UK Round Table SD Report

We were invited to assist in developing recommendations to the Deputy Prime Minister on reporting on sustainability for the 1999 UK Government Strategy for Sustainable Development. The project involved working in close collaboration with the most senior levels of sustainable development policy-making in the UK, several of them being world-leaders in their fields.

We held a seminar with a selection of stakeholders from industry, government (MPs and officials), the trades unions, local authorities and other public bodies, NGOs, academia and the media. We paid a great deal of attention to the different perspectives of each group, giving participants a chance both to influence the way that the session was organised and also to identify the questions that would be addressed during the day. We found it relatively straightforward to balance this need with the needs of the senior civil servants who were drafting the strategy.

The seminar was a great success and resulted in a report to the Deputy Prime Minister that was enthusiastically endorsed by the Round Table itself. Feedback from participants was extremely positive, with Professor Sir Richard Southwood, the then Chair of the Round Table, describing the seminar as stimulating and useful.