Building Kent CC’s Capacity to Respond to Climate Change
Based on a series of interviews held with KCC senior managers and politicians in February 2008, the Climate South East’s organisational capacity benchmarking model reviewed KCC’s current level of response to climate change, and outlined some helpful next steps.
Kent County Council was invited to participate in a pilot of this model in early 2008. We already had a reasonably well-established Climate Change Programme following the Nottingham Declaration framework and were due an internal stock take on progress in order to shape the next phase. We had already laid a lot of groundwork, such as establishing clear corporate policy on climate change, but we recognised that one of the gaps in our programme was around how to structure the next phase of awareness-raising and capacity-building within KCC. We needed something more than merely a simple communications exercise. We were therefore particularly attracted to the Climate South East model because it looks at tackling climate change from an organisational development and change management perspective in a way that fits with and complements the activity-based Nottingham Declaration framework and resonated well in KCC. We also found the fact that the model was based on good practice across the public and private sector (rather than just local government) more helpful and relevant for KCC, because we like to benchmark ourselves against a range of sectors.
We needed an approach that allowed the independent reviewers to get a sense of the organisation quickly and accurately. We found the review team well-practised in accurately observing KCC's organisational culture, and highly politically and professionally skilled in terms of how they conducted interviews with a range of Cabinet Members, the Chief Executive and senior managers. In the space of a couple of weeks, we had a clearly laid out review of KCC's current capability and some specific recommended next steps appropriate to KCC's culture and approach to change management. More broadly, the review reaffirmed the merits of our climate change programme as a whole, concluding that good progress had been made along all pathways and that continuing to implement our programme would enable us to reach Level 5. It was also helpful to know that our progress on mitigation and adaptation did not differ significantly - we were working effectively on our twin-track approach. We had positive feedback from those interviewed, and we have used the product of the review as evidence for our Select Committee on Climate Change scrutiny review of progress and as part of the business case for a range of next-steps organisational capacity projects, including to support a bid for additional Carbon Trust funding. In particular, we are developing two "breakthrough projects" around our office transformation programme and our Building Schools for the Future programme.
KCC Organisational Benchmarking Final Report
Contact Email:
Organisation:
Kent County Council
Funding Details:
Funded through the ESPACE project.
Status:
Complete
Website relating to case study:
http://www.alexanderballard.co.uk
Organisation’s website:
http://www.kent.gov.uk/climatechange
Keywords relating to this case study:
strategy, management, benchmarking, organisational capacity, behaviour change, programme management
South East groups case study relates to:
Communications
