Nottingham is one of nine partner cities in a European (LIFE) funded project that is seeking to evaluate and improve the sustainable development performance of European cities. The partners in the project are: Vienna, Venice, Birmingham, Leipzig, Newcastle, Nottingham, The Hague, Malmo, Tampere, University of West of England, Improvement and Development Agency and Eurocities.

Although the concept of sustainable development is now much more widely used and understood than it was ten years ago, practical implementation lags well behind in most countries. Good practice and innovative sustainability projects are relatively common, but have generally not found their way into the mainstream.

The European Commission recognises the need for new implementation tools that can help city authorities to measure the quality and effectiveness of existing sustainability policies and help them to undertake new policy initiatives. The PRESUD project was developed by Newcastle City Council and is supported by the European Commission, through the LIFE fund, to help address this gap.

The PRESUD project aims to test out a new implementation tool for improving sustainable development in European cities, which involves the use of indicators and peer review. Each review examines the state of the environment in each country, the pressures on it and the policy response to these by the government concerned, through a range of indicators. Another process drawn on by the PRESUD project is the UK Local Government Improvement Programme, which is run by the Improvement and Development Agency in London (IDeA).

The benefits that the PRESUD project will bring to Nottingham include:

• Being involved in a high profile sustainability project near the time of the World Summit on Sustainable Development  
• Gaining some objective feedback on the City Council's approach to an important cross cutting issue  
• A better understanding of Nottingham's strengths and the opportunity for other European cities to learn from these  
• Receiving constructive suggestions about areas for improvement from other European cities who may excel in areas where Nottingham does not  
• Enhancing Nottingham's profile as an active European city

For more information:

Email: mike.peverill@nottinghamcity.gov.uk

Website: PRESUD