Letter from Emma Hardy MP to Baroness Brown, Chair of the Adaptation Committee for the Committee on Climate Change (CCC)
Published 5 September 2025
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2025
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/letter-from-defra-to-baroness-brown-and-the-climate-change-committee-ccc/letter-from-emma-hardy-mp-to-baroness-brown-chair-of-the-adaptation-committee-for-the-committee-on-climate-change-ccc
From: Emma Hardy MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Date: 18 August 2025
Dear Baroness Brown,
Thank you for the Committee’s publication of this year’s progress report on climate adaptation. We are considering your recommendations carefully and will respond fully in due course in line with our statutory duties. This government agrees with the Committee on the need to strengthen the approach to climate adaptation.
In your recent progress report, you - the CCC - acknowledged that the Government recently signalled its desire to strengthen objectives on adaptation. You recommended that this should now be taken forward.
We see the establishment of stronger objectives as crucial to an ambitious and impactful fourth National Adaptation Programme. We propose that these objectives are based on agreed planning assumptions including a minimum climate scenario and timeframe.
As the Government’s statutory advisory body on climate adaptation, I would welcome your input. To help us in forming the objectives, I am writing to request your guidance on these planning assumptions, specifically on the CCC’s assessment of different minimum climate scenarios and timeframes for those scenarios.
This assessment should be based on available climate science and the levels of warming that the country is projected to face over the coming decades. This evidence will be considered by the government in setting its common planning assumptions. Subsequently, we will set objectives that define the levels of resilience that we are aiming for under our planning assumptions.
We would be grateful if you could provide the requested guidance by the end of September. This will enable us to consider the guidance before we respond fully to your Progress Report later in the year.
Yours sincerely,
Emma Hardy MP