Capability for Local Sustainability
"For a local policy to be sustainable it must respect [the] five [sustainable development] principles"
Creating Strong, Safe and Prosperous Communities: Statutory Guidance HM Government, July 2008
What is capability?
The SDC uses ‘capability’ to describe ‘the degree to which organisations have the leadership, attitudes, knowledge, culture, skills/competencies, tools and resources to put sustainable development into practice through their own policies and programmes’.
Sustainable development in the new local performance framework
Sustainable development is now at the heart of the new local performance framework. For example:
- The UK Government’s new statutory guidance, Creating Strong, Safe and Prosperous Communities, emphasises that, more than before, sustainability should be central to the content of two key local plans. The LSP’s Sustainable Community Strategy – the 'overarching plan' for a local area – should have sustainability at its heart: the "Strategy’s economic, social and environmental priorities should therefore demonstrate how they support each other in an integrated way." In turn, the LSP’s Local Area Agreement should be the "shorter-term delivery mechanism for the Sustainable Community Strategy", and
- The latest consultation paper on the new Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) says that "sustainability considerations will be integral to the three overarching CAA questions" and that CAA will be "inherently about sustainability."
Capability for Local Sustainability
So how can local authorities and their LSP partners respond to these increasing expectations and put sustainable development at the heart of key plans and processes? And how can national and regional stakeholders help them to do this?
The Capability for Local Sustainability project has brought together Government Departments, national stakeholders, regional bodies, local authorities and LSPs to explore ways to improve the capability of local government and its partners, to deliver sustainable development. The project has focused in particular on the role of LSPs, SCSs and LAAs in achieving sustainable development.
Highlighting key findings from this project, SDC’s paper, Local decision-making and sustainable development: LSPs, Sustainable Community Strategies and LAAs:
- Summarises the key learning from the Capability for Local Sustainability project
- Outlines the key responsibilities of local authorities and LSP partner in relation to sustainable development
- Highlights the benefits of taking a sustainable development approach
- Identifies some of the ‘key ingredients’ for delivering sustainable development at the local level
- Presents new developments that the project helped create; and outlines what further support is still required from government and other stakeholders.
Publications
Local decision-making and sustainable development: LSPs, Sustainable Community Strategies and LAAs
Capability for Local Sustainability: a report to the SDC from CAG Consultants.
CAG were commissioned to identify current good practice in delivering sustainable development through LSPs, SCSs and LAAs and to identify what support would be needed to strengthen the capability of all local areas to replicate such good practice. The research also examined the potential role a benchmarking tool could play in supporting the delivery of sustainable development.
CAG's Capability for Local Sustainability - Summary of proposals: This paper brings together the proposals from CAG’s 'Capability for Local Sustainability'
report in summary form.
