The Preston People’s Climate Jury offered 30 Preston residents a chance to have their say on how to tackle climate change across the city and make recommendations to local leaders about how the city should act in response. Shared Future was asked to facilitate the Preston People’s Climate Jury. The first session of the People’s Climate Jury took place on February 1st 2024. The report of the Preston Climate Jury is now available on our website.

The first step in the project was establishing the Advisory Group, made up of representatives from the local community, business and public sectors. They agreed the demographic profile used to select the jury so that it is mirrored the local population. The advisory group also agreed the wording of the question that the jury was asked to consider. The question reflectd shared values of working together, fairness and equity, aligning with the council’s strategic commitments to Community Wealth Building and ‘Fairness for You’.

‘‘How can we in Preston work together to address the opportunities and challenges of climate change in a way that is fair to everyone?”

Background to the People’s Jury

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) provided Preston City Council with the opportunity to commit £1.36m of funding to actions to address climate change. The funding will be invested in warmer homes, in local skills for the transition to cleaner energy, and in supporting Preston businesses to decarbonise. Given the scale of the challenge posed by climate change, Council agreed that encouraging informed debate and supporting community involvement in decision making on climate change was also a priority, and approved a share of UKSPF funding for a People’s Climate Jury. 

£50,000 has been allocated from Preston’s UKSPF programme to the project. The funding ensured that the selection process to recruit members of the jury produced a good match with Preston’s demographic profile in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, ward area and attitude towards climate change so that the jury will ‘look and talk like us’.

30 jury members came together for eight sessions over a two-month period to hear from a range of commentators about climate change, discuss what they heard and agreed a set of recommendations for local action in response.  Each participant was reimbursed for their involvement and supported with childcare or transport needs as required.

Find out more

Preston Council developed a set of webpages where the members of the jury and the wider public can follow the conversation. Presentations by expert commentators were uploaded regularly.

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Follow the Preston People’s Climate Jury on the Preston Council Website

The Preston Climate Jury report is available for download on our website.