I honestly believe that the challenge of climate change is a massive opportunity for local government and its partners – though I must admit that, making this case over the past couple of years, I have sometimes felt rather lonely!

Why is this an opportunity? Two main reasons: first, because the local dimension is absolutely fundamental to creating the low carbon communities that can see human civilization through the crises to come (so we cannot afford for local government to fail); and also because I believe passionately in local government’s ability to innovate, lead and deliver. There are many, many aspects to this. Here, I’m going to deal briefly with one of them: leadership.

Early next month sees the launch of a climate change leadership programme I’ve been designing with SOLACE Enterprises. We think it’s the first of its kind in local government, but I often get asked what distinguishes this from other themed leadership development work; isn’t it just another niche offer? To my mind, the answer is ‘no’ for one reason – climate change requires a new approach to local leadership and new leadership behaviours.

The concise version of my argument is that the scale of change required in our communities and the pace at which it needs to happen mean that – in terms of both mitigating future climate change and adapting to its effects - the type of leadership required locally has not been experienced in living memory.

The level of ambition required is analogous to the Victorian era, the only other time when British local government was at the heart of creating the fundamental conditions for both communities and businesses to be successful. At the time, it was about creating sanitation, utilities, infrastructure. Now it is about creating the physical and social infrastructure for low carbon living in our localities.

No-one alive today has experienced the type of leadership needed to make this happen. There is a great deal of learning to do along the way. I’ll be returning to this theme in future blogs.