Citizen Visioning

How can we create a happy and fair Coleford whilst responding to the challenges of climate change?

In December 2018, Forest of Dean District Council (The District Council) declared a climate emergency, setting strong targets: to achieve carbon neutrality for both council operations and the district by 2030.

The District Council’s 2022-2025 Climate Action Plan recognises the opportunities to deliver local prosperity by taking climate action to achieve economic, health and social co-benefits. The plan also recognises the importance of engagement to prioritise and deliver actions.

As part of Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living programme, the council worked with Involve (who wrote this report), Ipsos, and Quantum to run a citizen visioning project. The District Council wanted to develop citizen engagement suited to the rural geography of the district, and had an ambition to develop climate action plans at the level of local communities. Coleford was chosen to hold the citizen visioning project after The District Council co-ordinated a competitive expression of interest process amongst the four town councils in the district.

The first stage of the process saw wide community engagement and youth participation. The outcomes from this fed into the citizen visioning process.