Action Briefing Feb 2003 - Mar 2004
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Shake-up in the Sus Team

Birmingham City Council is currently undergoing some reorganisation, including the structure and size of the Sustainability Team.

Plans are not yet confirmed, but one element of this shake-up involves having sustainability officers, or officers with a partial sustainability remit, within other departments.

This makes sense in that it properly integrates sustainability within other departments, but we feel there is still a need for an overarching sustainability team to remain in place that can act more strategically.

Other Councils do manage to provide both, so hopefully Birmingham can, too. Currently, we are not sure whether a
decision has been made about whether there will be a strategic team and under whose department it will end up. The current team, I’m told, is down to a staff of two from a previous total of eight.

We’d like to make it clear that we are not criticising the City Council here, as no firm decisions seem to have been made and we do not know the full facts. But we are concerned about the support given to the Team and would like to suggest that supporters contact their councillors to find out a little more and to ask for an overarching sustainability team to remain, and for the team to have a lead officer at an appropriately senior level.

Karen Leach