North Northamptonshire Climate Change Strategy to be discussed by Executive
Climate06 February 2025
A Climate Change Strategy outlining the key climate related risks for the North Northamptonshire area will be discussed next week.
North Northamptonshire Council’s Executive will consider the Strategy which aims to build a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable future by bringing together sectors and organisations to work collaboratively.
The Strategy outlines a vision, approach, and key areas of focus to address the effects of climate change over the next five years and has been shaped by consultation and feedback.
Once in place, the next step will be to develop a roadmap to Net Zero action plan to set out practical steps that can be taken to realise ambitions for the area. The action plan will be developed over the next year with input from residents, community groups, businesses, councillors and officers.
The Council declared a climate and environment emergency in July 2021, recognising the need for action to enhance, protect, and prevent further decline of the local environment. Alongside this declaration a set of recommendations were adopted to include developing a Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan.
The draft Climate Change Strategy 2025-2030 ensures North Northamptonshire Council has a strategy in place for its climate ambitions.
The Strategy focuses on six key areas of strategic importance:
- Transport
- Homes and the Built Environment
- Nature, Food and Farming
- Energy
- Green Economy
- Waste
Plans for each sector focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience to climate change, and ensuring an equitable transition to a low-carbon future.
Right from the start, the Council has been clear that climate change and looking after the environment must be the ‘green thread’ running through the organisation. Further to this, one of the Council’s corporate priorities is to create a greener, sustainable environment for North Northamptonshire as a whole.Cllr Helen Harrison, the Council’s executive member for climate and the green environment
We are dedicated to securing the best possible future for North Northamptonshire residents, businesses, and the environment—creating a fairer, greener community that has fully transitioned to Net Zero emissions by 2050 at the latest.
Climate change represents one of the most profound challenges of our time, reshaping the environment, economies, and communities worldwide with increasingly severe impacts.
Since the Council came into existence in April 2021 there has been notable progress, with more than 20,000 trees planted and more going in every year following multiple successful bids for Treescape funding.
More than 200 on-street electric vehicle charging points have been installed across North Northants with steps being taken to broaden coverage and increase the number of public charging points to over 500 by 2027. This is in recognition of the significant infrastructure roll out that will be needed to support residents in transitioning to electric vehicles over the coming years.
The latest full year official figures indicate that in North Northamptonshire, plug-in EVs accounted for a third of the growth in new vehicle registrations in 2023.
Another notable action that the Council took early on was to adopt a tool to assess the climate impact of its decisions and procurement activities, the output of which is included in the climate section of every report.
North Northamptonshire Council has started the way it means to go on in doing our bit to tackle this great challenge. The steps we have taken so far are welcome and it will be important to work closely with our communities as we make further progress over the coming years.Jason Smithers, Leader of the Council
I am also delighted how some local businesses are seeing this, not as a challenge, but an opportunity to develop new products and markets.
Looking ahead, I would like North Northants to be viewed as a front-runner in Net Zero living and seen as a place that embraces innovation in green technologies and clean energy. I hope that the Strategy helps to provide a springboard to make this happen building on our successes to date.