The King's Speech must squeeze out more progress on climate

By the time the King's Speech is delivered on Wednesday, the Government will still be processing a bruising set of local election results. Reform UK has made significant gains. Labour and the Conservatives have both lost hundreds, even thousands of councillors. Greens and Liberal Democrats have made significant progress. But based on projected vote shares, no party has touched 30% and can't lay any real claim to a national mandate. The instinctive Whitehall reaction to a bruising and fragmented result like this is to pull power inward; to centralise, to control, to fix things from the top. After 13 years working in and on behalf of local government, I know the impulse well. It is exactly the wrong move.Ministers in this government (and the last) often complain that the levers they have to pull aren't connected to anything and progress is painfully slow. That's because the overly centralised UK is an extreme outlier compared to other democracies. Devolution isn't a domestic policy choice, it's correcting a structural anomaly that most of our neighbours (and competitors) resolved decades ago. If anything, last week's results make the case for working closer with local leaders clearer. Punishing local government by cutting local authorities out would be the worst possible response to a difficult and messy set of results.Nowhere is that more true than in climate action and the clean energy security mission. While it wasn't on the ballot paper, climate ambition was on the line. And it took a hit in some places. But the cross-party local leadership that survives (and there is a great deal of it, not least across our 120-plus member network) is precisely what the government needs to leverage to deliver on its promise of a new era of clean energy security. The direction of travel is right. Just before last week's polls, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act received Royal Assent. After 10 months and five rounds of parliamentary ping pong, it delivers genuine wins: Strategic Authorities are now a legal reality, mayors have new planning powers, the Community Right to Buy gives local people a first shot at saving treasured assets, and, for the first time, air quality and access to green space are recognised in law as determinants of public health.But the Government itself called the Act ‘the floor, not the ceiling' of devolution. Our members might argue that, right now, the floor sits too low. There is no statutory climate duty. There is no devolution of Warm Homes funding. There is no clear role in local area energy planning. There is no full-fat fiscal devolution strategy. The legislative space the Act opened up can't be resealed. The toothpaste is out of the tube. The King's Speech is the place to squeeze out more progress. And here are three things we think will mark the difference between a government that talks about local delivery and one that genuinely supports it.An Energy Independence Bill that powers up our placesThe Energy Independence Bill was promised in the 2024 King's Speech and has yet to be introduced. With wholesale gas prices still 75% higher than before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and Brent crude up more than 50% since the Iran conflict began, getting off the fossil fuel rollercoaster is no longer optional. But energy independence is not delivered from Whitehall. It is delivered street by street. That is why this Bill must include a national framework for Local Area Energy Plans (something we alongside Energy Systems Catapult and Utility Week have been campaigning on for years) and a successor to the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, which closed last June with no replacement. Schools spend more than £500 million a year on energy. NHS bills have more than doubled since 2019. The Warm Homes Plan rightly puts £13.2 billion behind domestic property, but the public buildings where children learn and patients heal cannot be left behind. The announced (and sometimes renounced) small short-term funding pots and work being done by GB Energy plugs some of the gap, but it isn't enough and holds back long-term local delivery.The second conflict-inflicted fossil fuel crisis in less than five years only sharpens the case for ground-up clean energy independence.A statutory duty for local climate action. Last November, more than 500 cross-party councillors signed our open letter with Climate Emergency UK calling for a statutory climate duty. More than 20 cross-party MPs backed the same amendment in Parliament. Mayors Andy Burnham and Claire Ward have publicly backed the cause. The Local Government Association supports it. Nearly 90% of UK100 members support it. The Devolution Act was the natural home; it didn't get there. The local government standards bill expected on Wednesday is the next opportunity, modelled on the local health duty already in the Devolution Act. If that doesn't happen, the Government should bring forward a standalone Climate Duty Bill. A new Clean Air Act for the 70th anniversary This year marks 70 years since the Clean Air Act 1956. While our air has arguably never been cleaner, in post-industrial times, there are still tens of thousands of premature deaths a year in the UK that are still caused by dirty air. And we've set up a new clean air network to work on a cross-party basis to tackle the stubborn issue from the ground up. But the key to unlocking transformative action is a new Clean Act Act that includes: targets aligned to WHO guidelines, long-term funding certainty, and clarity on roles and responsibilities across tiers. Everyone deserves clean air to breathe. The 70th anniversary of fighting the deadly Great Smog shouldn't just be a moment of commemoration, it is the moment to prove we mean it when we say everybody deserves to breathe clean air.After a bruising election, the instinct might be to lick one's wounds and approach a changed local government landscape with caution, but the right response is not to pull power inward. It is to harness the ambition that survives to ensure we can all breathe easily in a new, self-sufficient clean security era. Let's continue working with local leaders, not around them.Christopher Hammond is UK100 chief executive and former council leader

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KING'S SPEECH

The King's Speech must squeeze out more progress on climate

By Christopher Hammond | 11 May 2026

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