Local government forums

We delivered a series of forums aimed at Local Authority representatives where these stakeholders can come together to explore emerging connections topics and access advice.

With two-thirds of Local Authorities in our region declaring climate emergencies and increasingly looking to us to collaborate with them on their plans, we established a Local Authority forum to better understand their priorities and challenges and how we can best support them.

Recognising that many of our Local Authority stakeholders were facing similar challenges in relation to decarbonisation, these sessions focused on EVs and the associated charging infrastructure and future energy scenarios.

We engaged with stakeholders and gave them opportunities to help shape the content and format of these events. We learned that facilitating peer-to-peer learning would be beneficial and so each forum featured a presentation from local government representatives who shared their insights and experiences with attendees.

We successfully delivered three Local Authority forums in the year and a total of 71 stakeholders took part. We were encouraged by the engagement and the response from stakeholders, with 100% of those who took part in our forums telling us the sessions were ‘very useful’ or ‘useful’.

These Local Authority forums were always intended to be a springboard for on-going and closer engagement and so, acting on feedback we received from stakeholders, we will be focusing on local energy planning issues at future sessions and extending an invitation to other public sector bodies who we think may benefit to take part.