Leeds City Council: Developing a detailed LCLIP

September 2009

Source: Adapting to climate change: Local area’s action

Leeds City Council has been strongly committed to sustainability issues since the 1990s but the initial catalyst for adaptation work was officer membership of the UKCIP English Stakeholders Forum. This generated officer commitment to adaptation issues, which helped to drive the Council’s early adaptation work. The Leeds Initiative (the Local Strategic Partnership) worked closely with the Council to select NI188 as one of its 35 indicators and made a commitment to reach level 3 by March 2011.

Leeds has developed a detailed Local Climate Impacts Profile (LCLIP), which aimed to identify the threats and opportunities presented by climate change in Leeds. It examined the effects of recent severe weather in Leeds, and investigated how communities and the authority have responded to help reduce existing and future vulnerability to weather patterns expected as a result of climate change and what lessons if any could be learned.

One of the initial drivers for the LCLIP was the Council’s own meteorological station, developed to support air quality management. Analysis of this data and the former Leeds Weather Centre archives has provided nuggets of information which have raised awareness of climate change across the Council.

The analysis has identified climatic fluctuations within Leeds over a 25 year period which are consistent with climate change. For example, the frequency of air frosts and snowfall days has decreased, while high winds appear to be on the increase.

The LCLIP research also included a review of local newspaper archives, to identify extreme weather events that have occurred within the city of Leeds district. The Council initially commissioned two students to conduct a media trawl of local newspapers for severe weather events, between 2002 and 2008. This information was analysed by officers who prepared a detailed LCLIP for the city.

For each event, researchers checked the news report related to a real weather event in Leeds, reviewed what happened, found relevant pictures and, for more serious events, spoken to relevant experts within the Council.

Using this information, they analysed the impacts of these events in terms of a hierarchy of disruption – first order (Paralysing) to fourth order (Nuisance) (Rooney, J. 1967. The urban snow hazard in the United States. Geographical Review 57, 539–559). Impacts were also analysed according to the sectors affected (e.g. health, housing, retail, transport and so on).

The LCLIP information is presented in accessible format, using symbols for different categories of event, including strong winds, flooding, heavy rains and lightning strikes to heat wave conditions and wintry conditions. More detailed analysis is presented for more serious (Level 1) events, examining what how the Council responded and how it has learnt from these events.

The weather events identified in the study and their effects on the local community were analysed in terms of their impact on a particular service area. This process helped to identify how the Council’s adaptation responses to different severe weather events may need to be modified with future climate change.

The LCLIP study also drew on work done in the regional adaptation study for Yorkshire and Humberside, and looks at potential future actions (e.g. drought plan with Environment Agency; national heat wave plans with PCTs). The LCLIP report will shortly be presented to the Leeds Corporate Leadership Team, and is intended to be used to inform future priorities for action on adaptation, based on existing climate risks.

The LCLIP findings will be included within a climate proofing template, which is currently being developed as part of a new methodology for sustainability appraisals. The LCLIP will also provide evidence of existing climate risks, when developing new applications for vulnerability mapping and when risk assessments.