Preparing for extreme heat

Overview

Challenge

One of the major impacts of climate change in cities is extreme heat, often referred to as the ‘silent killer’. In 2022, when temperatures reached over 40 degrees Celsius in the UK for the first time, over 4,500 excess deaths were recorded in England, with the highest mortality rate in London. The impacts of extreme heat are not shared fairly, with older adults, young children, people living with disabilities and people living in poor quality housing most most at risk.

Hackney Council were interested in involving residents to ensure their action on climate change was guided by equity. Involve worked with Sortition Foundation to deliver their first-ever Citizens’ Climate Jury, where residents responded to the question:

How can Hackney Council and others make sure that residents, especially those who are most affected, are protected from very hot weather as our climate changes?

Outcome

The Citizens' Climate Jury brought together 15 residents who broadly reflected the borough to learn about the topic, deliberate solutions and agree on a set of nine priority recommendations. Hackney Council published their formal response to the recommendations in full, outlining their commitment to:

• develop a new communications approach tailored to those who are most vulnerable to the impact of extreme heat 

• open, map and promote cool spaces, such as council buildings, libraries and shaded areas

• increase Hackney’s street tree canopy coverage within areas most in need  

• incentivise companies to exceed building regulations to raise environmental standards

• develop an Urban Forest Plan to protect, manage and increase tree canopy

Role - Engagement Lead at Involve, working alongside a Project Officer and additional facilitators

Timescale - 6 months (Jan - June 2024)

Approach

Jury design

A citizens’ jury is a group of people from different walks of life brought together to learn about a topic, deliberate options and make recommendations. Deliberative methods offer a route to move beyond polarised opinions by understanding the public’s considered judgement on a topic.

The Hackney Citizens’ Jury was designed over a period of four months, through close collaboration with the team at Hackney Council.

Key activities included:

• Setting the scope, or boundaries of the discussion, by identifying what decisions citizens could meaningfully influence

• Prioritising topics that jury members would need to learn about to have informed discussions on the topic and organising speakers

• Laying the groundwork for impact: engaging with relevant council decision-makers and departments who would be responsible for taking recommendations forward

• Session design: mapping goals, inputs and outputs of each session and designing activities (see high-level design below)

Participant recruitment

Jury members were recruited by using a democratic lottery. This involved sending 4000 letters to a random selection of households, inviting people to register their interest in taking part.

From there, Sortition Foundation selected a group by computer to be broadly reflective of the borough in terms of their: 

• age

• gender

• ethnicity

• disability

• education level

• housing tenure

• attitudes to climate change

Wider community engagement

The Citizens’ Climate Jury sat within a wider process of community engagement. This aimed to hear experiences and ideas from people most at risk from extreme heat and get feedback on the proposed session design.

Engagement methods included:

• A survey led by Hackney Council to understand local perceptions of extreme heat, which received 480 responses

• Meetings with community groups, including a local tenants’ and residents’ association and two older adults groups

Insights from the wider engagement included:

• There is a lack of knowledge about the risks of extreme heat

• People in an at-risk groups don’t always self-identify as ‘vulnerable’

• Many older adults do not use the internet - so online cannot be the only method to communicate the risks of extreme heat

• Many other countries and cultures are well adapted to extreme heat - how can we learn from them?

These insights were fed into the jury design and information speakers were asked to cover.

Session delivery

The Citizens’ Climate Jury took place across four evenings. Jury members were guided through three stages:

• Learning about the topic from a range of speakers and each other’s experiences

• Dialogue and deliberation – processing the information they had heard and weighing up potential ways forward

• Decision-making - working together to make trade-offs and agree a final set of recommendations

A key feature of the design was the co-creation session in which jury members worked with speakers, specialists and council officers to develop ideas for recommendations together. Whilst there was a risk of power imbalance between ‘people with lanyards’ and local residents, the session was designed to ensure the jury members held final decision making power.

Recommendations

Jury members worked together to prioritise, draft and peer-review a final set of nine recommendations directed towards the council and others. The recommendations called for:

• Targeting emergency response and communication

• Indoor cooling off spaces

• Outreach for street homeless people

• Quick fixes to upgrade existing buildings

• Creating cool routes and green spaces

• Investing in healthcare providers

• Incentivising companies to build heatwave compliant new builds

• Looking at the whole built environment on new developments

• Enforcing and updating building regulations

In the final session, residents presented these recommendations to the Mayor of Hackney and Director of Climate, Homes and Economy.

Impact

The Hackney Citizens’ Climate Jury had a direct impact on the actions of the council in preparing for extreme heat. The council’s formal response to the recommendations outlined their commitment to:

• develop a new communications approach tailored to those who are most vulnerable to the impact of extreme heat 

• open, map and promote cool spaces, such as council buildings, libraries and shaded areas

• increase Hackney’s street tree canopy coverage within areas most in need  

• incentivise companies to exceed building regulations to raise environmental standards

• develop an Urban Forest Plan to protect, manage and increase tree canopy

What’s more, council officers shared how working with speakers and specialists through the process resulted in new partnerships and project opportunities.

The project is featured in by London Councils’ report London Leading: Case Studies in Climate Resilience Leadership.