Letter 23 — To Councillor Katie Dye

Keeping climate accountability visible

Date: 4 November 2025
Recipient: Councillor Katie Dye, Chair of the Climate Emergency Advisory Committee — Leeds City Council

Context

As Week 4 of One Letter a Day carries on from city delivery to democratic oversight, we write to Councillor Katie Dye.

As Chair of the Climate Emergency Advisory Committee (CEAC), she occupies the accountability link between policy ambition and public trust — keeping Leeds’s climate work visible, scrutinised and on track when national debate drifts toward short-term concerns.

Letter

Dear Councillor Dye,

Thank you for chairing the Climate Emergency Advisory Committee and for the time you give to keeping Leeds’s climate commitments under democratic scrutiny. Oversight rarely attracts attention, yet it is what makes promises credible. In a city trying to lead on climate delivery, that credibility is essential.

I am writing as part of One Letter a Day: a year-long civic experiment to reopen grounded conversations about the climate emergency, starting here in Leeds. Each day I write to someone whose work influences how we think and act on this crisis. Both letters and replies are published online to encourage wider dialogue. The aim is to keep open a visible and respectful conversation between citizens and decision-makers about what progress really looks like.

Over the past two years, the national debate has changed. Urgent discussion of the climate emergency has been crowded out by short-term economic anxieties and, at times, by populist and divisive narratives that turn attention away from shared challenges. In that context, the role of local democratic forums like the CEAC feels more important than ever — not only to monitor delivery but to help protect the quality of public discourse itself.

May I ask:

What has the Committee learned in that time about the main bottlenecks that slow Leeds’s climate delivery, and how might wider civic participation help to overcome them? How can residents, universities and community organisations contribute meaningfully? And how can the Committee keep the climate conversation visible and constructive when national attention drifts toward easier or more polarising issues?

I ask because your perspective could help clarify how local democracy sustains direction in difficult political weather, and how open civic engagement can keep climate accountability alive when distraction is easier than persistence.

With appreciation,
Vivien Badaut
Founder, One Letter a Day
www.one-letter-a-day.uk
linkedin.com/vivienbadaut

📨 Reply from Councillor Katie Dye

No reply has yet been received.

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Tomorrow’s letter continues Week 4’s focus on regional coordination, turning to Professor Rosa Foster, Director of the Yorkshire & Humber Climate Commission, asking how regional collaboration can turn civic energy into measurable progress and rebuild public confidence that the transition is real and shared.