Planning for Sustainability in NSW Local Government

• Main Authors: Jade Herriman, Emma Partridge, Mick Paddon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: UTS ePRESS 2008-04-01
• Series: Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance
• Online Access: https://learning-analytics.info/journals/index.php/cjlg/article/view/765

Local councils in the state of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia are starting to give serious consideration to how they can include ‘sustainability’ in their planning for the future. There is no statutory requirement to create a sustainability plan – and therefore no standard definition of what constitutes such a plan for local government in NSW. The same is true of the term ‘sustainability’, for which there is no standard or legislative definition. However, the NSW state division of Local Government Managers Australia (LGMA - a professional organization for council managers) has recently released a ‘Sustainability Health Check’ as a resource to assist councils in assessing their current performance and devising appropriate strategies and action plans for sustainability. In addition, several individual councils have used the opportunity provided by the state government’s Urban Sustainability Program to make a first attempt at developing a sustainability plan.