed for undertaking risk assessments, which have been carried out for main service areas in all local authorities and for the objectives in the sustainable community strategies.

The next stages of the project will be to join up the project at a regional level, across a wider range of partners, such as Natural England, looking at adaptation projects they support as solutions to adaptation problems, working with services to ensure that outputs from the risk assessments can be used effectively and developing methodology for assessing the return on the investment.

Support to the project has been carried out by Climate Adaptation Project Officers, recent graduates or post graduates, recruited through Studentforce.

Mike Peverill (mike.peverill@emcouncils.gov.uk)