Over the past seven years I have had the privilege of supporting over 500 people taking part in 17 climate change citizens’ juries and assemblies across the UK, including the influential Cumbria Climate Assembly.
I’ve heard from people aged 11 to 86, from Aberdeen to Bude, from climate activists to sceptics and everything in between. During these processes a striking pattern has emerged: strong support for bold, urgent action on climate change, and just as often, frustration that local councils are expected to tackle huge challenges without the powers needed to do so.
Similarly, as extreme heat warnings and images of wildfires and floods have filled our screens over the last months, the polling shows rising levels of concern over climate change: 74% of Britons feel concerned about climate change today, compared to 69% remembering being concerned prior to the summer.
People are worried and expect government to act, but lasting solutions depend on bringing people into decision-making so that policies reflect their needs and command public support.
These realities exist in a political context where MPs are consistently underestimating public support for plans to achieve net zero, and Reform and the Conservatives have explicitly stated they will repeal the UK’s landmark climate change act and net zero target - reversing two decades of cross-party consensus. Confidence in political institutions remains low, with only 9% thinking politicians are trustworthy and many people are experiencing climate policy as something done to them rather than with them, with costs falling unevenly across society.
Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s devolution experiment is exciting because it has the potential to give citizens a meaningful role in shaping policy, helping to create decisions that are both effective and capable of attracting broad political support. But, devolution does not necessarily mean democratisation.
The challenge ahead is to ensure that the very welcome transfer of power and responsibility to local leaders and their ability to raise substantial funding also opens the space for citizen engagement, not consolidation of power in the hands of mayors with a weak electoral mandate. In the North of England, for example, Greater Manchester mayor Bev Craig was elected this summer with a turnout of 25% and in 2024 Liverpool mayor, Steve Rotherham, was re-elected with a 24% turnout.
Devolution does not have to stop with mayors
The key test for devolution is not simply whether more powers move downstream from Westminster, but whether those powers are then opened up to citizens in lasting, practical and meaningful ways.
Burnham’s devolution plans could be the entry point for a serious reappraisal of what an ambitious, meaningful strategy for citizen participation could look like. As we wait nervously to see the newly promised guidance on approaches to public participation, the commitment in the recent Government policy paper, Rewiring the State, to ‘replace the current model of consultation by default with new and modern forms of public participation’ is promising. The realisation of what a new statutory duty for neighbourhood governance arrangements could look like as part of the Devolution and Community Empowerment Act also has great potential.
But, for participatory governance to become embedded in policymaking, existing and new local authorities need help. There is huge support for this direction of travel from many who have been elected or employed to drive local government, but their efforts to change culture from one where the public is seen as a risk to be managed rather than a resource to be tapped, are hampered. These advocates for change must battle against hierarchical rule driven bureaucracies unable to reward risk taking and experimentation as well as pitiful budgets.
We need to be able to connect democratic innovations - such as participatory budgeting, digital democracy, citizens’ assemblies and legislative theatre - together to build a stronger and more resilient democratic ecosystem that meets people where they are and ensures those whose voices are all so often marginalised, are heard loud and clear. We can learn from places such as Paris, where neighbourhood forums for local concerns, participatory budgeting for resource allocation, citizens’ assemblies for complex trade-offs and digital tools for wider involvement sit alongside clear duties on local government to respond. The example is not without its problems, but the offer is there for people to choose multiple routes into decision making.
Make participation permanent
We also need sustained participatory mechanisms, not just one-offs or a ‘carnival of participatory methods’ that don’t result in any meaningful change. Instead, devolution should open the door for the institutionalisation of engagement, such as making participatory budgeting a required aspect of councils’ budget-setting processes.
This message comes loud and clear from the Cumbria Climate Assembly, a diverse group of 42 residents who deliberated on the topic of climate action for some 30 hours last year. One year after the process completed its work, with our support, assembly members continue to push for change, advocating for one of their top recommendations: the establishment of a permanent citizens’ assembly as part of the new Mayoral Combined Authority, which will exist from 2027. A permanent process that is baked into an organisation’s constitution means politicians and officers are no longer unsure about how to receive and respond to recommendations, and, through repeated cycles of assembly recruitment the wider population learns what having a voice outside of the ballot box can really look like.
A participation strategy that falls far short
The Cumbria Climate Assembly is held up as an example in Energising Britain, the government’s first ever climate change and public engagement strategy. This strategy should place citizens at the centre of decision-making, improving both the quality and legitimacy of policy while strengthening public support for action.
However, in its current iteration, the strategy is woefully inadequate. It is dangerously out of step with the scale and urgency of the crisis and the need for us to make immediate, huge reductions in emissions, not defer them through over-optimistic future assumptions. It is over reliant on the role of increased public awareness and behaviour change efforts which serve to problematise the individual, not the wider social and economic systems people live within and when delivered in isolation are proven to be ineffective. It offers no serious infrastructure for citizen deliberation at scale and the transferring of power to citizens and communities. It does not prepare the public for the trade-offs and structural changes that are needed, and it views our task as a technical transition rather than a social transformation which must be shaped by the public. The strategy should be refreshed in light of the many positive opportunities that devolution presents to build a large scale, robust ecosystem of participation, including permanent embedded structures and clear duties on local government to respond.
The increased public interest in climate after the summer and the opportunities presented by devolution and rewiring the state create the perfect policy window for meaningful public participation to become embedded in decision-making. If devolution is to deliver on its democratic potential, the existence of permanent citizens’ assemblies, such as the idea of a Cumbrian permanent assembly, should no longer be seen as an interesting democratic curiosity. It should be seen as a normal and expected part of how decisions are made.
