Sustainable development for 2009-10

In 2005, the government set a number of challenging sustainability targets and ambitions that government departments must achieve. In 2008, CWDC became an executive Non-Departmental Public Body (eNDPB). This means that we must contribute to these government targets.

Sustainability at CWDC

Our aim at CWDC is to drive reform across the children's workforce. In so doing, we can help to make a positive contribution to the sustainability agenda and still deliver quality for employers, key stakeholders and partners.

We have produced our first sustainable development action plan (SDAP) for 2009-10. This plan clearly outlines how we will include sustainability in our work and our operations.

• Sustainable sevelopment action plan 2009-10 [PDF - 75.1 Kb]
• Annexe 1: Priorities for action [PDF - 39.8 Kb]
• Annexe 2: Sustainablility activity [PDF - 27.8 Kb]
• Annexe 3: Action plan [PDF - 32.5 Kb]

What we are doing already

Highlights of our sustainability activity to date include: 

• driving reform across the children's workforce by supporting and funding private, voluntary and independent organisations to deliver change
• moving to new office accommodation. Our office has an excellent sustainability rating and offers a number of waste reduction and recycling facilities. We will do more in 2009-10 to build on this.
• working with children and young people to ensure they have a say in helping us plan and deliver on our work and commitments.

The full list of our sustainable activity can be found in Annexe 2: Sustainable activity [PDF - 27.8 Kb].

What we will do in 2009-10

Highlights of the challenging and measurable sustainability targets we have set ourselves include:

• to reduce the energy usage of our Leeds office by 2.5% by March 2010 (compared to 2008-09 levels)
• delivering our new sustainable procurement policy and encouraging our suppliers to do the same (by June 2009)
• instigating a pilot children and young people's advisory group to involve them in the governance of CWDC.

Our action plan can be found in Annexe 3: Action plan [PDF - 32.5 Kb].

How we will judge our results and if we have been successful

We need to know how we are doing on implementing sustainability in our work and where we need to improve.

With this in mind, we will monitor and regularly report on our work in order to gauge our progress.