The People's Emergency Briefing
Take Action Toolkit
Prepared for attendees of the People's Emergency Briefing screening, September 2026. To be used by everyone!
A significant number of the people who came along wanted more information about writing to their MP, and other opportunities for lobbying.
Below is a short guide plus three ready-to-use letter templates: one to our MP, one to our water company, and a generic one you can adapt for any company whose practices you want to challenge or praise.
HOW TO EMAIL YOUR MP STEP-BY-STEP?
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Confirm you're writing to the right person. Our MP for this area is Kit Malthouse. Find his current parliamentary email address at members.parliament.uk (search "Kit Malthouse") — always use the address listed there rather than one from an old leaflet, in case it's changed. Use WriteToThem to find details of all of your elected representatives.
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Use your own words where you can. A template is a starting point. MPs and their caseworkers notice when many nearly-identical emails arrive — a personal sentence or two at the start (why this matters to you, what you saw at the screening) carries far more weight than a copy-paste message.
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Say clearly what you want him to do. The ask in the template below is: publicly support, and press the government for, a national televised emergency briefing. Keep this front and centre — don't let it get lost in background explanation.
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Include your full name and home address. MPs prioritise (and are expected to reply to) constituents. No constituency address, no guaranteed reply.
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Ask for a reply. Politely request a response setting out his position.
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Send it. Email is fastest; you can also use the contact form on his website if you prefer.
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Let us know you've sent it. If you're comfortable doing so, tell Sustainable Overton (or just keep a note yourself) — it helps us gauge how many local people have written in, which itself is useful evidence if we ever need to show the strength of local feeling.
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Follow up if you don't hear back within a few weeks. A short, polite chaser is entirely reasonable.
And the others.......
We also talked about the power we hold in the choices we make, the votes we cast with our £££
Here are some additional templates which can be used to write to Southern Water regarding their hosepipe ban decisions, as well as a generic good/bad letter for any company where you see practices which should be commented on.
More sustainable options often aren't the cheapest, and so telling a company you care can really help to shape their decision making.
There's always something you can do, however small it seems.
Together, all the small changes add up to a tidal wave of change.
