Protecting the most vulnerable: Camden Council's blueprint for climate-proofing communities

Scorching summer heatwaves, intense spring storms that bring flooding and wind damage, winter cold snaps that burst pipes and damage roads. The effects of a changing climate are tangible in London, UK, as they are in cities across the globe.

According to Met Office, these events are likely to intensify in the coming years, a race against time for businesses and public sector bodies to build resilience.

For councils, the challenge is particularly complex. They are responsible for delivering many of the crucial services like schools, leisure centres and social housing that communities depend on. Damage to these facilities adds large costs to already tight budgets, but it also means service disruptions that have a direct impact on constituents’ lives.

The London Borough of Camden (Camden Council) added climate as a principal risk to its Corporate Risk Register back in 2022. It is undertaking an ambitious resilience building effort across hundreds of its sites, informed by analyses from Zurich Resilience Solutions.

How Camden Council scoped the risks 

The work builds on previous risk assessments published in Camden’s borough-wide Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan 2023–25. For the next phase, the council required a more granular site-level analysis – using Zurich’s proprietary data and tools – to help shape practical planning decisions.

“We wanted to select three archetype locations for detailed assessment that could be used as benchmarks for other similar areas in Camden," explains Suzanne King, Climate Adaptation and Resilience Lead. They chose 82 locations across these three ‘model estates’:

• Regent’s Park Estate: an area of dense social housing with expected heat risk.
• Maitland Park/Kentish Town: an area where the council has a mix of assets at higher risk of heat and flood risk, notably care homes, leisure centres and libraries.
• Kilburn: a typical residential area with known levels of flood risk.

The individual locations themselves covered four asset types: schools, large housing estates, care homes and sports and leisure facilities – chosen because they serve some of Camden’s most vulnerable residents.

What the analysis found 

In the UK, flood risk is the most widely publicised climate risk. Both Camden Council and the Greater London Authority have a range of measures in place to investigate flood events, incorporate flood risk in planning applications and build resilience.

But Camden's assessment painted a more nuanced picture. Wind damage, heat stress and drought, for example, are projected to see the highest hazard values for the borough by 2060, while flood risk is more localised.

For the council, this creates a range of concerns beyond physical building damage. In care homes, heat stress poses a direct threat to older residents who are more likely to have pre-existing conditions and are less able to regulate their own body temperature. In schools, it could directly affect child safety, wellbeing and learning outcomes – with wide-ranging social and educational consequences.

This social dimension of climate risk is paramount for councils like Camden as they seek to shield vulnerable communities. The borough’s risk assessment is also consistent with national-level data. A 2025 CDP report, for example, found that 83 percent of UK local authorities believe climate change could shut down essential health and social work.

The importance of financial quantification

As well as shining a light on these risks, the assessment went one step further: it included financial loss quantifications for the risks analysed.

These combine factors like building age, construction type, presence of basements and building use – alongside expected days of service interruption – calculate risk in tangible numerical terms.

This is important for a number of reasons. Quantifications provide stronger, more persuasive evidence to guide the prioritization of the council’s resilience works and the budgets required to execute them. That evidence is also important to strengthen applications for climate adaptation grants, from the Greater London Authority and other government agencies.

From data to action

Camden Council is already exploring ways to operationalise the assessment findings into its adaptation work.

It is collaborating with the UCL Institute of Health Equity and Raise Camden (the council's child health equity program, led by Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Director of the Institute of Health Equity and Professor of Epidemiology at University College London), to look at health needs across estates. The data from the report feeds directly into this work, by providing the climate risk and climate justice evidence base to engage residents from a health equity lens.

In summer 2025, the council launched its "Stay Cool" campaign and cool spaces network. Using data from Zurich Resilience Solutions, the council can identify specific areas at highest heat risk and concentrate efforts to establish cool spaces – including libraries, community centres, sports facilities – in those locations. These buildings will function as safe havens during extreme heat events.

“We would like to continue working with Zurich Resilience Solutions to try to look at the economic losses associated with heat,” highlights Ms. King. “Extreme heat is a major hazard that will only be getting worse in Camden and we want to prioritise building our resilience to it.”

Climate resilience will be integral to public services 

Camden’s efforts are a sign of intent, going beyond identifying risks to acting on them – they also serve as a blueprint for other local authorities.

Its ‘model estate’ approach means other boroughs don't need to start from scratch. By matching building age, material, typology and construction characteristics, Camden's archetype findings can be extended across similar assets in the borough and the wider city. Coordinated approaches like this will be crucial for UK councils, many of which are facing funding crises that will only be exacerbated further by climate hazards.

Climate resilience building is emerging as a key priority for cities across the world. It helps local authorities identify where targeted investment will do the most good for communities, practical measures today that will better protect vulnerable residents and the viability of essential services from increasingly extreme weather. These quick fixes are also good for the balance sheet. Every $1 invested in adaptation can yield over $10.50 in benefits over 10 years.

Future risks may seem abstract today. But the councils who follow Camden’s lead and take them seriously today will be the ones best placed to thrive in the future.