Every June, Great Big Green Week - the UK’s only mass moment for climate and nature - shows what community action looks like at full volume. This year 1.6 million people took part in more than 10,000 events, and over half of them were there for the first time. But the Week rests on something quieter that runs all year round: thousands of local groups, networks and community centres doing the patient work of climate and nature action where they live.

We wanted to understand how that quiet engine is really doing. So earlier this year we commissioned the first survey of its kind, working with Community Environment Associates (CEA) to reach out to more than 600 local organisations across England. This week we're publishing what the survey found.

A movement with deep roots

155 organisations responded, from village groups run off kitchen tables to county-wide networks and community hubs with staff and premises. Together they cover around 320 parliamentary constituencies. Most link their climate work with nature, and the range of what they do is striking: four in five run public events, two thirds are involved in practical projects from community energy to repair cafes, and the same proportion are engaging with policy and decision makers locally.

The stories they shared are full of energy and invention. Groups winning better climate policies in local plans. Community energy schemes putting their surplus back into local grants. Climate cafes, libraries of things, school conferences, tree planting, food growing. People are rightly proud of what they've built, usually with tiny budgets and no paid staff.

We were struck too by the role of local networks. Dozens of county and city networks are quietly holding the  local action together: sharing information, connecting isolated volunteers, and reaching groups that national organisations never do.

Credit: Greener Henley 

Under strain, at the worst possible moment

The survey is honest about the pressures. Local activity appears lower than it was four years ago. Some groups have quietly wound down. Many of those still going are carried by a small number of people who have been doing it for years, and who tell us the same things: they need help with fundraising, with digital and communications, with reaching new and more diverse people, and with sharing the load so nobody burns out.

The timing matters. People across the country still want a healthy natural world and a liveable climate. That hasn't changed, and you can see it in every one of these 155 responses. What has changed is what's ranged against them. Organised and well-funded voices now argue against climate science itself, and are working hard in communities to turn climate and nature into a dividing line. Misinformation about clean energy, heat pumps and electric vehicles is actively discouraging people from choices that would save them money. And here is the imbalance this report lays bare: that operation is resourced for the long haul, while our side of the argument rests on volunteers, a third of whom run their groups on less than £1,000 a year, and on their goodwill not running out. The report puts it plainly: at a time like this, it is vital that the groups keen to speak up and work for a safe future have the support they need. Without it, we risk fragmented effort and declining public engagement at exactly the moment the country needs the opposite.

Why local action matters

And when the national conversation gets noisy, the most trusted voices are local ones. The neighbour who runs the repair cafe. The group that got solar panels on the village hall and cut its bills. The network that helped a community shape how change happens where they live, rather than having it done to them. Politicians of every party pay close attention to what's visible in their own constituency, and these groups are the visible, practical, hopeful face of climate action in more than 300 of them. They show that this agenda isn't a project for someone else, somewhere else. It's people looking after the places they love and the people they share them with.

The transition to a cleaner, fairer future will be won or lost in how it's experienced street by street. That means the groups in this survey are not a nice extra to national campaigning. They are the foundation of it.

Credit: The Hearth Southport, The Hearth Network 

What we're going to do about it

The report challenges us directly, and we welcome that. It says that if The Climate Coalition wants to strengthen community and grassroots organising, we should act as infrastructure for the movement: a convenor of groups and networks, a builder of skills and capacity, and a connector between national and local action.

So that's what we'll do. Starting this year we are:

Launching a training programme for local organisers. Built around what groups told us they need most: fundraising, digital and communications, community organising, and sustaining groups for the long term without burning out. We'll develop it with our members, with experienced local organisers, and with the groups who responded to the survey, and it will feed directly into Great Big Green Week 2027.

Opening our doors wider. Any local group can join The Climate Coalition as a community member, alongside programmes like Build. Grow. Lead. Membership connects you to the UK’s largest coalition of organisations working together for climate and nature. .

Working with local networks. We'll be convening the county and city networks that responded to explore how national and local action can back each other up better, starting with a workshop this autumn.

Get involved

If you're part of a local climate or nature group, this report is about you, and the next chapter is with you. Read the full report, join us as a community member, and register your interest in the training programme. And put the dates in your diary now: Great Big Green Week returns from 5-13 June 2027, and we'd love it to reach places, and people, it has never reached before.

The Local Climate Action Survey was carried out for The Climate Coalition by Community Environment Associates in early 2026. The full report is available to download here.