homehef

• 2005 report
• Introduction
• Air quality
• Crime
• Decision making
• Economy
• Education
• Employment
• Energy
• Health
• Housing
• Land use
• Noise
• Social exclusion
• Transport
• Waste
• Water
• Wildlife

local councils / sitemap / accessibility / members / contact us

Current report

---

• Select a report
  • QoL 2006
  • QoL 2004
  • QoL 2003
  • QoL 2002
  • QoL 2001

Introduction

In March 2005, the UK Government published its long awaited review of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy entitled 'Securing the future'.

This new government agenda is focused very much on action and delivery around the shared principles of:

• living within environmental limits;
• ensuring a strong, healthy and just society;
• achieving a sustainable economy;
• promoting good governance; and
• using sound science responsibly

This review set out the areas of sustainable consumption and production, climate change and energy, natural resource protection, environmental enhancement and sustainable communities as priorities for immediate action and these are all areas that the Hertfordshire Environmental Forum is working on and looking to progress.

So whilst 2005 has been a year of review and agenda setting, 2006 is likely to be a year for prioritising activity, focusing on delivery and reviewing progress in these priority areas. In order to look at progress we have to understand where we are starting from and the quality of life report is Hertfordshire's mechanism for assessing how we are doing across the broad basket of quality of life indicators. Increasingly the indicators used are mirroring the national quality of life indicator set being put forward by the Audit Commission with one or two local exceptions. This means that we are able to look at how we are doing locally as well as how we are doing in comparison to others. It is also encouraging that once again the work being done to look at quality of life in Hertfordshire is held up as good practice by the Audit Commission in its publication 'Local quality of life indicators - supporting local communities to become sustainable'.

As an innovation in this year's report, we have integrated the legislation elements into the relevant chapters of the report rather than have a separate section.