Climate adaptation and resilience

The Met Office predicts that as the UK climate changes, summer heatwaves and severe flooding will happen more often.

Adaptation can help to ensure that people, nature, places, and infrastructure are well prepared to deal with these challenges and resilient to potential impacts.

The climate risk map

The climate risk map enables us to identify vulnerable residents to climate related hazards and identify adaption and resilience priorities.

The climate risk map has been used to:

• Identify priority locations for parklets across the borough. Parklets are the conversion of small spaces of land to green interventions that reduce environmental risks (e.g. flooding, overheating, and air pollution)
• Inform the climate risk and vulnerability assessment undertaken as part of the the Wandsworth Adaptation and Resilience Strategy 2025-2035

Climate stories, hurdles and ideas

We delivered an interactive climate change and air quality workshop at the senior leadership team meeting in March.

The theme of the workshop was ‘Stories, Hurdles and Ideas’. This informed the new Adult Social Care and Public Health Climate Change Action plan. Further work is in progress to implement the action plan.

Internal training

Our staff have access to climate change and air quality training modules. The training has been completed by numerous employees so far.

Behavioural insights project

The behavioural insights project involved vulnerable groups in the borough as well as GPs to help gather information on their perceptions of climate change and its impact on health. 

This project highlighted measures vulnerable groups could take to adapt to and mitigate against the impacts of climate change.

South West London Integrated Care System

We’re involved with the South West London Integrated Care System which aims to improve the quality of people’s experience of care in South West London.

We’ve used the climate change risk map to help review the impact of climate change on the NHS estate.

Through the climate change behavioural insights project we have:

• Help raise awareness of training modules on climate change and air pollution for NHS staff
• Attended their workshops to contribute to the development of their climate plans

Adaptation and Resilience Strategy

We have developed an Adaptation and Resilience Strategy. This includes a climate risk and vulnerability assessment, adaptation and resilience framework, and priorities.

The CCS team collaborated with various council teams and engaged with external stakeholders, including the Greater London Authority (GLA), to develop the strategy. Internal engagement included two workshops, a survey, and consultations.

The climate risk map, along with other datasets like the UK climate projections, was used to identify risks and vulnerabilities. The helps understand current climate risks, past changes, and future projections in Wandsworth. The strategy is designed to be complementary to the annual Climate Action Plans.

The strategy focuses on long-term adaption and resilience priorities, while the annual Climate Action Plans outline the short to medium term action and delivery timelines.

An implementation framework was created, which will be embedded across the organisation to ensure a consistent and robust approach to adaptation and resilience by all teams.