UK100 has submitted a response to Defra’s consultation on the proposed strategy for the Fifth Round of the Adaptation Reporting (ARP5). The consultation explores how climate adaptation reporting should evolve across sectors and levels of government to improve resilience to climate risks.

The submission highlights the important role of strategic and local authorities in delivering place-based adaptation, alongside the need for stronger coordination, clearer national use of reporting outputs, and sufficient funding and support to ensure reporting drives meaningful action.

It outlines key priorities for the proposed reforms:

Strengthening adaptation reporting across sectors and governance levels: The proposed objectives and principles provide a stronger foundation for improving the consistency, comparability and quality of climate adaptation reporting. However, reporting frameworks should place greater emphasis on measurable outcomes, practical resilience improvements, and how reporting informs long-term decision-making, infrastructure planning and investment.

Recognising the role of strategic and local authorities: Expanding reporting to include Strategic Authorities is welcome given their growing role in transport, housing, spatial planning, economic development and local resilience. However, Strategic Authorities cannot report effectively in isolation, as many adaptation and resilience functions are delivered through constituent local authorities. Reporting arrangements should therefore support collaboration across governance levels and reflect on-the-ground delivery.

Providing adequate funding and capacity support: Reporting requirements must be accompanied by sufficient long-term funding, technical guidance, data and capacity. Constituent local authorities should also receive support where they are expected to contribute evidence, delivery activity and local implementation insight into strategic authority reporting.

Ensuring reporting supports action and implementation: Reporting should not become solely a compliance exercise. ARP5 should help organisations identify climate risks, prioritise adaptation measures, strengthen governance arrangements and integrate resilience into operational planning, investment and service delivery.

Reducing duplication across reporting frameworks: Many organisations are already subject to multiple climate, infrastructure and resilience reporting requirements. ARP5 should align with existing mandatory and voluntary reporting frameworks, including climate disclosures and sectoral reporting obligations, to minimise duplication and reduce administrative burdens.

Clarifying how reporting outputs will be used nationally: There should be greater clarity on how information gathered through ARP5 will be analysed and used to inform national resilience planning, infrastructure policy, future Climate Change Risk Assessments, and cross-sector adaptation priorities.

Overall, UK100 called for continued collaboration with government to ensure ARP5 strengthens adaptation capability across sectors and places, supports practical resilience action, and helps embed climate adaptation within long-term planning, investment and service delivery at all levels of government.