Save the date! The Sustain Britain Conference is back!

In a little over a month, on 19th September, the second Sustain Britain Conference will take place in Royal Wooton Bassett, held once again in the grounds of the Sustain Farm Shop and Cafe.  Free to attend, with just 100 tickets available, places can be booked here.   

Building on our inaugural event, this year’s conference will see the launch of the ‘Greenprint for a Sustainable, Independent Britain’, a paper which embraces and expands on many of the topics discussed and debated both by our delegates and our esteemed panel of speakers last year.  

Special focus will be placed on implementing practical ways for communities to build more resilient, self-sufficient local communities through the adoption, adaption and implementation of aspects of the Greenprint for their own benefit.  

Once again, internationally renowned speakers will join us including CEO of Forum for the Future Hannah Pathak, and our keynote speaker for the day Sir Jonathan Porritt. Alongside pioneering eco-warrior Jarvis Smith, we will hear from local activists who are actively applying the Sustain ethos in the delivery of sustainable change for their communities.  

This includes Dave Knight of Royal Wootton Bassett’s Environment Trust, who will be speaking about the Trust’s vision for a network of cycle paths and Active Travel routes for Royal Wootton Bassett and a link route to Swindon, which supports the concept of Sustain Circles. 

Given the recent experiences of Sustain Wiltshire, other prominent points of discussion will include Sustainable Anarchy, and the need for a radical overhaul of the public sector’s attitude to risk. 

Sustainable Anarchy. This is fast becoming a vital tool necessary to progress sustainable projects in an effective manner. Here, the power of acting in the public interest needs to be carefully managed, alongside ensuring that nature and the wider environment are protected as part of any planned sustainable project.   

Far from being without order, as anarchy might suggest, Sustainable Anarchy requires careful planning, thought and effort. This is necessary to ensure that actions are taken in the public interest, helping to confront self-perpetuating bureaucracy that continues to hold back regionally and nationally important projects which have a key part to play in promoting economic growth and protecting the planet.  

Public Servants Must Take More Risk. Spare a thought for our local politicians who give up their time to try and deliver positive change for their communities, only to be thwarted by the bureaucracy that surrounds them.  

Instead of barriers we need a positive change in the culture of our public servants. Rigid protocol needs to be replaced with a greater appetite for risk taking, and an acceptance of a reasonable level of errors. 

It is for this precise reason that the Sustain Britain Greenprint champions an 80/20 rule for public servants, where 80% of budgets would be spent on frontline services rather than on consultants and bureaucracy, and a new 20% grace rate would be set for the public sector encouraging greater agility and risk taking without recrimination through the adoption of a 20% target level for permissible mistakes.  

In our view, it is this kind of radical change that needs to be implemented if we are to make Britain better through actions that save the planet, rather than reports that wrap it up in red tape.  

Until next time... 

Nick Ash