Events

Planning for all possible futures: Climate Risk and Resilience at Civil Service Live

On Tuesday 10 June 2025, Verture joined the Met Office on stage at Civil Service Live in Glasgow to deliver a packed session on Risk and Resilience: Planning for Climate Change. Together, we explored how to manage uncertainty, anticipate risks, and embed climate science into everyday decision-making.

Too often, we only reach for climate science when dealing with the aftermath of impacts – during floods, heatwaves, or service disruptions. But we need to flip that approach. Climate data must inform all decision-making across our public services and communities: from place-making and community development to emergency planning, infrastructure investment, and service delivery.

In every type of policy making, public service delivery, investment or when making any type of decision we need to be asking “does this increase our exposure or vulnerability to climate risks?”. We need to think systematically about climate risk and adaptation. The essential first step to this is by considering this basic question in all decision making. If the answer is “we don’t know” then we need to fill that knowledge gap as soon as possible.

Our core message? The science is here, it’s accessible, and it’s ready to use. The Met Office provides free, user-friendly tools – including the UK Climate Projections and Local Authority Climate Service – that help planners, policy makers, and practitioners embed future climate risks into their strategies. There is no excuse to delay. If we continue planning based on the past instead of the future, we risk costly disruptions and missed opportunities to build resilience.

At Verture, we’ve already seen how powerful these tools can be. Through Climate Ready Southeast Scotland – our regional partnership with six local authorities – we used the UK Climate Projections (UKCP) data to identify priority regional risks, and develop a shared evidence base for action. This collaborative approach is helping us understand climate risks, coordinate investment, and build resilience across boundaries.

The session also featured this powerful short film from the Met Office, “This is the UK’s future climate”, which brought home the urgency and reality of climate change in the UK.

We’re grateful to the Met Office for the opportunity to speak together and to everyone who joined the conversation at Civil Service Live.

Let’s stop reacting to climate risks and start planning for them.