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Sustainable Development 08 Conference

Date of speech	21 February 2008
Location	Barbican Conference Centre, London
Event summary	Sustainable Development 08: Think Sustainable, Think Change

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Draft text of the speech - may differ from the delivered version.

Thank you Sara (Parkin, of Forum for the Future).

Introduction

It's three years since Securing the Future, the Government's sustainable development strategy, was published.

Things move fast in the world of Government. New policies are announced. Prime Ministers, Ministers and whole departments change. And even the language we use to describe our values and what we are doing gradually evolves.

So I really welcome the opportunity to be here today, to take stock of what sustainable development means to Communities and Local Government, a Department that wasn't even born when Securing the Future was published.

Securing the Future

I know Jonathan (Tillson from Defra) will be reminding us a bit later of what Securing the Future is all about. But I want to start with a few thoughts on some of the main features.

First, the five guiding principles of sustainable development. Summed up in the simple sentence "We want to achieve our goals of living within environmental limits and a just society, and we will do it by means of a sustainable economy, good governance, and sound science."

Sometimes it's easy to forget how much those principles moved the debate forwards. The recognition that people and the environment come first, but that we need three other principles too if we are to achieve our goals. Not only the familiar 'third pillar' of a strong and sustainable economy. But also good governance - an area where my Department plays a key role in making sure that decisions get made at the right levels, and overturning the 'Whitehall knows best' attitudes. And sound science - basing things like the planning system and indeed our own policy making processes ever more firmly on an evidence-based approach.

Secondly, Securing the Future gave us 'the four E's' as a way of securing change - Enable, Engage, Exemplify, Encourage - a broader toolkit than traditional regulatory approaches alone. I know Yvette Cooper came to this very event last year and talked about the work we are doing on buildings and climate change. She talked about partnerships, long-term strategy, incentives, regulatory frameworks, support for technology and information. All of the 'four E's' are vital to, and are part of, our work in this area.

And thirdly, the Shared Priorities that Securing the Future announced. Sustainable consumption and production. Climate change and energy. Natural resources and the environment. Sustainable communities and a fairer world.

It's startling how fast climate change has charged up the international and domestic policy agenda over the past three years - and indeed how central it is becoming to the work of my own department.

And it's worth a reminder that the concept of Sustainable Communities is alive and well. The Sustainable Communities Plan itself has been taken forward in new and exciting directions, such as the Housing Green Paper. But the definition of sustainable communities - places that are active, inclusive, safe - well run - environmentally sensitive - well designed and built - well connected - well served - fair for everyone - that definition is standing the test of time.

Sustainable Development in Communities and Local Government

One thing that has forced us to ask ourselves what sustainable development means to Communities and Local Government, as a new department with a new set of objectives, was the preparation of our Sustainable Development Action Plan . We concluded that the Department has five distinctive contributions to make to sustainable development. These are:

• championing social aspects of sustainable development - tackling deprivation, building social cohesion, empowering communities to act together on the issues they face;
• ensuring that people have access to housing that is affordable and of good quality, and managing the environmental consequences of housing development;
• using the planning system and our urban regeneration programmes to give people access to the services, surroundings and amenities that serve sustainable communities;
• helping local authorities - and regions, sub-regions and cities too - to respond to the needs of local people and to the economic, social and environmental circumstances of a rapidly changing world; and
• as a vital partner in tackling climate change - principally through the built environment and local government.

So, for us, sustainable development is played out on a very broad arena - probably as broad an arena as for any other department. I want to illustrate this today by giving examples of things we've been doing over the past year that fit with the distinctive contributions that I've just outlined.

Community empowerment

Securing the Future had a lot to say about Together We Can, the cross-government action plan - led, at the time, by Home Office - on engaging and involving people.

Community empowerment has risen even further up the agenda since the arrival of Hazel Blears as our Secretary of State. The Community Empowerment Action Plan , published jointly with the Local Government Association last October, sets out what community empowerment means to us, and the vital role that involving people in decisions that affects them makes to getting things right. As Hazel said:

"It is the only way we can get to grips with some of the biggest challenges we face - from climate change to childhood obesity - where people making little changes in their everyday life is a vital part of the solution."

The action plan sets out concrete steps that we have taken and will take, to involve people in the things that affect them - from giving tenants a greater role in housing management and citizens a greater role in planning, through to community kitties, petitions, community contracts or charters and indeed transferring assets to communities.

And, whilst empowerment is a vital part of building sustainable communities, it can and must be part of the way we take forward sustainability in the narrower, environmental sense of the word. From harnessing the passion that people have for their local environment, through things like neighbourhood management pathfinders, to mobilising community action on climate change. Hazel Blears and Kay Andrews have started a process of engagement with third sector partners, to explore the potential for community action on climate change and the role to be played by the third sector in this.

Housing

You all know the priority that Gordon Brown gives to meeting the nation's housing needs. This is a long-term challenge that reflects a historical legacy of under-supply, the aspirations that prosperity has understandably given people to have their own home, and the long-term demographics that the country faces.

But this agenda isn't about housing supply numbers alone. We need to ensure that new homes are part of vibrant communities, served by the infrastructure and services they need and built in a way that respects environmental limits. In short, they need to stand the test of time.

I was in Wolverhampton earlier this week. I saw houses and buildings that had been standing for a century or more. Well designed buildings which gave the city centre a distinctive feel. And which, with a sensitive approach to updating the public realm, will help to engender a real sense of civic pride. But I also saw some buildings, only a few decades old, which were poorly designed and just didn't fit with their surroundings. And those buildings present a real challenge - to the local economy, to the community and to the wider environment.

So it's vital that we put good design and planning at the heart of our housing and regeneration agenda. Good design delivers value for money. And it can be an integral part of achieving environmentally sustainable development.

Timely delivery of housing-related infrastructure, such as transport links for people to get from home to work, schools and healthcare facilities for people to access, and high quality green space for people to enjoy and children to play on, is essential to us delivering sustainable housing growth.

That is why the Government is putting in place the framework and funding necessary to help achieve this. We're setting aside large sums of funding specifically targeted at supporting housing growth. That's why we're providing £1.7 billion of funding over the Spending Review period for infrastructure in the key growth locations. And it's why we have a cross-Government Public Service Delivery Agreement (PSA20) on housing growth and affordability, so that we deliver the transport, schools and hospitals, alongside the houses, in all parts of the country.

Which brings me to the topic of making sure that housing growth is environmentally responsible. We are determined to make it so. And we have made real strides over the past year. We have:

• finalised the zero carbon new homes policy for 2016 that Yvette talked about when she was at this event last year - let's not forget how ground-breaking that policy is;

And we have:

• announced water efficiency standards for new homes;
• finalised the Code for Sustainable Homes, which all new homes will in future need to be rated against;
• launched the eco-towns programme - a real opportunity to drive up environmental standards by showing what can be done - not only in terms of carbon and climate resilience but also wider aspects of environmental sustainability such as green space and biodiversity.

Of course, we've also heard a lot about flooding and new development over the past year. We are determined to avoid adding to flood risk through inappropriate house building. That is why we have introduced Planning Policy Statement 25 , which Sir Michael Pitt has agreed is sound provided it is rigorously applied. We do need to make sure that it is rigorously applied, and we are finalising the practice guidance to support it. And we have followed up PPS 25 by working with Defra on proposals for surface water management and sustainable drainage systems.

Planning

Of course, a lot of these issues are played out through the planning system. The planning system is all about reconciling environmental, economic and social objectives in order to deal with the long-term challenges we face - including climate change, maintaining our global competitiveness and ensuring security of energy supplies. And, inevitably, not everyone will always like the choices that get made.

But what we have had is a planning system where planning applications for nationally significant infrastructure can be dealt with under multiple, overlapping consent regimes, and where our national policy often simply isn't clear enough. This has sometimes led to delays in the decision-making process or to choices about policy on national infrastructure development being debated at length in local inquiries on individual projects. And that can't be good for anyone.

So that is why we have been pressing ahead with a process of planning reform for a single consent regime for nationally significant infrastructure. National policy statements produced by Government are the foundation of the proposed system. They will establish the national case for infrastructure development, following public consultation and Parliamentary scrutiny.

In response to the feedback from consultation on the Planning White Paper we have included a provision in the Planning Bill that, in preparing these national policy statements, Ministers must have the objective of contributing to sustainable development. This will happen through the requirement in the Bill that each national policy statement will be subject to an appraisal of its sustainability. This process will look at the environmental, social and economic implications to ensure that important adverse and beneficial effects are carefully considered and integrated and sustainable development is properly achieved.

And it isn't only on the major infrastructure side that we've been active of course. We have introduced a new Planning Policy Statement on climate change which sits under our Town and Country Planning regime. And the Planning Bill places a duty on local planning authorities to take action on climate change, both mitigation and adaptation.

Local government

I talked earlier about the principle of good governance being at the heart of sustainable development. Again, that sometimes brings uncomfortable choices on specific issues - whether to introduce regulations that oblige local authorities to do what looks like the 'right thing', or to give them the space to form their own, locally tailored, version of what the right thing is and how to bring it about.

The right answer will often fall somewhere between the two, which is where the 'four E's' I mentioned earlier come in.

A recent example was whether there should be a general duty, in the Climate Change Bill, for all public bodies on climate change adaptation. The Government's position is clear. Such a duty would be a blunt instrument.

Much better to use tools like the UK Climate Impacts Programme to get local authorities to recognise the importance of adaptation for themselves. To give them guidance on what an adaptation programme might look like. And to give them the right incentives, through the performance framework, to take action. And for local authorities to realise that, if they don't take action, then those that ignore the issue will be held to account.

Which is why the Climate Change Bill gives the Secretary of State the power - but not the obligation - to require public bodies to report on what they are doing on adaptation.

So we have to be subtle in the way we use the levers at our disposal to make sure that sustainable development is delivered on the ground. So as not to stifle innovative local solutions to very real issues.

But legislation is sometimes part of the answer, when used effectively. Which is why the Government gave its support to the Sustainable Communities Bill, which received assent last October. Some changes were needed along the way, to respect the principles I've been talking about. But we now have a piece of legislation that helps people to promote the sustainability of local communities. Which starts from the principle that local people know best. But gets central government to give them the support they need, by inviting local authorities to make proposals to improve local sustainability. A real example of central government, local authorities and local people working in partnership.

Climate change

I'm not going to dwell on climate change. It is indeed 'the greatest threat', as Securing the Future put it. And I hope I have shown, from everything else we're doing, that my Department is indeed a vital partner in tackling and adapting to it, and taking that role very seriously.

But climate change is so large and tangible an issue that it sometimes crowds out discussion of other aspects of sustainable development. Let's ask ourselves this: if there were no such thing as climate change - and plainly there is - would we still need the concept of sustainable development to help us improve the human condition now and in the future? I believe the answer is a resounding yes, and I commend events such as today for reminding us why.

Conclusion

Thank you for listening. As I unfortunately cannot be with you for the panel session later this morning, I would be happy to take a few questions before I leave.