Making climate risk useful in project decisions

A practical insight for local authorities

Local authorities are under real pressure. They are managing ageing assets, stretched budgets, and the challenge of keeping services running reliably. Climate risk is increasingly part of that picture, but it is often framed as a specialist or sustainability concern, separate from everyday project decisions.

This report, produced by Bankers without Boundaries (BwB) through the Net Zero Living Programme, makes a clear and practical case: climate risk is already part of how funders, insurers, and delivery partners assess whether a project is affordable and deliverable. The question is not whether to engage with it, but how to do so in a way that fits existing council processes.

The report focuses on cost savings, service reliability, and risk reduction, with examples from housing retrofit, local energy projects, and roads and transport. It shows that resilience measures can work like any other efficiency improvement: they reduce future repair bills, lower the chance of disruption, and make projects easier to finance and approve.

Crucially, the report argues that climate risk lands best when it is described in language that project sponsors, finance officers, and cabinet members already use. Terms like whole life cost, service continuity, maintenance spend, and insurability connect climate considerations to the decisions councils make every day.

Practical guidance covers five steps that project teams can follow without specialist modelling or new systems: setting clear service outcomes in the project brief; building a simple evidence pack; using procurement to require risk management plans from bidders; comparing options on whole life cost, not just capital spend; and tracking a small set of resilience indicators over time.

The insight for local authority teams is direct: when climate risk is made visible early, in the right language, projects become easier to compare, price, and defend internally.

Key takeaways

• Local authorities that describe climate resilience in terms of operating costs, service continuity, and insurability find it easier to secure funding and internal approval for their projects.
• Procurement is one of the most effective tools available to local authorities for embedding climate risk management into delivery without requiring specialist expertise.
• Projects that compare options on whole life cost, rather than capital cost alone, are better placed to demonstrate value for money to funders and internal decision makers.