It’s All in the Details: Comparing and Explaining Variation in the ‘Policy Specificity’ of Sub-City Climate Activities, 2019-2022

Between late 2019 and early 2022, London boroughs developed CAPs that outlined how each borough sought to meet its climate targets; 25 boroughs aimed to be net zero or carbon neutral regarding their own estate and operations by 2030, while the others varied in their deadline years, from 2025 (Tower Hamlets) to 2040 (Havering). All these CAPs are publicly available.

The cross-London London Councils association published a spreadsheet collating each goal from every CAP divided across nine climate policy programmes developed by the boroughs (based on information as of 15th June 2022).

An additional policy area – ‘air quality’ – overlaps with climate policy but is distinct, and so we do not include air quality within our analysis; however, we coded these policies and include them within our supplementary file. Bexley (Conservative-led), Hackney, and Waltham Forest (both Labour-led) did not produce Climate Plans in time to be included in this analysis, resulting in a final dataset of 29 boroughs. We counted the number of policies for each programme and borough, thus obtaining the 'policy density' scores.

The final dataset contained 2,545 policies, of which 2,508 pertained to climate activities (37 were for air quality more broadly) and are subsequently analysed.