Newcastle City Council (www.newcastle.gov.uk) is the Local Authority covering the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and is one of the largest public sector organisation and employer in the North East of England. Newcastle has been acclaimed the most sustainable city in the UK two years running in an influential new report acknowledging success in promoting environmental and sustainability issues. Forum for the Future, a sustainable development group which works with leading organisations in business and the public sector, analysed environmental performance, quality of life and future proofing for the UK’s 20 largest cities. Newcastle was elevated to the top of its environmental league table and in a strong overall performance finished fourth in both quality of life and future proofing. The City’s new climate change programme is also sited as a key contributor to this award and noted for it comprehensive coverage. The City’s climate change strategy can be found at www.thebiggreenpledge.org.uk as can the early publication of GIS based resources to help encourage behavioural change by residents. To date, we have only published aerial thermal data, although the full strategy sets out some of our ambitions to published roof orientation data to further help our residents install low carbon measures. We also aim to develop this to support public, commercial and third sector buildings.

The City Council has an extensive track record in securing and successfully delivering a wide range of European supported projects including European interventions targeting the environmental and sustainability agenda. Newcastle has recently completed the ACT2 project, part of the CONCERTO initiative funded by the 6th Framework. NCC is also involved as a partner in the C-Liege project led by FIT (Roma) and funded by the IEE (2010 call).

Newcastle City Council is one of the first signatories of the EU “Covenant of Mayors agreement” which commits the council to reducing carbon emissions by at least 20% by 2020. Our Sustainable Environmental Action Plan (SEAP) was approved in October 2010 together with the City Climate Change Strategy. The City is taking the regional lead on developing financial packages for low carbon retrofits to homes and would be able to disseminate the findings and tools from this project across all local authorities in the North East and beyond. In the UK, FiTs and RHI projects help set out the financial support for the installation of solar projects and work to date in Newcastle has already utilised GIS to help identify suitable properties for photovoltaic panels on social housing.

Role in the project

NCC will host one of the pilots of i-SCOPE. Their activities include definition of requirements, data collection and adaptation and support in the deployment and assessment of the services. NCC will also take part to awareness and dissemination activities for instance through initiatives such as Covenant of Mayors, CONCERTO.

Key Staff involved in the project

Adrian McLoughlin has over 10 years experience working in Local Government implementing sustainability across all services. He completed MSc (Distinction) Environmental Management (2001) & BSc (Hons) Environmental Management (1999) and is Associate Member of Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment (IEMA) & Regional Steering Broad member. EMAS background, focused on climate change, both mitigation & adaptation,  author of the City’s climate change strategy & action plan (2010) and developed the Covenant of Mayors SEAP. Lead contact at Newcastle City Council on climate change. Representative on most relevant regional and national bodies, including co-lead for the English Core Cities Climate Change Programme. Brian Williams - is the Lead GIS Officer for Newcastle City Council and holds a 1st class Honours degree in Environmental Management. Brian has ten years of experience in GIS and has worked on a wide range of projects including the support to the Virtual Newcastle Gateshead Initiative http://virtualng.northumbria.ac.uk and leading the analysis work to identity suitable YHN housing and council assets that are suitable for the installation of solar PV as part of the carbon route map programme.