Carbon Leadership Programme - FAQs

The Carbon Leadership Programme helps local highway authorities (LHAs) measure and identify how to reduce their carbon emissions. It provides a simple, standardised way to calculate how much carbon is emitted by local highway services for road construction and maintenance activities. 

The programme also assesses each LHA’s carbon management programme relative to best practice. Combined, these assessments can be used to define practical steps towards reducing the carbon footprint of local highways services. 

In summary, the programme helps LHAs to measure and meet their carbon reduction commitments and save money through more efficient operations.

The Carbon Leadership Programme has been developed by Proving Services in partnership with the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT). It is funded by DfT.

The Carbon Leadership Programme is being delivered by Proving Services in partnership with ADEPT. 

The Department for Transport (DfT) provides funding and joint oversight of the programme, and will receive six-monthly reporting on progress and outcomes from ADEPT and Proving Services.  

The Future Highways Research Group (FHRG) will also play a key part in the delivery of the programme, providing technical expertise and supporting the implementation process. 

The main objectives of the programme are to: 

1. Establish the current carbon footprint (emissions) for each in-scope LHA. 

   a. Using the Carbon Footprint Assessment (CFA) toolset and a streamlined methodology evolved from the CCAS guidance. 

2. Determine each LHA’s current performance in terms of best practice carbon management. 

   b. Using the Best Practice Carbon Assessment (BPCA) toolset and an assessment factor set that has been specifically tailored for the local roads sector. 

3. Provide comprehensive benchmarking data. 

   a. Including the carbon footprints for LHA services and functions. 

   b. Using best practice assessments to compare progress to net zero. 

4. Identify, and share between LHAs, the actions and business changes being implemented by LHAs to reduce their carbon emissions. 

   a. Agreeing and recording a prioritised list of carbon management improvements and carbon reduction initiatives with LHA leadership teams. 

   b. Guiding LHAs toward effective carbon reduction options and away from unproven initiatives. 

   c. Inform future procurements to ensure best practice is embedded within future contracts. 

5. Aggregate the individual LHA assessments to provide a carbon footprint for local roads maintenance and construction schemes for the target reporting year (April 2024 to March 2025). 

   a. To enable better local and central planning, targeted funding, and sector resources coordination. 

6. Establish a carbon baseline from which LHAs can plan, monitor, report, and benchmark progress towards net zero. 

   a. Ensuring knowledge sharing and optimised investments, sector wide. 

The Carbon Footprint Assessment (CFA) toolkit provides a straightforward and proven approach to whole-service carbon assessments. It combines top-down and bottom-up assessment methods, allowing local authorities to use readily available KPIs and data.  

While there are many other toolsets available, the CFA is specifically designed to create a uniform dataset for the purposes of benchmarking across the local roads sector. 

There is little alignment or consistency across the numerous other carbon reduction tools being deployed across the sector currently.  

The Carbon Leadership Programme utilises a single, best-fit emissions factor for each assessed item. These emissions factors are recorded in the FHRG Local Roads Emissions Database and are used across all the FHRG carbon toolsets. 

Yes. The scope of the assessments is restricted to common in-scope local highways construction and maintenance activities. 

All English LHAs are eligible to participate in the Carbon Leadership Programme.  

DfT is funding this programme to support all English LHAs in understanding their current emissions and progress towards net zero. Participation is completely free and open to all LHAs. 

We strongly encourage LHAs to take part, as the programme offers a cost effective way to strengthen their efforts to monitor and reduce carbon, share best practice, and learn from peers across the sector. 

Yes. The programme is open to all English LHAs, regardless of ADEPT or FHRG membership. Authorities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are not part of the DfT funded programme but can approach ADEPT or Proving Services if they are interested in applying the toolkits. 

154 English LHAs. 

Yes, but not within the Carbon Leadership Programme; which is a local roads initiative. 

The two programme modules are: 

1. Carbon Footprint Assessment 
2. Best Practice Carbon Assessment 

Yes. The process has been designed to answer two questions: 

1. What is our current carbon footprint?   

2. What are we doing to reduce future carbon emissions and what can we learn from others to help us do more? 

The process includes the completion of two proforma assessments:  

1. Carbon Footprint Assessment 
2. Best Practice Carbon Assessment 

Both are provided as Excel workbooks and once completed these are returned to Proving for error checking and data gap closing. The assessments are then calculated and reports produced. These reports are reviewed with each LHA at a carbon analysis and carbon reduction workshop facilitated by Proving. 

Completed assessments are included in the national carbon benchmarks. 

The carbon best practice toolkit guidance has been developed by identifying and assessing the various activities that highways authorities could implement to reduce their carbon emissions. This includes learning from the two Live Labs programmes.  

7 dimensions and 68 assessment factors have been identified. These have been categorised to incorporate the CCAS dimensions. 

• Corporate /Service Carbon Policy 
• Purchased Goods and Services (Provider Policy and Management) 
• Premises and Sites 
• Staff and Contractors 
• Vehicles and Plant 
• Functions and Activities (Operations) 
• Major Schemes 

Detailed scoring guidance has been produced that describes how performance for each potential activity or initiative would be assessed against the categories of Excellent, Good, Satisfactory, Requires Improvement and Poor.  

The assessment provides an authority-specific checklist and programme for improvement by assessing current performance against each assessment factor together with the opportunity for improvement.  

This allows the authority to focus on those initiatives where a tangible carbon reduction can be realistically achieved. Experience and learning from other authority assessments will also be shared. 

Each LHA is allowed 90 days to complete the proformas and the review and planning workshop. 

The Carbon Footprint Assessment typically takes between one and two weeks to complete, using available data from each key highways function. 

The Carbon Best Practice Assessment typically takes around half to one day to complete. 

There will be a single, 3-hour workshop on completion of the assessment. This workshop will be held with senior leaders from the LHA. 

The programme is free for eligible LHAs for a single assessment comprising the two modules. 

For the three years of the programme, the assessment will be funded by the DfT. In subsequent years, the tools will remain available and free to use, but an independent annual assessment will cost £8,000. 

The DfT funding covers all of the costs of ADEPT, Proving and any other parties engaged in the validation and peer review process. 

No. The programme is fully funded by the DfT. 

The DfT has sponsored the programme and will be a recipient of the data from the local roads sector. 

The tools will remain free-to-access and free-to-use however all independent carbon assessments will be chargeable. 

CLP branding will be launched with the programme and subject to conditions of use which will be communicated to participating LHAs. 

The benefits for participants are summarised below: 

1. A whole service carbon footprint statement 

   i. Including benchmarking with other, similar LHAs 

2. An assessment of progress on the journey to net zero 

   ii. Including benchmarking with other, similar LHAs 

3. A route map of prioritised initiatives to reduce future emissions 

   iii. Whilst, wherever possible, increasing efficiency and reducing costs. 

The CLP is a critical element of understanding your carbon hotspots and the options for carbon emissions reductions.  

The FHRG has identified that highways services with the lowest operational emissions strongly correlate with those with the highest Value for Money scores (LHA VfM Benchmarking Club). The efficient use of resources, acquired through effective procurements, are proven to reduce costs and carbon emissions. 

Yes. All completed assessments will be independently certified by the FHRG. The certified assessments will be shared with the DfT. 

Yes. All participating LHAs are free to use their certified assessments to inform and promote their work in other business areas. 

A detailed proforma outlining the data requirements will be sent to all English LHAs. Each proforma will require between 38 and 86 answers (depending on the scope of highways services). 

The data is primarily used to inform the participating LHAs. However, the dataset is also used to create national benchmarks and will form part of the evidence  used by DfT to inform future plans and funding.  

LHA data will be anonymised in all publicly available datasets. 

Yes. If you wish to exclude your data from the data used for benchmarking, you can opt-out at any time. Opting out means that you will only be able to see your data and you will not be given access to the wider benchmarking data. 

All data collected will be shared with DfT. No data will be shared with private sector organisations. 

The FHRG would welcome case studies and learning feedback, however, this is not a requirement of the programme. 

Yes. This is included in the programme and facilitated by the FHRG. 

Leaning and knowledge sharing are primary goals of the programme. As the programme progresses, each authority will be encouraged to share structured quantitative and qualitative data, together with reflections and feedback. 

Anonymised LHA benchmark datasets will be shared with all participating LHAs. 

Support will be provided by Proving throughout the programme. This includes training and orientation workshops, embedded guidance within the proformas and telephone support. Additional, optional support is available from selected CLP partners. 

ADEPT will administer and Proving Services will deliver the programme. 

Contact Proving Services for CLP process support. The contact details are on the ADEPT website. 

Yes. Proving will be scheduling repeating, virtual, training and orientation sessions on Microsoft Teams. Participants will be free to join as many of these as they wish. 

You can register and sign up for one of the programme’s introductory webinars here: www.adeptnet.org.uk/carbon-leadership-programme   

For any additional questions about the Carbon Leadership Programme please contact [email protected]