Climate Ready Leicester

We have an ambition to become a climate ready city which means working towards net zero carbon emissions and adapting to climate change.

Residents' guide

Our Climate Ready Leicester residents' guide provides clear and simple suggestions for actions people could take to reduce their impact in their daily lives. Many of the ideas are free or low cost and links are provided to more detailed information.

This is a part of our ongoing campaign to help everyone do their bit to tackle the climate emergency, including accessing the support that is available.

Climate Ready Leicester plan

Our Climate Ready Leicester Plan was adopted by councillors on 5 September 2024. It includes our updated strategy for responding to the climate emergency and our latest set of actions to implement the strategy. We will update the list of actions each year as new ones are planned.

The plan is underpinned by evidence from a Carbon Neutral Roadmap produced for us in 2022 by experts from Ricardo Energy and Environment. It has also been shaped by feedback from the public and local organisations including the results of a questionnaire survey. The plan, along with evidence from the roadmap and questionnaire is available below.

The Climate Ready Leicester Plan includes steps to reduce the council’s and Leicester’s carbon emissions towards our ambition of reaching net zero. It also covers actions to reduce our wider impact on climate change and to adapt and make the city resilient to the changes happening. Above all, the plan takes a ‘people-centred’ approach to achieving these changes. This includes offering information and support, and making sure actions bring wider benefits to help people with the cost of living and other issues affecting quality of life.

• Climate Ready Leicester Plan 2023 – 2028 (PDF)
• Carbon Neutral Roadmap 2022 (PDF)
• Climate Consultation 2023-24 Findings Report (PDF)

Our past climate actions

We declared a climate emergency in February 2019 and details are available below. We completed our first action plan for the climate emergency between 2020 and 2023. The plan contained over 150 actions including:

• delivering warmer homes
• cost savings for small businesses
• more solar energy
• electric buses
• more homes protected from flooding
• new habitat for pollinating insects
• more items saved from landfill to raise money for charity

It also saved lots of carbon and achieved much more. Details are available below in our final progress update for the 2020-23 action plan.

If you have problems accessing or viewing any of the documents above, please email [email protected].

What do we mean by climate emergency?

Human activity produces greenhouses gases, particularly carbon dioxide, which are often referred to as ‘carbon emissions’. These gases cause climate change, raising the average temperature of the world. This is already causing extreme weather including storms and heatwaves as well as sea level rise and damage to nature. If we don’t take urgent action these impacts will get much worse.

Declaring a climate emergency means we are prepared to play our part. Alongside other cities around the world, we are committed to taking the action needed to prevent climate change becoming much worse.

You can learn more about what we’re doing to tackle the climate emergency, and the city and council’s carbon footprints on our climate action page.

Contact us

If you have a question about our work on the climate emergency, please use the contact methods below to get in touch or keep up to date.

Send us an email: [email protected] 
Ring us: 0116 454 2110
Follow us on Twitter (@ClimateReadyLCC)