The Commissioning Joint Committee Guide to Environmental Sustainability

The Commissioning Joint Committee (CJC) has completed its guide to this complex and hugely important subject. It addresses all the main aspects of sustainability as they affect public bodies, including:

• emissions control and trading
• sustainable procurement
• sustainable energy sources
• sustainable construction methods and materials
• designing buildings for low energy consumption
• waste recycling and disposal.

This invaluable publication is not just about the urgency of action to reduce climate change, but also what in practice local authorities and other similar bodies can do to reduce it. Corporate decision-makers and practitioners need to know what practitioners in all disciplines, not just their own, can do. The purpose of the guide is to give them a source of unvarnished jargon-free information.

It also covers, separately, some special subjects which cut across the work of all disciplines, including:

• whole-life costing for sustainability
• statutory duties to pursue sustainability
• statutory powers of local authorities to pursue sustainability.

The volume of technical information available about most aspects of sustainability is of course daunting. Although most of it is readily available, no one person could possibly read it all. The CJC has therefore tried to identify the sources which appear to be particularly useful and accessible. Most are subject-specific, and are mentioned in whichever parts of the guide address the subjects in question.

Standard CJC practice is to quote the URL for every document quoted if it is on the web; and also its precise name, to make it easier for users to find the new URL whenever this changes. Even so, typing in URLs from hard copy documents is hard work, and notoriously accident prone. The terms of licences for other categories of purchaser, which includes those local authorities operating shared service arrangements, are available on request from CIPFA’s Publications Department.

This publication is also available as a bookmarked PDF.