Welcome to your Lancashire

Facts

Fact: Extreme weather events disrupt our services, affect the lives of our residents and cost local  authorities money.  

Fact: Climate change experts agree that extreme weather events will become more frequent in the coming years. 

Fact: Climate change is a foreseeable risk and one which should be considered alongside other risks.  

Fact: Planned adaptation is more effective than last minute reactive adaptation. 

Fact: Adaptation may not be cost-free, but planned adaptation is usually less expensive than responding to an emergency or retrofitting to cope with altered climate risks.

Adapting to climate change in Lancashire

Adapting to climate change in Lancashire

What is adaptation and why should we adapt?

Adaptation to climate change refers to the programme of work that needs to be done to adjust the way we live in response to actual or expected climate change.

According to the UK Government, “Adapting to climate change means adapting the way we do things - in all areas of our lives - to respond to the changing circumstances. It means not only protecting against negative impacts, but also making us better able to take advantage of any benefits.”
 
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) definition of adaptation is "any adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities".
 
Climate change will have significant impacts on communities and how services are delivered. The likelihood and magnitude of these impacts will vary according to localities and the individual. It is important that we become a “climate ready” council by firstly developing an understanding about how climate change is likely to affect our area and ability to deliver our services and then ensure that we take appropriate actions to prepare for the impacts of climate change.
 
The action we take will vary across services and localities but may include improving education, awareness and training on the impacts of climate change, as well as taking tangible steps such as planting drought-resistant seeds and creating better coastal protection.

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Adaptation wizard for Lancashire

The Lancashire Adaptation Wizard is a tool to help you adapt to climate change.

It will take you through a 4 stage process that will help you to assess your vulnerability to current climate and future climate change, undertake a risk assessment and identify options to address your key climate risks.
 
The Lancashire adaptation wizard aims to help service managers and business planners to:
  • Understand how climate change might affect service delivery and why action should be taken to adapt to climate change (by providing climate projection data, details of recent weather events and incidents and advice on assessing vulnerabilities to extreme weather events by monitoring service impacts)
  • Assess the likelihood of future events occurring (by using future climate projections data)
  • Complete an extreme weather and climate change risk assessment (by providing templates and completed examples of climate change risk assessments)
  •  Identify adaptation actions (by providing examples of adaptation in practice)  
If you already consider extreme weather events as part of your service planning then the emphasis is on ensuring that the latest predictions of weather and climate are used as part of service risk assessments. The wizard will also help service planners to recognise where 'adaptation' is already taking place within a service or where more needs to be done.  By asking our services to work through the adaptation wizard and complete the risk assessment we can ensure that Lancashire County Councils adaptation action plan is as comprehensive as possible. 
 
The Lancashire wizard has been adapted from the UKCIP (UK Climate Impact Programme) adaptation wizard.  
 
UKCIP is mostly funded by Defra to provide information, help and support to Local Authorities and businesses seeking to understand and adapt to the impacts of Climate Change.

Wizard part 1 

Part 1 of the adaptation wizard explores how you can begin to identify climate change impacts.
 

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Our statutory duty and NI 188

National Adaptation Policy

National Government is demanding that all its departments, local authorities and public bodies have adequately considered their vulnerabilities to current and future weather and climate and have taken appropriate steps to respond to the risks that these pose to future service delivery – referred to as adaptation. Central Government Departments and public bodies such as utilities are being instructed to formally report on how they are doing this and what their adaptation actions are expected to be.
 
Local authorities and adaptation
 
Local councils have key role in ensuring that their communities are sustainable in the face of a changing climate and Lancashire County Council has made a commitment to ensuring that its services are well adapted to the inevitable impacts of climate change by understanding the risks associated with climate change and ensuring that appropriate action is taken. Our performance in relation to adaptation will be measured through National Indicator NI188 – planning to adapt to climate change. It is our duty to ensure that we can demonstrate that we:
  • Understand what impact climate change could have on our area
  • Ensure that current policies, strategies and plans include provision for the impacts of climate change
  • That we can identify and assess the risks from climate change to our services
  • That developments with a lifetime of more than 20 years required to factor in climate change
  • That our Emergency Planning service take into account climate change
  • That we are addressing climate change in our local Community Strategy or Community Plan
National Indicator – NI188 planning to adapt to climate change
 
NI 188 measures local authority performance against four levels of achievement with the first level requiring a basic assessment of current and potential impacts of the weather on our services. 
 
Lancashire County Council achieved level 1 of the indicator in March 2009 by completing an initial vulnerability assessment known as an LCLIP.  You can find out more about this at the LCLIP section.  We are currently undertaking a comprehensive risk assessment of current and future vulnerabilities to extreme weather and climate and this will support the development of a 'comprehensive adaptation action plan'.  This exercise will help us to identify where adaptation is already taking place within our services and hopefully identify areas where additional action may be required.   The adaptation action plan for Lancashire will be published here when complete.
 
The Defra website has plenty of information about adaptation and our duty in relation to NI188.  There are also some useful documents about how Local Parish Councils and communities can 'adapt to a changing climate'.
 
Find out more about what the Environment Agency is doing in relation to climate change adaptation.

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Climate change in Lancashire

Climate Change in often seen as a 'global' issue with impacts such as rises in sea level, flooding, temperature increases and extreme weather having much less effect on the North West of England than other parts of the world.  Without a doubt some areas of the world are already suffering from the effects of extreme weather events being attributed to climate change and many are expected to be greatly affected in the future however much we cut our CO2 emissions. Whilst the North West may not expect to experience some of these extremes there will be changes in local weather patterns that may cause disruptions to business and distress to individuals here in Lancashire.  Exactly how climate change will affect Lancashire and their extent is difficult to predict but there are some changes we should expect and plan for, these include: 

  • Increased mean temperature
  • Reduced summer rainfall
  • Increased winter precipitation
  • Increased likelihood of extreme weather events

For more information about climate change in Lancashire and the North West view the Lancashire Projections page.

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