STEP 1: BUILD YOUR TEAM

1.1 Form a collective /team, find your friends! Gather a few people from those you know in your community, who share the same goals, and are ready to take action. This will be the organising group who are up for the mission to create a Climate Emergency Centre. A strong and creative organising group needs a diversity of experience and networks (such as culture, age, gender, skills, education ).

1.2 To guide you, read through the principles and values in Appendix A of this handbook and consider whether the group would agree with them. We ask individual CECs to follow them, but every group is different and may want to discuss and add to this list.

1.3. Set up an initial meeting with your team to discuss your next steps – sit in a circle so that everyone is facing each other and everyone is equal. Make sure that everyone there has time to share what they want to bring by checking, before ending the meeting, that each person feels they have had a chance to share what they wanted. Make sure to allow fun and humour in the meeting, so people can relax and are more able to contribute, and CECs should be fun!

1.4. Make a regular meeting day and way to communicate outside meetings such as a chat group so you can all feed into the weekly agenda and keep in touch/ share info. Consider setting up a project organising system, such as Trello, Basecamp, Slack or Loomio for discussions. Whichever one you choose, ensure the whole team knows how to use it.

1.5 Brainstorm, create a group vision which is a helpful process to build team coherence and an agreed way forward that can form the basis of creating your project brief. The PECH structure is a simple way to do this. Here’s a guidance doc on how to run the session- CEC PECH visioning guidance

Discuss and create a simple one-page A4 project brief see Appendix B for ideas. This project outline can help you with some suggestions to create your first leaflet and longer project proposal, that can help with funding applications or expand into a longer project plan. The project brief needs to be discussed, agreed and designed early, so that you can all be on the same page. A one pager leaflet is the beginning of any project.

1.6 Split into Working Groups / Teams that focus on:

Outreach Team – contacting local groups who may be interested in working with you, or supporting the CEC, and engaging with the local community- let them know who you are and what you are planning ( see Appendix I Outreach Strategy )
Building finders Team – identifying vacant commercial properties in your area, take photos and researching the owners contact details the Business rates of the property. Bring this info back to the wider group /negotiation team for consideration.
Negotiations team – find out within the local council who handles vacant property. Sometimes this is the main Regeneration officer, but positions vary across councils it could be the estates or property manager. Also find a few local councillors who are interested in supporting environmental projects. Get their help to understand how the council works and who to speak to on the council diagram of councillors, officers and Local Authority departments. It is very important to connect and build relationships with key people on the Council who can help or support your project. Also, research your local community’s needs and your local Council’s priorities/ borough plan. If your local /Borough Council has declared a Climate Emergency it will have a Climate Emergency plan https://data.climateemergency.uk that it wants to deliver on and your CEC will provide them with a route to deliver on some of this.(see Step 4 Finding a space for more info) It’s a win win situation for the Council, the developer the local economy the environment and the Community
Setting up as a legal entity team– decides which type of legal entity is best for your CEC Project. There is more information about this in Step 4 Find Your Space.
Contact your Council business rates dept. to determine which legal entity is acceptable for discretionary business rates relief. Some may not recognise a CIC ( It must be set up as a Not for profit CIC)