a) Local initiative group report

• Title: A briefing report to a government agency, outlining a proposed local initiative that should aim to influence personal behaviour, help to mitigate climate change and promote environmental justice.
• Type: Report
• Date: Thu 13 Nov 2025
• Group of 4, 1600 words (approx 400 per student).
• 25% final module mark Imagine that you (as a group) have just started a policy job at a national agency like the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or the equivalent agency in Wales or Scotland (in exceptional cases, even of another country).

You have asked to propose an idea for an intervention, such as waste, biodiversity, climate change adaptation etc. You are allowed to pick which of these work areas you want to focus on, and come up with an idea about how to make people act differently around it.

This document is the group’s brief to your boss: your chance to ‘pitch’ your idea. Your group needs to address the main points below but you do not have to do so in the structure presented here – just try to make sure they are covered in your report.

Note: the implementation of your initiative has a budget: you have a maximum of £250,000 (excluding staff costs): and you also have only 18 months to put together, trial and evaluate the intervention.

Hot Tips

• The group can pick the geographical and demographic target population for your intervention (i.e. a particular population segment, such as school children, or region / city/ catchment). Try not to make it too broad – often a more focussed intervention can be more effective.
• The report should make reference to a real location; indicate it in the text.
• Make sure you are aware of the types of interventions that have already been used and try not to overly replicate them e.g. giving recycling bins to all houses in a municipal neighbourhood.
• Try to make your writing style appropriate for a government report. That is, keep the language simple and straightforward, and use a professional tone.
• No need to include a cover sheet, but the report must be submitted via Turnitin.
• You will probably draw on the ‘grey’ literature a reasonable amount in this assessment (e.g. policy documents etc), plus websites and media reports (as well as key academic references). That is fine and expected: but make sure you have some academic literature in there, particularly when addressing the point (2) about the rationale for your intervention.
• Include the word count at the end of the report (that is, indicate the total number of words, excluding headings, footnotes, figure captions, tables and bibliography).

Further details and instructions

• Groups of 4 students (in exceptional cases, 3 students) will jointly select the topic and develop the report; groups will be formed according to the alphabetical order of names.
• Word count excludes headings, footnotes, figure captions, tables and bibliography).

The group should make use concepts and ideas discussed in the lectures and also from the course bibliography.

The report should have the following basic structure:

1. Title of project
2. Rationale (e.g. the theory and existing evidence behind the idea: and how this differs/improves upon past interventions)?
3. Interventions and activities (what are you going to do and who is your target audience?)
4. Evaluation (i.e. how will you be able to say later whether it has effectively changed personal behaviour, heled to mitigate climate change and promoted environmental justice?)
5. Any other comments (e.g. potential drawbacks)