Camden's new climate action plan: Community resilience and social justice
Camden’s Cabinet have approved a new Climate Action Plan for 2026 to 2030, by building on the achievements of the previous action plan, strengthening our commitment to improving Camden’s resilience to the climate crisis, focusing on social justice, and creating the enabling environment for environmentally sustainable investment and inclusive growth.
In 2019, we declared a Climate Emergency and held the UK’s first Citizens’ Assembly on the climate crisis.
This put our citizens alongside the Council at the centre of rising to the climate challenge.
The resulting Climate Action Plan for 2020-25 generated new levels of community-led climate action across Camden. Importantly, it helped us leverage over £35 million of external funding, among other things to finance our energy-efficiency retrofit programme for buildings.
This has helped to cut carbon dioxide emissions across our own estate and operations by 64.5%, excluding housing, while borough wide emissions have reduced by 52%.
Notable projects over the past five years include the community led Somers Town Future Neighbourhood climate action programme, major energy efficiency projects at Swiss Cottage Library, Highgate Library, Talacre Leisure Centre and Acland Burghley school, and our successful community energy partnership which has seen solar installed at Hampstead, Parliament Hill and Regent High schools.
From November 2024 through to May 2025, we carried out extensive community engagement with residents including young people, businesses, community groups and some of the original Citizens’ Assembly members to help shape the new Climate Action Plan for 2026-30.
The community told us that they were already experiencing the impacts of the climate crisis, noting the extreme summer heat of recent years and the increasing rate of surface water flooding, and need support to build their resilience with a focus on those most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis.
The community also told us how action on climate could help respond to pressing cost of living and public health concerns by reducing household energy costs, making it safer and easier to walk and cycle around Camden and by providing sharing-economy focused offers such as the Library of Things service at Swiss Cottage and Kentish Town libraries, that reduce the need to buy new household goods.
The zero-carbon agenda therefore remained important and our ambition for zero carbon has also not weakened as a Council. We will therefore continue to lead by example across our own estate and operations through our decarbonisation programme. We will also continue to play an enabling role to support a zero-carbon borough through our planning policies, heat network improvements, lobbying and Local Area Energy Plan.
Councillor Harrison continued:
“Camden’s Climate Action Plan 2026–2030 is one of pragmatism, equity, and empowerment that reflects the shared priorities and lived experiences of our communities. It focuses on building our community’s resilience to a changing climate, while also responding to the climate crisis in a way that helps to meet the day-to-day needs of residents, by improving the energy efficiency of homes and providing services that help to residents to save money and stay healthy while helping to protect the environment.
"It acknowledges the limits of a council-led net zero goal whilst strengthening a commitment to community resilience, social justice, and shared responsibility.
“The Climate Action Plan reaffirms our commitment to a zero carbon Camden by creating the enabling conditions for environmentally sustainable investment and growth. It also confirms our intention to continue to lead by example of the decarbonisation agenda, building on the success of our Council led zero carbon programme which has seen carbon emissions fall by 64.5% since 2010 across our estate.”