Make a proposal to your CE organisation’s board on how they could engage with the election‘Increasing your visibility’ and ‘Contacting your candidates’ can be done in the course of normal operations by a few people. However if you have capacity there may be more you can do, for instance, attend or (co-)organise local events during Great Big Green Week (June 8-16) or Community Energy Fortnight (July 1-14), create a leaflet that canvassers might like to use…

Decide with your board and volunteers what you have capacity and energy for. Plan what it will take. Get a budget (or apply for funding) for your plan and engage volunteers to help make it happen.

Organise or support a local hustings or event
Once the general election campaign has started, local candidates will often attend hustings. You can find Friends of the Earth’s guide to organising a hustings here. Other organisations like FOE may be planning to run Climate and Energy Hustings, so ask around in advance if you want to partner. If other hustings are going ahead, get in touch with the organisers to make sure community energy comes up. There may be other local events you can get involved in. Make sure to advertise election events to your members and ask them to talk to local candidates about community energy.

Develop an ask
This can be anything from a message of support on social media or their website to writing to their party’s energy spokesperson asking them to improve their offer for the sector. For details on what the major parties are currently saying about community energy, you can read our blog here.