Following on from a successful Phase 1 Pathfinder Places Project, Perth & Kinross Council, in partnership with Nicki Souter Associates, the University of Edinburgh and the Blairgowrie & Rattray Community Trust are seeking to develop the key community co-created place-based solutions that address non-technical barriers as voted for by residents and businesses in the Phase 1 areas. The project will seek to explore how these ideas can be best executed utilising the expertise of participating partners. The development work will focus on two key themes: **Revitalising Homes** will look at a whole systems approach to retrofit through engagement with local suppliers and installers, identifying green skills gaps, exploring and modifying the customer re-claim model for funding and creating a viable business model for a sustainable retrofit project. Work will also be carried out to create a local Trusted Trader Network and supplier/installer framework prioritising local businesses to be utilised by private and social housing landlords and owners. **Connecting Regional Travel** will investigate the viability of two new services focusing on the rural town of Aberfeldy. One will look at an express bus route out of the town to Perth, and another will concentrate on a minibus service connecting surrounding villages with Aberfeldy. Work will also look at synchronising bus schedules with vital destinations like healthcare facilities or train stations, provision of express bus services and feasibility of peer-to-peer transport services. Additionally, it will investigate reduced-cost fare options to stimulate demand and encourage a shift in commuting patterns, ultimately striving to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. A fail-fast agile approach will be taken allowing elements of the project to be adaptable, whilst still focused on the solutions to key barriers. We will maximise knowledge transfer through extensive monitoring and evaluation, working in collaboration with external partners to ensure that our findings and associated learnings are disseminated across the UK, reaching local government, businesses and community groups. The project will focus on the Perth & Kinross local authority area, with a particular focus on the communities of Aberfeldy and Blairgowrie.

The UK is committed to drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in order to do our fair bit to help limit the disastrous impacts of global warming. Thanks to supportive state policies, there has been a technological revolution in renewable energy in the last 20 years; wind and solar power are now the cheapest forms of electricity generation. Since the war in Ukraine, we also realise that these are good for energy security. We will need more renewable energy but it is also clear that we cannot rely only on such 'supply-side' measures and wait for further technological breakthroughs. We need to simultaneously address demand-side issues and overcome non-technical barriers to the adoption of cleaner technologies and less wasteful behaviours: from heat pumps, electric cars and smart meters to better home insulation and more walking and cycling. Some of the barriers we want to address are about perceptions of issues and institutions, feelings of agency and control and concerns about place and wider issues, All of these need to be explored and addressed if we are to see greater progress towards Net Zero targets and greater uptake of some of these technologies. Each part of the country must do its fair bit, and this project explores how the residents of Perth & Kinross can speed up our transition to a low-carbon future. By organising 'hackathons' and other events, the council will empower young people to articulate their vision of how their village or neighbourhood should start to look in the near future. These sustainability visions will be shared with older residents for a community-wide discussion about the changes we need to make collectively, the difficulties that some people may fear (or may indeed encounter) and the local benefits we should seek to share (e.g. cleaner air, less noisy traffic, more local green jobs). These local 'intergenerational climate action dialogues' will feed into a larger 'climate assembly', a regional event involving citizens and local businesses which will inform and improve council policy, and help us to develop new low carbon projects that are locally developed and supported. We will also hold focus groups with the public and consult with representatives of sectors such as the business sector to probe issues and barriers that relate directly to them.