The Bude Area Community Jury, which was commissioned by Bude Climate Partnership, brought together 34 citizens aged 16 to 86 from across the wider Bude area to answer the question:

‘‘How can we respond to a changing climate, including sea level rise, to support our community to thrive?”

In August 2023, Sortition Foundation sent a letter to every address in the Bude Community Network Area, which comprises the town of Bude-Stratton and 10 surrounding rural parishes.

To ensure a jury that reflected to diversity of the local population, participants were selected based on the following characteristics: Gender, Age, Ethnicity, Disability, Religion, Geography, Indices of Multiple Deprivation, Length of time living in Bude, Housing Tenure, and levels of climate change concern.

The jury met over 5 full days across 3 weekends, from the 24th of September to the 25th of November. All participants received £330 in vouchers as a thank you for their time. 

Download the full report (65mb PDF)

The Recommendations

Over three weekends, the jury heard from 21 ‘expert’ commentators, met with young people from the parallel Budehaven School Mini-Jury, engaged with the work of Key Stage 2 children, and shared their own knowledge and lived experiences. After 30 hours of talking, listening, imagining, and deliberating, the Jury came to a close.

In the end the Community Jury produced 11 principles for future decision making on sea level rise, and 29 recommendations covering sea level rise, awareness raising, and other climate change-related topics.

Some of the top recommendations focused on:

• Prioritising nature-based solutions and natural processes in responding to sea level rise. 
• Moving beyond short-term, election-bound thinking in our response to climate change. 
• Ensuring local knowledge is at the forefront of any response. 
• Developing a community engagement exercise to ensure CTAP funding is used effectively. 

Impact on Jury members

One of the benefits of a deliberative process is the positive change it brings to participants. In a series of short digital stories community jury members talked frequently how taking part inspired them, gave them hope and motivated them to become active in their community. One of the participants said:

“A couple of years ago, I had to abandon my career plans due to a family crisis … I had reached a very low ebb when the letter about the climate change jury came through my door, and I pushed myself to apply for it. I’m now hugely relieved I was selected.

Right from the first session, I was using a side of myself that I had forgotten existed, and I suddenly had self-esteem again. It was a much needed reminder that I have something to contribute to my community, that I can be a voice at the table and that I can be a positive support and influence for other adults…

It has everything to do with the atmosphere you guys created for us: you kept us comfortable, got us inspired, fostered our camaraderie and gave us the space to go a little crazy sometimes. It’s a massive testament to your professional skills.“

Jury Statement

The Jury drafted a short statement that captured their feelings around the journey that they had been part of. This needed to secure the support of 80% of participants to be included in the report: 

“As a jury we have met for some 30 hours for a total of over a thousand individual hours. With us we’ve brought a huge range of life and professional experience. We have thought deeply and considered a range of opinions. At times it was possible to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the situation.

Through our combined knowledge and by adopting a collaborative approach, we’ve worked through this complex issue together. We’ve identified a need for urgent action to achieve positive outcomes and hope for our community. We see a long term problem that can’t be solved with short term solutions – we must alert people to the gravity of the situation.

We, as a jury, want to make an ongoing commitment to continue to push for change – and believe that if we all work together we can achieve this. People power is central to addressing this but likewise so is political action at all levels.

We have glimmers of hope for the future.
We see opportunities not only threats.
We know you are listening and that change can happen.”

Find out more on the Bude Area Climate Jury pages

Read about the Budehaven mini-jury youth programme that ran alongside the main process.

Download the Bude Area Climate Jury report on our report pages.

Watch the digital stories recorded by members of the community jury.