| 1. There are immense challenges ahead if the UK is to move towards a sustainable future in which we balance the need for economic and social progress against environmental limits and constraints. Central Government departments can play a key role here by placing the environment at the heart of policy making and helping to achieve such a shift. They are also major employers and estate managers, and to that extent should manage operations to reduce environmental impacts. "Greening Government" is therefore of enormous importance. It should constitute an over-arching framework within which all policy making and operational management are carried out.
2. For some years, the Government has itself produced an annual report on Greening Government. The latest in this series was renamed Sustainable Development in Government: First Annual Report partly to reflect the inclusion of social issues. It was largely based on detailed information which departments provided in response to an annual questionnaire, and these responses have been made available on the Government's Sustainable Development web-site. Our main purpose in producing our own report is to review the progress being made by departments in the light of these detailed questionnaire responses, and we see this as an inherent part of our audit role. In view of the difficulty in evaluating these responses, we have also sought to increase transparency and accountability by including as an Annex not only the full questionnaire itself but our own commentary on the responses. We have drawn heavily on this analysis for our main report.
3. The key messages from our work are these:
- Most departments devote little in the way of staff resources to the Sustainable Development agenda, while the grade of the most senior staff working on these issues is relatively low. This reflects a lack of commitment by senior management and a failure to exploit the potential within many departments to mainstream sustainable development more radically.
- Objectives and targets agreed within Public Service Agreements act as key drivers for departments. Yet, with the exception of DEFRA, these agreements contain hardly any environmentally related targets—fuelling the impression that sustainable development is a relatively low priority. As we do not have access to the Sustainable Development Reports which departments submitted with their bids for Spending Review 2002, we cannot assess what impact this new requirement has had.
- Many departments are still unable to provide lists of new policies and the results of screening them for environmental impacts—some three years after the Government set this as an objective. Poor progress here partly reflects the lack of effective environmental management systems covering policy aspects. But it is
also symptomatic of a lack of commitment and awareness at higher levels within departments.
- Many departments are still unable to report adequately on their operational performance—for example, in reducing waste or water consumption. This highlights the importance of developing environmental management systems. More generally, departments could do much more to report on their environmental impacts by publishing their own environmental or sustainable development reports.
4. The Government is due to publish the next annual report on Sustainable Development in Government shortly. We appreciate that it will not be able to take account in that report of our findings and comments. However, we trust that our work will be of use to ENV(G) by highlighting areas where more progress could be made and further targets set. In particular, we would strongly urge ENV(G) to take account of the many specific comments contained in the Annex to this report. We would also be happy to comment on the draft questionnaire which will form the basis for the Government's 2004 report.
5. More generally, the Government is now embarking on review of its Sustainable Development Strategy. This should examine the impact which the strategy has had on departments and assess to what extent it has achieved the mainstreaming of environmental objectives. There is indeed an impressive range of policy documents and guidance in place which relate to sustainable development. But our fear is that much of the work undertaken on this agenda occupies a limbo existence which has little impact on departments' real priorities. It is a fear which is compounded by the very concept of sustainable development which can all too easily be used to obfuscate as well as empower.
6. Our work on this report has also involved considerable analysis of data. We have taken this opportunity to highlight once again our need for audit support. We would welcome the assistance of the NAO in analysing future reports and enabling us to carry out our audit function in a timely and effective manner.
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