We hosted a sold-out community screening of The People’s Emergency Briefing on Saturday 15 August — one of the hottest days of the year — to a full audience of 120 residents, councillors and community organisations, including this year’s Adur District Mayor, Julia Watts.
The free 50-minute film, presented by Chris Packham and featuring nine leading UK scientists alongside Jennifer Saunders and Deborah Meaden, sets out the latest evidence on the climate and nature crisis and its implications for health, food security, national security, the economy and nature loss. It was made from a briefing delivered to more than 1,200 MPs and leaders at Westminster in November 2025.
The screening took place on the same day that the Prime Minister visited Stourbridge to meet with fire services tackling the summer’s devastating wildfires, said the country must “face up” to a changing climate. Sussex has been officially declared in drought following the driest July in 190 years, with parts of West Sussex recording no rainfall for 59 consecutive days.
Among those in the audience were representatives of the organisations that contributed to Lancing Parish Council’s Gold award in the Royal Horticultural Society’s South & South East in Bloom competition, including Keep Lancing Lovely, World of Widewater and Sustainable Sussex. Alongside the screening, a display in the Community Hub showcased the environmental work being done across the parish — from the community garden and orchard at Orient Road, which supplies fresh produce to the Lancing and Sompting Foodbank, to the regenerating kelp beds and mussel colonies offshore that are part of the wider Sussex Bay marine restoration project.
The post-screening discussion, facilitated by Council Chair Denyse Whillier, reflected the mood of an audience that was clear-eyed about the scale of the challenge but determined not to be passive in response. Attendees noted that the managed transition to a sustainable economy need not be prohibitively expensive — the film’s experts put the cost at approximately £4 billion a year, or 0.2% of UK GDP — and called for coordinated national action on the scale the crisis demands, with strong backing for a government-led mission to manage the green transition.
“On Saturday afternoon, 120 people chose to spend part of one of the hottest days of the year together, watching difficult evidence and talking honestly about what it means. That says everything about this community. Our audience left dismayed by the scale of what we face — and clear that it demands a national response on the scale of the emergency. We want our government to treat this as a national mission.”
“Meanwhile communities like ours are not waiting. Last year, Lancing Parish Council won Gold in the Royal Horticultural Society’s South & South East in Bloom competition — one of only six Gold winners in the region — in recognition of the environmental work happening across the parish. The organisations who joined us on Saturday are doing extraordinary work — to reach net-zero goals, enhance biodiversity and encourage sustainable everyday choices among residents and local businesses. Recovery can happen faster than we dare to imagine — and it’s happening here.”
Councillor Denyse Whillier, Chair of Lancing Parish Council
We are encouraging residents who were unable to attend to visit www.nebriefing.org to find their nearest screening, or to register interest in hosting one. The film is available to screen free of charge in any community venue across the UK.
Copies of the Council’s community handout, Lancing — One of Sussex’s Hidden Jewels, setting out the natural resources of the parish and the organisations working to protect them, are available at the Parish Hall reception.
