The Welsh Assembly Government is one of only a few governments in the world to have a legal duty to promote sustainable development and it has complied with the legal requirements set out in the Government of Wales Act 2006. According to the Assembly Government’s sustainable development scheme - One Wales: One Planet - sustainable development means enhancing the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of people and communities, achieving a better quality of life for existing and future generations.

The Auditor General’s report, published today, found that while much has been achieved, there is still more to be done. The Assembly Government has introduced a range of tools and approaches to promote sustainable development and has sponsored a wide range of projects, such as its school meal procurement initiative Appetite for Life; education for sustainable development and global citizenship; NHS Wales’ Healthy Sustainable Wales project and sustainability indicators for Wales.

But, sustainable development is seen as one of a number of competing priorities, rather than as an approach that will help the Assembly Government to choose between competing priorities. The Assembly Government has not used sustainable development as a means of changing the culture of the organisation or promoting a more explicit focus on improving the longer-term wellbeing of people in Wales. The potential for sustainable development principles to underpin good governance is not yet fully appreciated. Limitations in Assembly Government business processes mean that the sustainability agenda is not being applied consistently across all business decisions.

The report found that there is much to do to ensure that each member of staff understands how sustainable development principles apply to their work.
The Assembly Government has recently adopted sustainable development as its central organising principle and this provides an opportunity to address these weaknesses. Today’s report recommends  that the Assembly Government’s work under its One Wales: One Planet scheme should be more tightly focused on challenging existing ways of doing business in areas such as legislation: policy and strategy and spending taxpayers’ money.

Other recommendations in the report include calls for the Assembly Government to:

• Embed sustainable development in its governance procedures, financial planning, core business planning processes, change programmes and human resources processes.
• Establish a management culture that places a premium on identifying policy conflicts at an early stage; actively working with stakeholders to resolve conflicts; and where conflicts cannot be resolved, managing and mitigating policy conflicts.
• Adopt an approach to business planning and performance management that helps both individuals and the whole organisation to focus on results.

Auditor General for Wales, Jeremy Colman, said today:

“Promoting sustainable development is vital for the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of people and communities and for achieving a better quality of life for our own and future generations.

I hope the Assembly Government will take on the recommendations outlined in my report by building on the foundations of its One Wales: One Planet scheme, embedding it within its business decisions and making it a higher priority in all that it does.”

Notes to Editors:

• This report examines whether the Assembly Government’s business making process supports its sustainable development objectives. It does not consider ‘green housekeeping’ issues.
• The report looks at Assembly Government decision making and sustainable development in the 10 year period before publication of its scheme called One Wales: One Planet in May 2009. It is ten years since the Assembly Government’s statutory duty to promote sustainable development came into force.
• The Assembly Government adopted its first sustainable development scheme, Learning to Live Differently, in 2000. It launched its second sustainable development scheme in 2004, Starting to Live Differently.
• The Wales Audit Office shared the emerging findings from this work with Assembly Government officials at an early stage, so that they could take account of these findings when drafting the new sustainable development scheme.
• The Wales Audit Office is independent of government and is responsible for the annual audit of some £20 billion of annual public expenditure. Its mission is to promote improvement, so that people in Wales benefit from accountable, well-managed public services that offer the best possible value for money. It is also committed to identify and spreading good practice across the Welsh public sector.
• The Wales Audit Office was created in April 2005 through the Public Audit (Wales) Act, 2004, which expanded the functions of the Auditor General for Wales and enabled the transfer of staffs from the Audit Commission in Wales and National Audit Office in Wales to his employment.