Climate change duties - draft statutory guidance for public bodies: consultation
Contents
The questions in this consultation are intended to gather your feedback on the content of the guidance. Please read or refer to the guidance while responding.
We know that not everyone will wish or feel able to answer all of the questions in this consultation. You’re encouraged to answer the questions you’d like to respond to, but you don’t have to respond to all of them.
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Key content in the Statutory Guidance
All public bodies will be responsible for some direct greenhouse gas emissions, for example through their day-to-day operations, estate and fleet. However, many public bodies will, through their varied functions, have a wide and significant influence on climate change action and sustainable development far beyond their organisational boundaries.
The proposed content of the guidance includes:
- The background to the guidance and an explanation of the relevant legislation
- The broader context, wider related legislation and policy, and impact assessments
- Climate change and inequalities
- How public bodies should approach putting the climate change duties into practice, including the importance of leadership and governance, mainstreaming and how to take climate change into account in decision making
- Dedicated chapters on each of the three climate change duties: reducing emissions, adaptation, and acting in the most sustainable way
- Reporting on climate action and progress towards targets and outcomes
- A Carbon Management Plan template (Annex A) aimed at smaller and less complex public bodies that may have limited capacity to measure, monitor and report on their carbon emissions
- A Climate Change Plan template for local authorities (Annex B) intended to help them demonstrate their compliance with the three climate change duties, across their corporate and area wide boundaries.
What are the climate change duties?
The duties are set out in section 44(1) and require that a relevant public body must, in exercising its functions, act –
(a) in the way best calculated to contribute to the delivery of national emissions reduction targets (i.e. mitigation)
(b) in the way best calculated to help deliver the National Adaptation Programme
(c) in a way that it considers most sustainable.
Who are the ‘public bodies’?
(i) those listed in Schedule 1
(ii) or those designated by order under section 5(1).
More than 180 of these public bodies also have a duty to report annually on their compliance with the climate change duties under The Climate Change (Duties of Public Bodies: Reporting Requirements) (Scotland) Order 2015, as amended. Public bodies required to report annually are listed in Schedule 1 of the Reporting Order.
What is ‘Statutory Guidance’?
Section 45(1) of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 requires Scottish Ministers to give guidance to the relevant public bodies in relation to the climate change duties. When deciding how best to fulfil their duties, these public bodies are required to take the guidance into account – under the Act they must ‘have regard’ to such guidance.
Section 45(2) requires Scottish Ministers to consult with local authorities and other relevant bodies before formally issuing the guidance. This consultation exercise fulfils that obligation.
Guidance issued under section 45 is known as Statutory Guidance due to this basis in law.
Statutory Guidance for relevant public bodies under section 45 was first published in 2011. This new guidance, once formally published, will supersede the 2011 Statutory Guidance in full.
| Page | Response |
|---|---|
| Climate change and equalities | 0 of 2 questions answered |
| Taking climate into account in decision making | 0 of 2 questions answered |
| The first duty: reducing emissions (climate change mitigation) | 0 of 3 questions answered |
| The second duty: adaptation | 0 of 2 questions answered |
| The third duty: acting in the most sustainable way | 0 of 2 questions answered |
| Reporting of scope 3 emissions | 0 of 2 questions answered |
| Overall reflections | 0 of 2 questions answered |
| About you (Required) | 0 of 10 questions answered |
| Evaluation | 0 of 1 questions answered |