Working With Wakefield Council

Major update July 2026

As many of our website visitors will know, Wakefield District held all out elections in May of this year.  This resulted in an overwhelming majority of seats passing from Labour to Reform UK.  This has had a major impact on Wakefield Council’s climate change activity.

To summarise, the council has:
1. Undeclared the climate emergency
2. Undeclared the ecological emergency
3. Withdrawn from the District’s Net Zero Partnership
4. Withdrawn support for the Net Zero Partnership
5. Ceased all climate communications, including via the Climate Action email list and all climate-related social media
6. Cut all ties with the Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission
7. Withdrawn from the Y&H Climate Commission pledge
8. Vired £41,000 from the climate change budget to highways for line painting
9. Decided to put the remaining £170,000 into next year’s budget as a saving, meaning the end of the climate change team.

All of the above will have major impacts on the district, because the council are both withdrawing from ALL public-facing work on climate change AND choosing to lose ALL technical expertise.

The council will continue some programmes and projects, managed through separate departments.  You can read the full details in Agenda Item 8, here.  However, without the technical expertise, support and co-ordination, we predict that the majority of these projects will be buried and never make it to completion.

An apparently unintended consequence of this new policy, and the deletion of knowledge and expertise, will be that the steady flow of grants and investments in renewable energy, electrification and energy efficiency will dry up.  This will be a huge loss to our district, costing the council more, reducing employment on local projects and leaving the district overly reliant on expensive and volatile fossil fuels.

Just Transition Wakefield has always engaged fully with Wakefield Council, both with elected members and with relevant officers.  This collaboration inevitably ceases, and not because of any action that we have taken.  However, we shall continue to engage positively with all relevant local partnerships, including the Net Zero Partnership and the Good Food Partnership.  These partnerships will continue to develop projects and programmes to benefit the people and businesses of our district. And of course, we are always open to honest conversation.

We are highly concerned about our district’s climate resilience and how we might adapt to the disruption caused by a rapidly changing climate.  While the Council’s new policy acknowledges the risk of flooding, it remains silent on the risks from heatwaves, wildfires, and rising food prices – all getting worse because of accelerating climate change.  All damaging people’s lives and livelihoods.

As one example of the risks, the May and June 2026 heatwaves in the UK caused an estimated 2700 excess deaths.  This number will increase as a result of the June-July heatwave.  For comparison, during the full year 2024-25, there were 1602 deaths in road traffic accidents.  Climate change is already killing our old, our sick and our vulnerable, but our new Reform UK council appears completely oblivious of this.

We mourn the loss, but we carry on – aiming to be stronger, louder, bigger and better.

Historical – retained for interest and reference

Just Transition Wakefield was created as a push on Wakefield Council to declare a climate emergency and to campaign to ensure that the council developed a suitable plan to meet its declared targets.

Wakefield Council declared a climate emergency in May 2019 and an ecological emergency in March 2021.  

The council have created a climate change team to create and deliver a plan to decarbonise their own activities by 2030 and to support and encourage the whole district to decarbonise homes and businesses, also by 2030 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Wakefield Council’s Climate Change Action Plan can be accessed here.

How are the council doing?

1. They have a plan.  It is not yet perfect, but it exists before many others, which crucially allows work to decarbonise their activities to start.

2. The climate change team are open and engaging, and very happy to talk to people – including ourselves.  This means that the updated Climate Change Action Plan will be an improvement on version 1.  We all need continuous improvement.

3. The section of the plan to decarbonise the district is not yet as good, because it is a bigger challenge.  There are also policy decisions made in Westminster that can either help or hinder.

What does Just Transition Wakefield do about this?

  • We engage with the council, meeting the Climate change team regularly to discuss progress and barriers, and to push further.
  • We attend the Climate Change and Environmental Overview and Scrutiny Committee to maintain a consistent presence and pressure, and ask difficult questions.
  • We highlight new technologies and reports.
  • We engage with the Climate Change team’s social media to spread the message.
  • As covid restrictions allow a return to face-to-face meetings, we will finally get to develop our own programme of climate activity. Keep watching the website! 

What can I do about this?

If you live in Wakefield and want to influence local climate action, you can: