Delivering Manchester Climate Ready: The Plan 2025-2030 | Manchester Climate Ready Partnership networking event 2025
On Thursday 13th November 2025, members of the Manchester Climate Ready Partnership, wider stakeholders and community representatives gathered at The People’s History museum to help turn Manchester’s zero carbon, climate resilient ambition into action.
In October 2025, Manchester Climate Ready published The Plan: 2025-2030 – Manchester’s five-year climate plan for a zero carbon, climate resilient future. The Plan is a call to action for every part of our city, inspiring the theme for this year’s in-person Partnership networking event: Delivering Manchester Climate Ready: The Plan 2025-2030.
The event started with a keynote address delivered by Tom Stannard, Chief Executive at Manchester City Council, where delegates were asked to consider both the challenges faced by our city and the opportunities ahead.
Putting people at the heart of a just transition
During our first panel, chaired by Shefali Kapoor, Director of Communities at Manchester City Council, community climate action champions: Anja Jungmayr representing Manchester Climate Ready Youth Partnership, Azhar Quaiyoom, Director & CEO at Q Sustain, Elaine Ungebu, Chair of Age Friendly Manchester’s Older People’s Board, and Naz Khan, Founder of Bike it Walk it CIC, shared stories from their inspiring work and the support they need to sustain and accelerate their progress.
The panellists shared that their work would benefit from things like workshop or meeting spaces, training opportunities, financial support and strong connections, as well as asking delegates to “keep climate and sustainability at the forefront of everything you do”.
Business leadership in a changing climate
During our second panel, chaired by Francis Heil, Associate Director at AtkinsRéalis, our panellists: Pete Bradshaw, Director of Sustainability at Manchester City Football Club, Claire Igoe, Associate Director of Sustainability at NHS Greater Manchester, and Adam Lechmere, Head of Sustainability at United Utilities, reflected on how their organisations have been reducing emissions and preparing for a changing climate.
They also shared their advice for other organisations in the city, which included:
Embedding sustainability into your organisation’s operation, from strategy to governance, job descriptions and appraisals – make sustainability everyone’s responsibility.
The importance of understanding your baseline, using TCFD and climate related reporting to highlighting where you can take action, to help build the business case for climate action.
And a call to action for organisations to be authentic, collaborative and bold.
Delivering The Plan
We asked our delegates to identify opportunities for collaboration and to make practical commitments that can delivered with existing resources and within the next few years to help deliver Manchester’s zero carbon, climate resilient vision.
In total, more than 70 climate commitments were made, with the majority of those commitments targeting communities.
The commitments made can broadly be categorised into the following themes: community engagement, education and training, sustainable transport, food and nature.
When asked what resources they would use to deliver their commitments, most delegates identified staff time, influence and communications. When asked how they would measure success, engagement levels, participation in projects, funding raised, and alignment with Manchester’s climate targets were common.
Overall, 76% of delegates committed to delivering their actions in 2026, with additional commitments planned for 2027 and 2028.
We will be following up with all delegates who made climate commitments next year to see how they are getting on.
Thank you to everyone who joined us and special thanks to our keynote speaker: Tom Stannard, Chief Executive at Manchester City Council, guest speaker: Lisa Enarsson, Senior Project Manager at The City of Stockholm for sharing insights on how Stockholm is tackling the climate crisis, and all our panellists and panel chairs.
Can your organisation be part of the solution?
Join the Manchester Climate Ready Partnership. Together we can create a healthy, green, socially just city where everyone can thrive.