The SCIS Programme in 2025/2026 has been nothing short of a whirlwind. If you were impressed by our impact in Year 1, you will be blown away by progress made in Year 2.

Just some of our programme highlights include….

• 100% of councils engaged in the programme for the second year in a row
• 25% more officers engaged
• 32 bespoke Local Authority Support Plans tailored to individual councils’ needs, priorities and goals
• 40+ socialisation sessions delivered to 25 councils helping to engage wider stakeholders around the ClimateView platform
• 6 councils completed Heat Transition Pathways workshops supporting councils to identify place-based transition targets and necessary tempo of delivery to meet these targets
• 3 councils published their ClimateView dashboards

Tip of the iceberg

These figures are only the tip of the iceberg. What has been truly impressive to witness were the less glamorous, day-to-day changes local authorities have been making to their way of working: the open-minded engagement with unfamiliar concepts and services, the creative trialling of innovative approaches in a difficult political climate, the continued eagerness to champion the programme and feed into its improvement. This mindset is a key factor of the programme’s success to date.

A standout moment

For me, a truly standout moment has to be the collation of over 1500 interventions in ClimateView which fed into SCIS’s first “Nationally Collated Intervention Insights Report”.

While this may have felt like just another data entry and reporting process at the time, it is so much more: the mobilisation of all 32 local authorities to create an unprecedented evidence base of climate action taking place across Scotland.

This database shines a light on never-seen-before insights into the pace, scale and challenges of area-wide climate action. It offers Scottish Government previously non-existent intelligence into the local delivery of Scotland’s Climate Change Plan. And, it demonstrates to delivery partners at all scales evidence on key funding and delivery gaps and the opportunities for further decarbonisation and investment.

What excites me most

What excites me most is not just the formation of this evidence base but what it enables SCIS to do: strengthen multi-level governance by facilitating conversations between local and national government, improve alignment between local delivery and national ambition, and in doing so ultimately better support local authorities to deliver local climate change plans.

This dataset and the insights it shows us has laid the foundation for our national delivery workstream, an ongoing collaboration and commitment from Scottish Government and Transport Scotland to listen to and integrate local insights into national policymaking.

With this piece of work and so much more planned for the year ahead, we're excited to see where we can go from here. Thank you to all our wonderful local authorities for your continued enthusiasm and engagement!

Find out more and read the full Annual Impact Report 2025-6 here.

Bring on Year 3!