Community Climate Fund
Changing Lives with Community Climate Action
Join us as a partner and give your business the chance to bring lasting benefit to communities.
Our Community Climate Fund will help businesses and communities come together to tackle both the climate and cost-of-living crisis at the same time. While the issues may seem very different, many of the solutions to the climate crisis such as retrofitting buildings, community food growing and/or energy schemes, will also address the cost-of-living crisis.
Working in 25 places by 2030, we aim to contribute £100m of value to community-led climate action that helps cut carbon, build resilience to economic and environmental shocks and create opportunities for better lives. Accelerating a just transition to a resilient, net zero future is the key to creating lasting success for businesses and communities.
Our Ambition
Accelerate a just transition
Contribute to accelerating the UK’s progress towards net zero and climate resilience, cutting carbon emissions adapting to current and future climate risks.
Create long-term change in places
Develop a shared vision and action plan that prioritises the issues that matter most to local communities, to improve people’s quality of life in the places where they live and work.
Give voice and agency to communities
Build a community-led approach that puts local people’s voices front and centre, equipping, empowering and supporting local people to act on their priorities.
Community prosperity and wellbeing
Improve health and wellbeing of people and nature. Tackling root causes of the cost-of-living crisis to build lasting prosperity for better life chances for people of all ages and backgrounds.
Our Approach
We will harness the power of the Business in the Community (BITC) network, bringing together our expertise on climate action and place-based regeneration with the skills and expertise of our members to make a difference for communities.
A tried and tested place approach
Engaging communities to understand issues, opportunities an
d help to create community led action plans.
Shared vision and practical action
A future vision co-created locally, owned by all with strategic pilot projects which could create significant impact if scaled.
Skills and funding support
Funding, expertise and resources to enable community groups and their beneficiaries to save money, access new opportunities, and become more resilient.
Innovative financial models
Harnessing markets to scale innovative solutions (e.g. community resilience bonds, harnessing offsetting).
Sharing learning widely
Influencing government to create enabling policy frameworks based on our experience of what works.
Project Opportunities Overview
Based on engagement with communities, archetype projects have been scoped based giving due consideration for ease of implementation, risk, and return on investment. These fall into three broad categories.
Community asset projects
Capital projects to improve communities and deliver climate positive outcomes.
– Energy efficiency and climate resilience projects
– Repurposing community spaces
– Large scale retrofit and Asset Transfer
Community support projects
Revenue projects to alleviate the impacts of the cost-of-living crisis and improve wellbeing.
– Shared Resource Libraries
– Repair Cafés
– Community Gardens
Strategic community projects
Projects to drive long-term transformational change in the local economy.
– Community climate enterprise hubs
– Skills and capabilities for green jobs
– Community energy generation
Our current places
Tees Valley
Former industrial heartlands of the North East, now set to be at the forefront of the green economy with the Teesworks low-carbon industrial zone home to innovative sustainable businesses.
However nearly two in five of children live in poverty, wages are 10% lower than the national average, and poor health outcomes resulting in lower life-expectancy than the rest of the UK.
We are in the process of co-creating projects with communities which will go live in the first half of 2024.
Bradford
A dynamic and diverse city, with 153 languages spoken, and the youngest city in Europe – a quarter of residents are under 16. It is however the fifth most income deprived, and sixth most employment deprived area in England.
We have been working in Bradford since 2020, bringing together a cross sector collaboration of business, public sector and community organisations to develop a shared vision for long term transformational change.
Following extensive community engagement, we will be announcing our initial investments in 2024.
How can you get involved?
We’re looking for partners who want to accelerate their own just transition journey to support the fund and work with us to build lasting prosperity, changing the lives of millions of people across the UK. To begin, we will be working in two places, Bradford and Tees Valley, but as the fund progresses, we will have more opportunities in other locations across the UK.
Founding Partner
As a founding partner who is with us from the start of our journey, you will have the chance to contribute strategically and lead on workstreams that align with your ambitions.
Place Partner
As a place partner, you will demonstrate your commitment to communities by partnering with us in a specific location.
Resources and Expertise Partner
As a resources and expertise partner you will contribute your time, expertise, goods and services to deliver impact in communities.
Register your interest by completing the below form
Frequently Asked Questions
There are many benefits for businesses to become a partner of the Community Climate Fund. Whether you choose to become a national partner and work alongside other leading businesses to help achieve a just transition across the UK, or to support a place of particular interest to your business. There will be opportunities to lead and inspire others, share best practice, network, and learn. Becoming a partner is an opportunity to align your ambitions and purpose – to support a just transition, responding to the economic pressures and environmental crisis that affect our most vulnerable communities. By becoming a partner you will enable community-led action and be able to demonstrate impact – to your employees, customers and wider stakeholders.
In places we are supporting, we have local people who are well connected amongst the local community. They gain a deep understanding of the needs of the community, through a range of activities including collaborating with local key stakeholders, facilitating steering groups, convening organisations through events and community conversations, and supporting community organisations. They identify potential projects that align with our goals towards a just transition and work closely with community organisations to make these projects a reality.
BITC’s Community Climate Fund enables community-led climate action in multiple places across the UK. It works in those places to specifically support communities to become more resilient to economic and environmental shocks. By working with and providing financial support to collaborative projects by community organisations we aim to achieve positive impact for the wider communities in these places.
