Sheffield LCLIP: Opening conversations on climate change adaptation
September 2009
Sheffield City Council initiated a Local Climate Impacts Profile (LCLIP) in response to LAA target NI188, adapting to climate change, and in anticipation of a locally defined target on awareness and action on climate change. The city planned to use the LCLIP to help it to reach Level 1 of NI188, through raising awareness of adaptation issues with services and partners and stimulating discussions about past and future actions.
Those participating in the LCLIP process included council services and local strategic partnership services selected on the basis of:
- those most likely to be affected by extreme weather;
- those dealing with the most vulnerable members of society; and
- ensuring a good cross section of city services.
Through these contacts the project served to raise awareness of adaptation where previously mitigation had dominated dialogue on climate change.
Council staff in the Environmental Strategy Team coordinated the LCLIP. They worked with Museums Sheffield to put together a summary of weather trends over the past 100+ years using the results of the Museum’s Whatever the Weather project. (Data has been collected at Weston Park Museum since 1882 and the site is a registered Met Office station.) In addition, newspaper records were collated on extreme weather events between 1998 and 2008 and converted into a Weather Timeline.
The Timeline was e-mailed out to the identified services along with a questionnaire to record how their service was affected by extreme weather. The questionnaire was intended as preparation for a face-to-face interview that was carried out by two officers from the Environmental Strategy Team. The interviews proved the most effective method of exploring the impacts of the extreme weather events, how services had responded, and the issues raised as a result of these experiences.
The 2007 floods became a particular focal point for discussion as many services had been involved either in the emergency response or the subsequent clear-up. From the interviews it was clear that these floods had demonstrated both the far reaching impacts of such events and also the potential vulnerability of local services to more frequent flooding.
One conclusion from the interview results was that the costs of extreme weather events were rarely recorded or were not easily available. This highlighted the need to record costs associated with extreme weather events in a clear and concise way to allow comparison of climate change risks with the other risks faced by services.
The final report presented the data both by service (for internal use) and by weather type (for communicating to a wider audience). It also highlighted a range of outstanding issues that would require further consideration, where action might be taken to improve climate change resilience, service response or data quality.
Common impacts presented similar issues to groups of services or organisations such as emergency services, health & welfare, infrastructure planning & management, environmental protection & management, information management & research, and business & commerce.
The council is now researching the potential for a more accessible presentation of the LCLIP findings and successful adaptation actions already implemented in the city, possibly commissioning a short film.
The experience of undertaking the Sheffield LCLIP process has proved an excellent way to engage city services and partners and has created a firm base for planning the next stage of the NI188, achieving Level 2.
- Click here for the Sheffield weather trends pdf.
- Click here for Sheffield draft interview pdf.
- Click here for the Sheffield draft questionaire pdf.
- For more information about the Sheffield LCLIP please contact: Kathy Hamilton, Carbon Reduction and Air Quality Team.
Tel: 078 378 333 80Bernd Hoermann, Carbon Reduction and Air Quality Team.
Tel: 0114 273 4655
