Summary

Lewisham Council developed a new climate communications approach to better engage the borough’s residents, in all their diversity, with the council’s climate action. By shifting messaging away from technical terminology and towards local stories, trusted messengers, and tangible benefits, the council sought to strengthen public trust and participation. This was brought to life through a Climate Grants campaign featuring local residents and organisations, which successfully generated higher-than-average engagement across the borough.

The problem

Research consistently shows that the public supports local action to tackle climate change. However, they often fail to connect it with direct improvements to their quality of life, such as lower energy bills or improved health outcomes. Terms like ‘net zero’’, ‘decarbonisation’, ‘retrofit’ and ‘climate resilience’ can act as a barrier to understanding leaving many ongoing climate initiatives invisible to the public.

Lewisham is one of London's most diverse boroughs. 46% of residents come from Black, Asian, Mixed, or other minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds and over 100 languages are spoken in the borough’s schools. The average resident is 33 and many are renters. When the council spoke to young people, they said they cared about climate change but did not know what the solutions were, what was already happening locally, or how to get involved. The council recognised that while previous climate communications had focused heavily on abstract targets, the demographics of the borough required a refreshed approach, to be intentionally accessible, inclusive, and culturally relevant, with a renewed focus on tangible local benefits.

The barriers were internal as well as external. Around 40% of the council's staff, roughly 1,200 people, live in the borough, yet climate literacy across the organisation varied widely. Communications capacity is limited, with separate officers covering climate, air quality and green spaces. The result was that much of Lewisham's existing climate action was not being communicated regularly , either to residents or to the council's own workforce.

The solution, timeline, and key stakeholders

Over a two-year period, Lewisham Council established  evidence-led communications , grounded in  Climate Outreach's sector-leading Britain Talks Climate & Nature research, alongside UK100 guidance, Climate Barometer polling and wider public engagement studies. Collaboration between the Climate Resilience Team, the Communications Team, and elected members led to the development of six core principles:

• Make climate solutions local and relatable.
• Use real stories from residents, businesses, schools and community organisations.
• Focus on benefits such as saving money, improving health and strengthening communities.
• Use trusted local messengers.
• Reduce jargon and improve accessibility.
• Use dialogue, participation, creativity and culture to engage residents.

In practice this meant a guidance deck and staff intranet resource, workshopped with the lead member and communications team, were circulated to the biodiversity, air quality and waste teams. The same guide was used to brief the new cabinet member after the local elections.

The emphasis on creativity and culture built on Lewisham's year as London Borough of Culture in 2022, which showed residents connected with climate action when it was approached through art, music and community events.

Using these principles, Lewisham revised its approach to climate communications, both with the borough’s residents, and internally within the council too. The council rewrote all external-facing web pages, to emphasise the local benefits of climate action: healthier communities, cleaner streets, and cheaper bills, featuring professional multimedia case studies from the borough’s Climate Grants and community energy fund recipients. It also produced short explainer videos on terms residents found opaque, such as rain gardens, retrofit and the circular economy. Alongside this, an interactive climate action map was launched to highlight where action, supported by Lewisham’s Climate Grants programme, is taking place.

Putting the principles into action, in November 2025 the council launched a public campaign across around 40 council-owned bus stops and its social media channels. Each poster and video featured a Lewisham resident or organisation that had used a Climate Grant to take action, chosen to reflect both the borough’s demographics and the range of groups involved: a school, a high street business, social enterprises, grassroots organisations and a community space. Messengers included a teacher at Dalmain Primary School, whose building now runs on a heat pump and solar panels (“Solar powering a brighter future”); Sister Stella of Rastafari Movement UK, a long-standing figure in Lewisham’s climate community, whose INI  Food and Wellbeing Centre in Downham runs a surplus-food market and a new growing space (“Sowing seeds for a better future”); a sewing school offering free repair workshops in local libraries; an award-winning sustainable coffee business, and a community centre supporting people from asylum-seeker backgrounds, whose insulation grant was framed around the money saved on bills. Every poster carried a QR code pointing to a single destination, the Climate Grants microsite.

The council further supports the residents and groups highlighted in the campaign through twice-yearly events for grantees, where the council provides the space and the food and the grantees speak for themselves about what they have done and why. Guest speakers, including local designer Ryan Hawaii and ReLondon, have covered the business case for reuse and repair. The council also funds trusted community groups to run their own climate events, in the language they know works with their audiences. Together these are building a network of trusted messengers able to communicate local climate action with their communities.

For staff at the council, Lewisham created a practical communications guide for officers, recognising the importance of consistent messaging on local climate action across council teams. The borough also established a Staff Climate Hub on the intranet, published Climate Implications Guidance on engagement and influence, and refreshed its climate e-learning with a plain-English glossary and links to video case studies.

Impact

To date, Lewisham’s refreshed approach to climate communications has resulted in measurable increases in local engagement with the council’s climate action through a focus on diversifying messengers and those represented in climate-related campaigns. The communications campaign achieved significant digital reach, recording 23,617 views during its first three months and an 8% engagement rate that substantially outperformed standard digital benchmarks. The campaign directed 4,372 visitors to the Climate Grants microsite, generated 180 new mailing list subscribers, and drew 387 sign-ups across the four grantee events held to date..

The campaign was designed to drive applications to the Climate Grants programme, and 89 organisations applied in the round that followed.

Beyond digital metrics, the approach is fostering an active network of around 400 to 450 local organisations, businesses, and community leaders who receive news of the grants and attend the events. Notably, the campaign attracted no hostile comments on  Instagram, at a time when many councils report that any climate content draws a vocal minority of negative responses. It is also delivering meaningful social impact by increasing the visibility of Lewisham’s diverse population and giving residents practical, accessible examples of how local climate action is supporting jobs and skills, wellbeing, and community cohesion.

Lessons Learned

Human-centered storytelling consistently outperforms abstract or technical climate messaging, with Lewisham’s campaigns focused on tangible local benefits, such as lower bills and improved health, resulting in higher rates of engagement relative to those campaigns which emphasised climate targets and more abstract benefits.

While local authorities are the most trusted level of government to deliver action to tackle climate change, overall institutional trust is low. Residents engage far more readily with peers, local organisations, and recognised community figures than with messaging explicitly from the council. To this end, diverse local representation is critical to ensure all residents see themselves reflected in climate initiatives. Lewisham found its grassroots climate leadership was far more diverse than the climate policy sector as a whole, and that choosing messengers from that community, rather than from the council or from national voices, was the single most important decision in the campaign

Proactive, positive content is also a good defence against polarisation and misinformation. By filling its channels with real local people explaining what they had done and why, Lewisham gave residents something to engage with and left little room for hostile commentary.

Embedding internal staff engagement, and establishing a clear communications framework before launching public-facing campaigns, were essential prerequisites, ensuring that all teams felt comfortable with key messages on the council’s local climate action, and understood the messages which land best with residents. Ensuring sufficient time and capacity is committed to this preparatory work is key to the successful delivery of such communications and engagement campaigns.

The campaign could improve with better testing, and by measuring deeper impact. Lewisham has good reach and engagement data but does not yet know how residents' attitudes, hope or trust have shifted as a result, and testing messages through newsletters or panels has been slow to set up. Councils starting out should build in a simple way of measuring how messages land from the beginning.

Next steps

Lewisham plans to continue embedding its climate communications guidance across  council service departments, and within the launch of the council’s new Climate Strategy in April 2027, rewritten to the language in this research. For council teams, climate literacy training and support will be expanded through the rollout of new e-learning modules, with a focus on reducing jargon and emphasising the co-benefits of climate action.

The council aims to develop more participatory digital tools alongside its climate grants map, including a youth engagement strategy using creative digital media, developed with the Young Mayor’s team, youth peer research to test how hopeful climate messaging lands, and will continue to expand its networks of local climate leaders and community partnerships.

The council is also exploring ways to strengthen methods for evaluating long-term behavioural, attitudinal, and trust changes as a result of its revised approach to climate communications and engagement, sharing findings with other local authorities through  networks like UK100. The council is also participating in UK100 Connect, UK100's climate communications and engagement network for local government. Connect is providing a peer learning network for climate communications and engagement, and building capacity among both officers and elected members to continue delivering effective campaigns and approaches.

We are keen to hear from other councils working on similar approaches, and to collaborate on research, projects or funding bids that explore how hopeful climate communications can be tested and measured.

Links, contacts, and credits

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