Peer Learning West Leicestershire

Peer Learning Days in the East Midlands are coming to West Leicestershire on Tuesday 11th June. This is the fourth event for local authorities in the programme, following on from successful Peer Learning Days in Northamptonshire, Derby and Leicester in recent months. This event is also the first to be hosted by and designed for district and borough councils. The hosts are Blaby District Council, Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council and North West Leicestershire District Council and participants will get to visit each council in turn to hear about their work. The focus is on energy efficiency and behaviour change, with:

• Blaby featuring its work on achieving positive behavioural change with staff
• Hinckley and Bosworth showcasing its new Hinckley Hub building - and discussing how it has achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating
• North West Leicestershire presenting its high profile Green Footprints campaign with local businesses

The day starts in Narborough at Blaby District Council's offices and takes in Hinckley and Coalville with bus transport provided throughout.

Booking is essential, via Lois Dale at East Midlands Councils, tel. 01664 502 624 or email: [email protected]

Download the draft agenda here

Previous Peer Learning Days

The third event was hosted by Leicester City Council who provided insights into extending District Heating, reducing carbon emissions from corporate property and developing a high profile city-wide Climate Change Programme of Action for the Deputy City Mayor. The day also included a visit to one of the city's surface water flood risk hot-spots, a tour around some of the local area and discussion about community engagement.

The second event on 14th November was hosted by Derby CIty Council who explained how they tackle the causes and effects of climate change locally in one of the region's large cities.

This second event was the first to showcase action in an urban environment and included looking at how the Council is tackling flood risk and enhancing economic potential from the River Derwent, which flows right through the city centre. Part of the Council's response has been to harness hydroelectric power which it is using in its main corporate building the Council House (currently undergoing major refuirbishment), but the other long term approach is a masterplan designed to enable flood protection to be improved through new developments along the river corridor. This will help to enhance the riverside environment and is preferable to the construction of very high flood walls.

Other highlights included looking at how public housing has been retrofitted with external wall insulation and solar PV to improve thermal efficiency and reduce fuel bills for the most disadvantaged. Further projects to reduce carbon and costs for householders and small businesses were also explained. The City Council is revising its climate change strategy and has recently revived the Derby Climate Alliance in order to do this as a partnership exercise.

This programme started on 10th October in Kettering, hosted by Northamptonshire County Council. Over 20 people from councils across the East Midlands took part and heard first hand about Northamptonshire's approach, successes and challenges. Particularly notable are the strong partnership based way of working, successive accreditation from the Carbon Trust to their Standard, impressive financial savings, embedding resilience principles into mainstream processes (including the new Local Nature Partnership) and an innovative use of commissioning.

The project was devised by the Local Government sector group of Climate East Midlands and is funded by East Midlands Improvement and Efficiency Partnership via the Climate Change Skills Programme. The coordination, event organisation, marketing and facilitation is being supported by Climate East Midlands. The target audience is people from within local government and their local strategic partners who are actively engaged in tackling the local causes and/or consequences of climate change.