Strategic Consulting

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Many public sector organisations have declared climate emergencies and set ambitious targets, but find that implementation stalls. Not because of technical barriers, but because of institutional inertia, competing priorities, and the difficulty of securing genuine commitment from governing bodies, senior staff, and operational teams who must balance climate action against other responsibilities.

These barriers are rarely acknowledged openly. Climate strategies are approved in principle, but when difficult trade-offs emerge - between capital investment and financial sustainability, between ambitious timelines and practical feasibility, between leading on climate and protecting core mission or statutory services, decision-making paralysis is common.

I help public sector organisations understand what they are actually navigating. Through confidential stakeholder interviews, organisation-wide analysis, and strategic advisory work, I surface the genuine barriers to implementation, diagnosing whether these are structural, financial, political, or rooted in conflicting values.

This work is particularly suited to large, complex institutions where climate commitments must be reconciled with multiple competing objectives: universities balancing research excellence with estate decarbonisation, combined authorities coordinating across multiple local authorities with different political leadership, or large councils where cross-departmental coordination is essential but difficult.

Services include:

• Organisational diagnosis: Confidential stakeholder interviews to understand barriers to climate implementation
• Climate strategy development and refresh: Working with leadership teams to develop realistic, politically navigable pathways
• Business case development: Supporting the case for ambitious climate investment where financial arguments are not straightforward
• Governance and decision-making structures: Advising on how to structure climate governance to enable rather than delay action
• Risk and scenario analysis: Helping institutions understand the trade-offs between different target dates and investment levels