Sporta Scotland
Sporta Scotland
Climate Change Report
The challenge
Sporta is the national association of leisure and cultural trusts, its members operate a wide range of leisure and cultural services in communities the length and breadth of the UK. With over 1,600 facilities, they have a combined turnover of more than £1 billion and employ around 50,000 staff.
In 2017, Sporta Scotland members committed to undertake an analysis of their environmental performance focusing on climate change and its impacts for the Trusts. This was in the expectation that the Scottish Government will, in the future, require all businesses to put in place appropriate measures to manage and report their climate change activities, with any non-compliance likely to become a significant business risk.
With the Trusts at various stages of development in relation to their management of environmental performance, and in some cases with limited existing data to benchmark against or processes for assessing climate impact, Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB) was commissioned to provide guidance and assistance to establish the priorities and focus of a Climate Change Reporting Programme. With the objective of enabling each Trust to produce its own climate change report to give them information on the actions they could take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to a changing climate and promote sustainable development.
Our approach
To support this objective a partnership agreement was established between Sporta and KSB. The individual Trusts then committed to this agreement to allow KSB to provide support to enable them to draft and implement their reports, using the model adopted by Scotland’s local authorities and public bodies. By making their own commitment to the Programme, each Trust started its own journey towards greater sustainability and improved environmental performance.
Seven Trusts were selected for a pilot Programme to test results which could then be rolled out across the Sporta estate by the end of 2019. These were, Active Stirling, AngusAlive, East Ayrshire Leisure, Live Active Leisure (Perth and Kinross), Kilmarnock Leisure Centre Trust, Live Borders and Sport Aberdeen.
The team from KSB provided the following key resources and outputs for each Trust:
- Access to a Sustainability and Climate Change Officer for support and assistance
- Chairing of meetings to facilitate and agree a programme of support to ensure accurate calculation of greenhouse gas emissions directly attributed to the Trust’s activities
- Enabling access to local authority Climate Change Reports allowing for peer to peer engagement and alignment of climate change planning
- Hosting of Climate Change reporting workshops
- Generation of desk-based research providing updates on sustainability and climate change action within each Trusts local authority
- Development of a web based digital platform which hosted comprehensive information about climate change and climate change reporting
- Creation of peer to peer valuation to receive feedback, share information and explore good practice
- Facilitation of review meetings with written feedback on draft reports and establishing the process of embedding a continuous environmental improvement programme
- Development of a reporting template to enable each Trust to communicate stakeholders on their 2017/18 Climate Change Report outputs
How we made a difference
By June 2018 all seven Trusts in the pilot programme had completed their own Climate Change report. KSB provided all the training, coaching and mentoring to produce these reports and ensured that services, where appropriate, where delivered through a group structure to achieve economies of scale.
These reports align with the established Scottish Public bodies reporting framework which now allows the Trusts and their respective local authorities to compare data and better allocate and manage resources, and ultimately provides a benchmark from which to set goals and targets for future emissions reductions. Creating efficiencies and therefore savings.
Each report is also compatible with both the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, (a corporate accounting and reporting standard) and ISO 14064-1. Alignment with this globally recognised accounting framework will future proof the Trusts from legislative reporting demands that may come into force in future years.
Additionally, Sporta Scotland and the Trusts that participated in this programme have shown great leadership on acting on climate change, in line with the Scottish Government’s ambitions, so there is both political and environmental benefits in this achievement. While the wider influence on staff, customers and other stakeholders is an area which has potential for real reputational gain particularly in relation to any future tendering and procurement processes.
Completing the first Climate Change Report for Live Borders has been a really beneficial process which has allowed us to produce a carbon baseline across 62 facilities. The support provided through Keep Scotland Beautiful allowed us to complete the report without difficulty and use this to formulate a robust Climate Change Action plan for the Organisation
Paul Cowan, Live Borders
