Regen is the technical assistance partner for policy and regulation on Innovate UK’s £60m Net Zero Living programme, supporting 52 local authorities from across the UK and Northern Ireland to navigate the local and national policy landscapes to help achieve their net zero ambitions.
Project duration: March 2024 – December 2025
Project lead: Mollie Atherton
Programme director: Poppy Maltby
Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living programme is helping local authorities address and overcome the non-technological barriers to net zero, including the policies, finance, planning, data and engagement needs that help local authorities take projects from concepts to realities to support placed-based decarbonisation.
It is supporting the 52 local authority led projects to accelerate progress to achieving their net zero goals. Local authority projects and initiatives involved in the programme include heat networks, community energy, retrofit one-stop shops and several other urban, suburban and rural net zero opportunities.
As the technical assistance partner for policy and regulation, our work is helping local authorities navigate the policy and regulatory barriers that might stand between them and project delivery, and more widely address some of the challenges in national policy frameworks to unlock shared barriers to delivering local net zero.
As part of our package of work, we have established five policy groups, based on some key topics that local authorities are exploring:
The policy groups are platforms for local authorities to explore shared challenges in the thematic areas, discuss and generate potential reforms to policies and regulations that could help ease those challenges, and invite expert speakers to share their learnings with the members.
The groups meet quarterly as a minimum and, each quarter, produce outputs that either help build knowledge about policy across the whole Net Zero Living programme, produce policy insights that Net Zero Living participants can share throughout their wider organisations or develop consultation responses that help shape policy direction.
