‘Alarm bells should be ringing’: Group slams RBWM's climate performance

A climate action group has criticised the ‘extremely disappointing’ RBWM results in a scorecard which compares local authorities’ steps to address climate change.

Every two years, Climate Emergency UK (CEUK) compares local authorities’ actions taken towards net zero. The latest data set looks at 2025.

RBWM Climate Emergency Coalition (CEC) dived into the data to examine the borough’s performance – and emerged dissatisfied.

The data looks at several areas of action, such as how many staff are given over to working on climate goals.

These action areas are each given a score – for example, 0-3, with 0 meaning there are no staff working on climate goals, and 3 meaning the team is considered fully resourced.

Each of these areas is weighted, giving an overall score in percentage form.

A score of one hundred per cent would mean that local authority is as good as it could get, by CEUK’s calculations.

Looking at this, RBWM CEC is of the view that the Royal Borough’s improvements have been lacklustre – which they blame on an ‘average at best’ climate action plan.

The borough scored 48 per cent for its plan, below the average score of 50 per cent for single tier councils.

Overall, it came 66th of the 186 unitary authorities scored, moving up 14 places since 2023.

On the face of it, this looks like a positive, but RBWM CEC member Paul Hinton says that a more careful look at the numbers paints a different picture.

To make this clear, CEC drew comparisons to Bristol, which along with RBWM, is one of the top three ‘best resourced’ councils.

Bristol only moved up three places compared to RBWM’s 14 places since 2023 – but Paul still says he would expect better from RBWM.

The jump in places reflects a ‘clustering’ of many local authorities hovering around the mid-level mark.

Because there are more local authorities in that middle cluster, moving up through it requires less actual improvement from RBWM. In terms of percentage score, RBWM saw an eight per cent increase in score, while Bristol (which was in a better position to start with) saw a 10 per cent increase.

In terms of local comparison, RBWM is also not doing so well, the CEC believes.

Taking Wokingham as a case study, the CEC says this council appears to have learned from 2023, as it rose from 102nd to 38th place.

This performance ‘demonstrates what can be achieved in two years,’ wrote CEC.

The group concludes that the borough is ‘still badly underperforming’ – and says ‘alarm bells should be ringing loud and clear’.

“The borough has obviously not learnt the lessons from the 2021 and 2023 scorecard results,” they wrote.

A good performance requires a good plan, they said, as the borough enters ‘an important eight months’ in its calendar; the RBWM Environment and Climate Strategy 2026-30 is being developed ready for approval in March.

“If the borough is to achieve its net zero objectives, a superior action plan is required,” the CEC wrote.

“If the next action plan is inferior or merely average, it is likely that the next opportunity to do something about it won’t come around again until March 2031.”

RBWM had not replied to a request for comment at the time of going to press.