Background 

The Place Standard Tool is an effective and widely used tool for considering place, with a focus on health and wellbeing. It provides a simple framework to consider the physical and social elements of our place’s and challenges organisations, communities and businesses (stakeholders) to have targeted and timely conversations to help deliver improvements to our living environments in an equitable way. It can be used at any time when people want to discuss the future of a place.

The addition of a climate lens resource will offer the opportunity to consider climate change and how it will impact on health and wellbeing and Scotland’s places.

The updated version of the tool, called Place Standard Tool with a climate lens, will help stakeholders, including public health planners, local planning partners and communities, to consider how global trends such as climate change will play out in a local area.

While the Place Standard tool was not designed as a climate change tool, good place making is essential for designing a robust local response to the climate emergency such as taking local action to cut emissions and to increase resilience to local climate change impacts. 

Solutions

The project’s goal is to create a climate lens resource for the Place Standard Tool and test it with real-life projects in Scotland. The feedback from the pilots will be used to improve the tool’s guidance and make it more user-friendly and effective. The ultimate objective is to help users of the Place Standard Tool consider the impact of climate change on Scotland’s places and communities and make informed decisions to respond appropriately.

The following learning outcomes are desired from this project:

• Develop bespoke resources with a climate adaptation and mitigation focus to be used in conjunction with the Place Standard Tool.
• Pilot the Place Standard Tool with the climate lens resources with a range of users in different locations.
• Evaluate the results of the pilot process and make changes to the resource as required.
• Integrate climate resources with Place Standard Tool materials
• Develop case studies for promoting the Place Standard Tool project as appropriate in the future.
• Prepare and deliver a final report to the Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and cascade to organisations throughout Scotland and to our global partners

Progress to date 

The climate lens resource and supporting guidance will be trialled with two phases of pilot projects between April 2021 to November 2021, with each phase including four pilot projects chosen to represent varied and diverse communities, landscapes and place making projects being undertaken across Scotland. 

Following an initial meeting of the project partners to establish parameters and timescales we developed a draft climate lens resource using existing material and suggestions from relevant agencies. Organisations throughout Scotland were then asked to express interest in becoming part of the pilot process. Following a series of on-line interviews four projects were selected for phase one, facilitators were identified from each organisation and they reviewed the climate lens materials and changes were made as a result of their suggestions. Workshops are now planned with community groups in the four pilot areas with external invigilators attending as part of the evaluation process. All workshop participations and facilitators will be requested to complete an evaluation of their experience using the climate lens resource and those evaluations rigorously reviewed and appropriate changes made prior to the second round of the piloting process.       

The anticipated outcomes of the project will offer those using the Place Standard Tool the opportunity to consider climate change and therefore be better equipped with materials and facilitation guidance needed for conversations about places today and in the future. The chance to be part of a growing community of practice that has means to document and share learning and the project will also give those involved in policy and practice access to a robust evidence base of the effectiveness of the process in using the Place Standard Tool to identify climate actions and to develop future-ready places. 

The development of a climate lens will align climate change and health inequalities agendas at the local level and contribute to awareness-raising on climate change. In addition allow people to share their views on climate change and how they want to respond to the climate emergency and identify how and if communities are prepared to take action in response to the climate change. This project has been a collaborative process involving the Scotland & Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research, (Sniffer) Sustainable Scotland Network, (SSN) Scottish Government and Public Health Scotland