Sustainability Leadership and Climate Action Plans - Sector Engagement and Support

**Update 20/04/23 - This update provides notice of a Supplier Engagement Event that will be held 9th May 2023 (expected 10:00 to 11:30 - tbc)** Should you wish to attend the event, please email [email protected] to request details / an invitation.

Expected contract start / end dates have also been updated.

(end of update).

The Department is looking to procure an experienced and prominent national lead provider (or consortia) to co-ordinate a regional network of environmental sustainability and climate change experts. These experts will operate in a voluntary capacity to perform several functions within the education sector related to climate change and sustainability. The provider will identify appropriate experts to help enable individual education settings to develop climate actions plans. These plans should include action scoping over the following areas: Decarbonisation/energy efficiency, adaptation and resilience, biodiversity/green infrastructure, climate education and green skills and careers. As such, the network of experts must be drawn from a wide range of careers and occupations (education, academia, industry), in order to provide the technical expertise needed to help education settings own and implement these wide-ranging plans. Further specific functions include: - Develop a regionally co-ordinated approach to provide practical climate change and sustainability advice to Sustainability Leads in education settings. - Assist in the creation and development of individual Climate Action Plans - Provide a support-matching function through: o setting up virtual or physical 'Sustainability Hubs' to provide regional single points of support, allowing education settings to engage in peer-to-peer learning. o providing a mentor-match service, assigning an expert to a setting/ Sustainability Lead to support over a sustained period. - Develop an engagement strategy tailored to all education sectors, from Early Years up to Further Education settings, with a particular focus on reaching those settings who are not yet engaged with climate action planning. - Develop and facilitate local and regional networks for sector collaboration and sharing of best practice of sustainability in education settings The provider will also be required to work with the Natural History Museum, their partners and the wider delivery network to encourage and guide sector participation with the Department's National Education Nature Park and Climate Action Award initiatives from Autumn 2023 onwards. At this stage we are looking for the market to register interest in bidding for this work (contact details below). We will look to hold market engagement days so that interested parties may request more detail about this opportunity.

Additional information: Background: In April 2022 the Department published its Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy. As part of that Strategy we committed to support the sector in appointing a Sustainability Lead who will develop a tailored Climate Action Plan to outline how the setting will embed sustainability. This procurement is a part of this initiative within the strategy and aims to provide direct sector support to implement this.