Contact: Bob Lisney, ext 6647 email: [email protected]

1. Summary

1.1 This report provides an account of progress made in the year 2003/04 measured against the Action Plan and rolls forward the Action Plan for 2004/05.

1.2 It also describes action taken in 2004/05 to incorporate sustainability into the formal management processes of the County Council. This ensures that there is appropriate support, knowledge, encouragement and monitoring so that benefits and progress can be measured in a similar way to business organisations' corporate social responsibility reports.

2. Corporate Strategy

2.1 This report supports all Aims of the Corporate Strategy.

3. Performance 2003/04

3.1 There has been good progress against the Action Plan, full details of which are given in Appendix 1. The County Council has achieved year-on-year progress within some specific topic areas. However, a general view, held by those most involved in one or more cross-cutting projects, is that the County Council could make greater progress, more quickly. It is also evident that the Authority still has gaps in tangible factual data to make judgements on real outcomes.

3.2 Many organisations have struggled with the term `sustainable development' and how the concept relates to its `service and business'. The County Council is no exception. During the past year the Corporate Sustainable Development Group, supported by a Treasurer's consultancy review, developed a practical way forward to mainstream concepts of sustainability into the core fabric of the County Council's management processes. This is reflected in the format of the 2004/05 Plan, which identifies key personnel responsible for taking forward each action and a support group for each of three topic areas.

4. Current Activities 2004/05

4.1 Sustainability is now being embedded into what is termed the `golden thread' of management for the County Council. The community strategy needs to be the sustainable development strategy for the county. It is expected that the County Council's role in developing sustainable communities will be assessed by the new Comprehensive Performance Assessment process. In turn the County Council's corporate strategy reflects those aspirations in the community strategy and provides a management focus for all services. The Corporate Sustainable Development Group is now able to focus on monitoring cross-cutting and specific achievements closely related to the performance plan and other external review processes. Also, as a result of signing the Aalborg Commitments in June, the County Council ensured it can relate its achievements within the areas eg of local management towards sustainability; better mobility, health, social equity, etc with 1,000 European local authorities.

4.2 Hampshire County Council's performance measurement in relation to sustainability will need to become more sophisticated and part of good management practice which is easily understood.

4.3 Robust information is critical for meaningful managerial decision making. Good quality data must be collected and analysed in order to determine action, for example, information on resources consumed by the Authority (energy, water, etc). There is likely to be increasing scrutiny of the County Council's sustainability credentials, especially in relation to commodities/services used. Corporate IT systems must be capable of providing such information so that targets for action can be set and corresponding savings made.

4.4 With the recent changes to corporate IT systems there has been an unanticipated loss of some year-on-year performance information. The new system is currently unable to set a baseline from which targets can be developed and progress measured for the reduction of energy use and green house gas emissions. The best available performance data for 2003/04, set out in Appendix 2, is therefore not as robust as anticipated. Attention will be focussed on remedying this hitch as soon as possible over the coming months.

4.5 As the principles of sustainable development are now mainstreamed it is imperative that the reporting process is aligned with the corporate plan, performance plan, budget and departmental business plans.

4.6 An action plan to risk cover the rest of 2004/05 has been set. More detailed plans to underpin each action and target are in various stages of development and the aspiration is to complete these and have the relevant parts reflected in each Departmental Action Plan by March 2005. In future years it will be endeavoured to develop a rolling programme aligned with the service and budget planning process.

Recommendations

1. That the outcomes of activities in 2003/04 be noted and the Action Plan for 2004/05 be agreed.

2. That incorporating sustainable development into the County Council's corporate strategy and performance plan and the Local Strategic Partnership process be supported.

3. That the Aalborg Commitments be a guide to cross-cutting measurement of outcomes.

8927/RPL

APPENDIX 1

Hampshire County Council Sustainable Development Action Plan 2003/04 - Achievements

Much of the Action Plan for 2003/04 has been delivered and the County Council continued to make progress in understanding the sustainable development agenda.

The 2003/04 Corporate Sustainable Development Action Plan included 6 actions:

1. Action Point 1 set out the intention to make substantial progress on the named initiatives that affect all or large parts of the organisation, as follows.

(i) Climate Change

The Council's progress to mitigate climate change, as part of our formal commitment under the Nottingham Declaration, has consisted of a variety of policy-level initiatives, supported by the development of mechanisms to measure our improved performance (see Action Point 2 below).

· The Carbon Management Programme

· ESPACE

· South East Climate Change Partnership

· United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme

· Renewable Energy Projects, eg Natural Light Project (wood/biomass); Calshot (tidal, wind & biomass); Whitchurch (hydro).

(ii) Reducing commercial waste - HNRI

Plans are being developed to expand the established recycling schemes to out-stations and schools. Major schemes are being implemented to recycle waste from highway maintenance activities and use more recycled materials in highway works. Also, a working group has been convened to develop indicators to monitor environmental performance of the construction industry.

(iii) Improving the sustainability credentials of purchases

Sustainable procurement advice has been developed by the Corporate Procurement Network (see Action Point 3), and has informed the purchasing decisions of proactive people in various departments. A coordinated approach is required to facilitate large-scale take-up of the advice.

(iv) Corporate Biodiversity Action Plan

During 03/04, the Biodiversity Action Group mapped current activity and agreed future targets. A consultation draft has been produced and the final Action Plan will be published in 04/05.

(v) Staff Travel Plan

Initiatives to address staff travel to work include Car Share and Bike2Work.

(vi) Green Schools Programme

A corporate Sustainable Schools Group supported an expanding group of School Administration Officers to develop practical ideas and initiatives to improve school environmental performance, e.g. the development of the school's waste recycling contract due to start in April 2005.

2. Action Point 2 established three sets of indicators, as described below, to assist HCC improve environmental performance and financial efficiency. Responsibilities have been assigned and targets are being set in 04/05. Monitoring data will be presented to the Corporate Sustainable Development Steering Group in order to begin evaluating progress against the targets.

(i) Materials and Resources indicators measure paper use, availability of recycling at schools, water consumption, amount of construction waste recycled and amount of recycled material used in construction.

(ii) Carbon Management and Climate Change indicators monitor energy use, uptake of energy efficient appliances, amount of energy purchased from renewable sources and amount of energy generated on HCC sites (photovoltaic and landfill gas).

(iii) Staff and Business Travel indicators monitor uptake of travel plans by schools, business mileage and environmental specification of the HCC fleet, levels of home-working and take-up of teleconferencing.

3. Action Point 3 aimed to develop guidance for sustainable purchasing. A revised edition of the Green Buying Guide was produced in October 03, has been incorporated in the Staff Procurement Briefing, and is to be available on Hantsweb. The Procurement Network has been advising on the Material Resources Strategy. The IT Department and HNRI are investigating the potential of a sustainable procurement database.

4. Action Point 4 sought to appraise projects against whole life sustainability criteria. Detailed service-specific approaches are currently on trial. Changes to Project Appraisal forms are under discussion at present. Commitment to sustainability has been included as a criteria for admission of contractors to the register.

5. Action Point 5 was to arrange briefing sessions for members on sustainability issues. These were held in December 2003. Through specific case studies on purchasing green electricity and recycling contracts for schools' waste, many valuable points were raised dealing with both specific ideas and changes that are required to our budgeting, decision making and scrutiny systems.

6. Action Point 6 was to look at the environmental benefits of new technologies. IT Department have investigated technologies that could facilitate home working, reduce office energy consumption, and reduce business mileage through videoconferencing.

APPENDIX 2

Key Environmental Performance Data

APPENDIX 3

Action Plan 2004/05

Travel and Transport

Materials and Resources

Carbon Management and Climate Change