Making local climate action possible: A toolkit for local authorities

Local authorities’ direct emissions account for between just 2–5% of area-wide emissions. Consequently, many are now recognising that in order to meet their climate goals, they will need to engage with local businesses. Whilst business engagement strategies will not be new to them, there is a clear need to tailor messaging and the approaches used in order to build meaningful, long lasting relationships that enable a just transition to net zero.

The Innovate UK Net Zero Living programme is supporting 52 local authorities across the UK to embrace innovation to unlock structural and systemic barriers to net zero delivery at the local level. While delivering the programme, we spotted an opportunity to help overcome the complexities faced by local authorities when trying to engage with local businesses on climate action. Between March and July 2025, we worked with Climate Outreach and The Connectives. This collaboration, guided by their prior research on trust and influence in climate communications and workshop insights from some of the places supported through the Net Zero Living Programme, led to the development of this toolkit.

The toolkits unique value lies in its focus on shifting local authority business engagement beyond transactions and compliance, demonstrating instead how trust built through purpose, empathy, and integrity can drive actions benefitting both people and planet.

It offers, practical guidance for being purpose-led and outcomes-driven, insights on building trust through values-led engagement, and suggested messaging you can adapt and experiment within a place-based context.

We hope you will find this toolkit useful, and it will help you to reflect on your current business engagement activities or maybe open the discussion.