Scotland’s Climate Week 2025 is celebrating and highlighting practical steps being taken in communities right across the country to support sustainability and climate resilience. Here, Heather Ashworth, our Development Officer, speaks one of the groups to reflect on their journey since working with her to develop their own Community Climate Action Plans.
Our Community Climate Action Plan (CCAP) programme, funded by the Scottish Government through Scotland’s COP26 community engagement programme ran from 2020 – 2023. I worked as a Community Climate Facilitator, supporting nine communities to design and implement climate action plans - helping them to reach Net Zero and adapt to climate change.
Through a series of workshops to gather information, identify climate action and action for nature that would be suitable for each community, we supported communities to create plans bespoke to their community and for their community.
I worked with communities in Arbroath, Camelon and Tamfourhill, Ferguslie Park, Islay, Jura, Kirriemuir, Knoydart, Newcastleton, Pollokshields, Shotts and Tayvallich. All unique in their approach to climate action and all inspiring in the way they approached the challenge.
Working with these communities was motivating and something that really struck me was seeing that the climate action being taken and planned also has a multitude of other benefits as well, for example, Ferguslie Park’s community market provides low-cost food produce but also reduces a significant amount of food waste. Sustainable Kirriemuir’s community garden allows for anyone to come and get involved supporting food growing but also supports mental wellbeing. Getting Better Together Shotts run a Community Transport scheme that supports non-profit organisations across Shotts reducing emissions but also mitigating loneliness and isolation and providing access to health and other services.
While our funding ended in 2023 and our support to the communities unfortunately ceased, we have kept in touch, and it was brilliant, when I reached out to see how they were getting on this year, that four came back straight away, happy to share what they had been up to and how things had changed over the past few years. We are hoping to share these in a series a case studies in the next few weeks.
The first community we’ll hear from is Camelon and Tamfourhill, who created a plan with us thanks to funding from the UK Community Renewal Fund. We asked them a few questions to see how they were getting on.
1. What climate action have you undertaken since creating your Community Climate Action Plan? Is this action that was planned in your action plan?
Our Community Climate Action Plan Core Group continued to meet which encouraged the Plan’s agreed actions to move forward, and this also facilitated the involvement of other partners.
A significant advancement was the Tamfourhill Community Hubs Energy Efficiency and Net Zero Project which secured 80% funding from the Community and Renewable Energy Fund with the remaining 20% funding being secured from SP Energy Networks Transmission Net Zero Fund. This enabled the Tamfourhill Community Hub to install an array of energy efficiency measures at the Hub, including the full insulation of the walls and roof, installation of a roof mounted solar PV system, an air source heat pump, battery storage, LED lighting and heating controls. This is a significant contribution to achieving improved sustainability, energy efficiency and reducing the community hubs carbon footprint.
The CCAP Core Group has continued to support local community actions, including, tree and pollinator planting and recycling focused community arts projects.
Another important development has been the creation of a young person led Climate Action Plan and through funding sourced from Forth Environment Link (FEL), the Safer Communities Youth Action Project (SCYAP) facilitated three climate action events in February and March 2025 which involved over 80 young people (11-16 years old) from the community and local schools confirming their own priority activities and themes for climate action in their local area.
The CCAP Core Group is now more focussed upon young people and the implementation of the SCYAP young people’s climate action plan, the key partners, include Falkirk High School, Falkirk Council, FEL, TCG, TCH & Scottish Canals and the Core Group is chaired and coordinated by SCYAP. We have supported this work and attended a few events through our Climate Action Schools programme.
2. What have you learned from being a part of the Community Climate Action plan programme and were there challenges putting any of your actions into place?
The key challenge has been to keep partners involved and often the work has fallen on the SCYAP to coordinate, develop and seek external funding to implement. The process for developing and confirming the Plan was good and the main challenge thereafter was getting other partners to commit time. Our experience was that local young people and Falkirk High School were the most motivated to move the plan forward and this has been positive in term of local youth action. The involvement of FEL has also been an excellent addition to the Core Group and linked our work to the regional climate hubs.
3. How important was the Community Climate Action Plan programme in kickstarting further action in your community?
The plan was critically important in facilitating climate action in our community and has had impact upon all of the participating partners. The plan provided a good framework for developing and implementing different activities and for monitoring their progress and was a useful reference point for securing additional resources and funding.
4. Have you seen any additional positive impacts in the community after undertaking the CCAP programme? For example; stronger community networks, visible behaviour change, actions that go beyond reducing emissions such as improving health, tackling loneliness etc.
The key additionality for us has been the involvement and empowerment of local young people who have got really involved with climate action activities. They have a good sense of ownership of the programmes that SCYAP have supported, and this has strengthened our ongoing youth work, accredited groupwork programmes and helped established our youth participation and youth action groups. Young people have been at the centre of local community developments: the design and construction of our wild and mindfulness benches in local parks, planting an orchard, putting in pollinators and bulbs and an array of community art and environmental improvement projects which have used recycled materials aligned to different nature and active travel themes. These activities have enabled progress against our other wider youth work outcomes:
- young People will have better connections with the wider community;
- young people will improve their mental and physical health and wellbeing;
- young people will increase their social skills, confidence to learn and levels of attainment; and
- young people will grow as active citizens, expressing their voice and enabling change.
5. Would you encourage others to undertake creating a Community Climate Action Plan?
Yes, absolutely we would but we acknowledge that ongoing support is a requirement and that may necessitate worker or staff inputs. As a youth action approach, we would be happy to promote or communicate the worth and benefits of being involved with our CCAP.
I’d like to thank John Hosie from Camelon and Tamfourhill for sharing this update with us, I was delighted to hear about the fantastic work that has continued since we worked on the community climate action plan together. In particular, hearing about the completion of the Energy Efficiency and Net Zero Project for the Tamfourhill Community Hub which was a pipe dream when we started. Seeing young people now leading the project and being empowered to taken action in their community is really inspiring to see.
Further funding of the Community Climate Action Plan programme will help numerous communities to come together and build a climate action plan that is best suited for them.
You can find out more about our work to support Community Climate Action Plans | Keep Scotland Beautiful and to read testimonials and case studies from the groups.
If you want to get involved, or you would like to learn more about funding this programme please contact Heather directly at Heather.Ashworth@KeepScotlandBeautiful.org
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