At Kendal Town Council we recognise partnership is required to respond to the emergency of climate change. We all have a role to play. Now more than ever we need a plan for how Kendal can take action. But it needs to be a plan guided by the people of Kendal. To do this we organised a Citizens’ Jury.

Citizens’ Juries (or the slightly larger Citizens’ Assembly) have been run all over the world to help figure out what to do about really big difficult problems. Lancaster City Council have completed its own Climate Change People’s Jury, as have Leeds, Camden, Brent and Oxford. At a national level the UK Climate Assembly has released its final report available here.

• The Oversight Panel was established to ensure the process was fair and unbiased. The represented organisations set commitments to consider and action the Jury’s recommendations.
• A question is set which the Jury are to consider and discuss. Kendal’s Jury considered ‘What should Kendal do about climate Change?’
• A jury is recruited via invites to randomly selected addresses within the area
• Individuals from age 15 upwards are invited to join the jury
• 20 people are selected who reflect the diversity of the wider population (in terms of age, gender, race, attitudes to climate change and geography)
• Jury members attend a set amount of sessions to share ideas and opinions and to hear from a range of experts who they are able to question
• A set of recommendations are created by the Jury and presented to the organisers for response and action