Christopher Hammond, Membership Director and former leader of Southampton City Council, appointed new UK100 Chief Executive.

Founder and former Chief Executive, Polly Billington, has stepped down to campaign as the parliamentary candidate for the new seat of East Thanet.

Christopher Hammond calls for a “paradigm shift away from centralised decision-making”.

Local authorities face “Kafkaesque” barriers to achieving Net Zero goals, reveals a comprehensive new UK100 report. Powers in Place calls for a new Net Zero Local Powers Bill and Net Zero Delivery Framework. The report is released as UK100 joins Chris Skidmore MP’s Local Mission Zero Network and announces plans to work together to drive forward policy solutions to overcome the barriers to local Net Zero.

Responding to the Spring Budget, UK100 welcomes the short-term energy bill relief but reiterates its call for a long-term solution, targeted at the most vulnerable.

This week Sheffield became the latest city to implement a Clean Air Zone (CAZ) to tackle an estimated 500 deaths a year related to air pollution in the city.

Collaboration in Gloucestershire is a shining example of local government leadership. An example we hope the Transport Secretary and the national government will follow in supporting regions across the country to collaborate for local Net Zero.

Since 2019 the majority of UK local authorities have declared a Climate Emergency, and 327 have produced a climate action plan of how they plan to reach Net Zero by their own target date (if they have one) of 2030, 2040 or 2050. These plans vary in length, design, topics covered and ambition. So how can you tell which council has a good climate action plan, a plan that the council is actually able to implement, and that the subsequent actions will mean that the council reaches Net Zero before 2050? Annie Pickering, Co-Director of Climate Emergency UK, writes for UK100's blog on climate action plans.

UK100's report argues that Birmingham, Camden, Hertfordshire, Leeds and Nottingham are leading the way on integrating climate and clean air policies but Ministers' "refusal to recognise the importance of joined-up policy making" is stalling wider progress.

On Friday, all the local authorities in Gloucestershire set a significant milestone by signing an agreement to work together on a county-wide project to tackle transport decarbonisation and achieve Net Zero emissions by 2045.

UK100 Chief Executive, Polly Billington, was invited to be a part of the panel at the official launch of Rt Hon Chris Skidmore OBE MP's Mission Zero Net Zero Review at King's College London on Monday alongside the Climate Minister, Graham Stuart MP.

This is an edited version of Polly's foreword from UK100's 2022 Annual Review.