Lead Organisation
Sustainability West Midlands Project Manager: Alan Carr (Sustainability Adviser)Overview
Staffordshire County Council (SCC) commissioned SWM to reinvigorate the sustainability agenda across the authority by convening a workshop that took place on 6 June 2017 that brought together staff from across the council as well as writing a report that reflected progress to date, recommendations for future activity and good practice examples from elsewhere. The aims of the project were as follows:- To raise the profile of sustainability across the organisation and to bring all key individuals up to date with the leadership SCC has shown on the subject.
- To make individuals aware that the whole organisation needs to work together to achieve a sustainable future for county of Staffordshire.
- To review SCC’s current sustainability related strategies, completed projects and outcomes of a stakeholder workshop to assess progress to date, in order for SWM to provide an independent assessment outlining how SCC can fully embed sustainability across its operations and services in future.
Results and achievements
- SWM produced sustainability criteria that SCC can use going forward.
- We identified a series of plans produced by SCC that are relevant to the sustainability agenda and have suggested a streamlining process to improve delivery.
- We were able to demonstrate 37 examples of existing good practice relating to sustainability and raise awareness of these.
- We were able to show that all of the sustainability metrics included in the criteria can fit in some way to SCC’s 26 Commissioning Priorities.
- 21 future project ideas came from discussions at the workshop.
- We provided SCC with a series of recommendations to consider when taking forward its sustainability related work.
“We recognised the value of SWM in terms of their ability to convene high quality workshops and their knowledge and experience of wider sustainability issues. They were able to help us build on our work around this agenda in Staffordshire by bringing together and engaging with a number of SCC staff, giving us the remit to produce a series of integrated next steps. The success of the workshop was also due to SWM’s refreshing and engaging approach to facilitation and their subsequent recommendations were clear, honest and realistic.” – Rachel Melvin, Team Manager: Sustainability & Waste Strategy.
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Lead Organisation
Sustainability West Midlands Project Manager: Simon Slater (formerly Chief Executive)Overview
Sustainable development is a complex agenda, how can it be interpreted and practically applied by regional, public sector organizations? SWM set out to answer this question in the context of Advantage West Midlands (AWM). The aim of this was to help build the understanding, confidence, and capacity of regional organizations to practically integrate sustainable development into their strategic and operational processes. The aim of this work was to take national good practice, in the form of the Sustainable Development Action Plans (SDAP) required to be produced and reported on annually by Government Departments to the Sustainable Development Commission, and adapt for regional public bodies such as AWM.Results and achievements
- AWM moved from the bottom to the top of the league table of corporate sustainability performance within the RDA network
- The creation of a board champion for future generations to chair the new sustainability sub-committee of the board to measure the progress of the SDAP
- Creation of small sustainability team of staff and co-located staff within AWM to drive ‘mainstreaming’
- Using the opportunity to refresh the economic strategy to produce the UK’s first low carbon regional economic strategy
- Internal environmental management system that led to operational savings from waste and energy efficiency measures
- Sustainability criteria built into funding investments, business support, and land and property development. This included a new carbon reduction target and reporting measures
- Developing a new sustainability standard for large sites, that was incorporated into Regional Planning Guidance
- Tailored training and support for the board, staff and partners to help them deliver their role in the SDAP
