Adur & Worthing Climate Assembly

Adur & Worthing Climate Assembly logo

We commissioned a Climate Assembly as part of our efforts to address the climate emergency.

Made up of a representative group of 43 Adur and Worthing residents selected at random, the Climate Assembly sought to address the following issues:

“How can we in Adur and Worthing collectively tackle climate change and support our places to thrive?”

“What does this mean for the way we live and for our local environment?”

How it worked

Following the model for a citizen's assembly, the Adur & Worthing Climate Assembly brought together a randomly selected group of local people to learn about climate issues and discuss them together, and then make recommendations about what should happen and how things could change.

Over five sessions taking place between September and December 2020, the 45 residents met to listen to evidence from expert speakers, deliberate and then make recommendations which were then formally presented to Adur & Worthing Councils on 12th January 2021. In line with government advice relating to Coronavirus (COVID-19), all sessions took place online.

The A&W Climate Assembly Recommendations

The assembly members put forward 18 recommendations, which fell under six themes:

Biodiversity and green spaces:
This was a very important theme for everyone and includes support for kelp restoration, rewilding green spaces and increasing local community food growing.
Information and education:
The members wanted to see easily accessed sources of information and places of excellence where learning about key sustainability issues can take place.
Green Finance and Energy:
These recommendations aim to ensure green energy schemes are available and affordable for everyone in Adur and Worthing.
Planning:
The assembly members felt really strongly that the planning system needed to support the highest levels of biodiversity and sustainability.
Transport:
The assembly members wanted to see low carbon transport and active, connected travel promoted, encouraged and supported.
Waste reduction and recycling:
These recommendations look to promote the 5 Rs to refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and recover alongside promotion and ongoing support for initiatives like repair cafés and composting.

Documents:

How residents were selected

The recruitment process was carried out by the Sortition Foundation. Letters were sent out to 8,000 households in Adur and Worthing. The addresses were randomly selected from Royal Mail's address database.

The following people were not eligible to apply:

elected representatives from any level of government
paid employees of any political party
people employed by Adur & Worthing Councils

Climate Assembly Advisory Group

An independent advisory group was established to oversee the design and implementation of the Climate Assembly. Their role was to provide advice and oversight to ensure the Assembly's plans, evidence and materials were accurate, balanced and unbiased.

Climate Assembly Survey

As part of the Climate Assembly, we invited all local residents to take part in a survey to find out what lifestyle changes they have already made that may help towards achieving greater sustainability in Adur and Worthing, and their views on climate change.

The survey closed in October 2020. Thank you to all those that took part. Here are the survey results:

Adur and Worthing Climate Change Survey 2020 - results (2,177KB)

Watch the Climate Assembly - videos

A diverse selection of inspiring speakers presented information to the assembly, many of whom are leading experts in their field. You can watch all the videos from the Climate Assembly on our YouTube playlist: