Sustainable Development Action Plans

Defra's Sustaianble Development Action PlanGovernment has made clear that the public sector needs to demonstrate leadership on Sustainable Development (SD). As part of this, the UK Government SD strategy, Securing the Future, set a requirement for all central Government Departments and their Executive Agencies to produce Sustainable Development Action Plans (SDAPs) and to report and update them regularly.

Defra's third SDAP sets out our actions until March 2011. We used the learning experiences from our second SDAP, published in November 2007, to develop this plan.

We want to lengthen our stride and ensure that SD is fully embedded in Defra. This means making sure that SD is a key component of everything we do, for example from making policy, to running our estates or engaging with staff and customers. Building on our previous SDAPs, we have really focused in our current SDAP on Defra’s core business – its policies – which is where we make a crucial contribution to SD.

In writing the plan, we have followed the guidance published by the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC). The ambition in the Defra plan and our progress against it will be audited by the SDC as part of their watchdog function.

Agency plans

The commitment to produce a Sustainable Development Action Plan also extends to Defra’s executive agencies. The agency plans show how the work of each organisation relates to Defra and the sustainable development agenda, as well as detailing their actions towards SD.

SDAPs currently available (in Adobe Acrobat pdf format) are:

 

Page last modified: 13 November 2009