Developing the LCLIP: Taking adaptation Leicester-wide

September 2009

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

Since 2008, Leicester City Council has been working on the development of a Local Climate Impacts Profile (LCLIP). This is being done through East Midlands Regional Assembly (EMRA), Government Office for the East Midlands, the Environment Agency and Defra, who are supporting councils and other public sector bodies across the East Midlands to conduct LCLIPs in order to assess their vulnerability to extreme weather and inform their adaptation planning.

For Anna Dodd, the development of the LCLIP has been a really interesting process: “We have discovered through the process that parts of the organisation have not been systematically recording the effects of weather damage. So we have now identified the need to improve our recording systems”.

The process has also had real benefits in promoting the adaptation action plan and encouraging other key partners to consider climate change impacts. Developing the LCLIP necessarily involves the cooperation and involvement of key organisations, such as the local health trust, the police and fire and rescue service. So the Council has used the opportunity to introduce its adaptation plan to them and to encourage them to consider developing their own organisational adaptation action plan.

The work has also allowed the Council to make good progress in achieving its LAA target of getting to Level 4 on NI188. As a result of the adaptation action plan and the LCLIP work, the Council now estimates that it has reached Level 2 and is well on the way to achieving Level 3 this year.

Work on adaptation has brought a number of wider benefits too. New and constructive links have been made with other bodies, including the Local Resilience Forum, which has become very interested in the climate change agenda. A knock-on effect has been that representatives on the forum have taken the adaptation back into their organisations, especially the Primary Care Trust, as well as the fire and rescue service.

A key next step for the Council will be to work with the Leicester Partnership to look at the Partnership’s objectives and work out the risks that climate change might pose to achievement of these.