November: From Poundbury to Cranbrook – delivering sustainable communities

2014 marks the centenary of town planning as a profession in the UK. As Chair of the SW branch of the RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute) this year, one of my key aims has been to try and elevate the debate above the rhetoric which passes for political debate to a serious discussion about the role of planning in shaping the world we live in.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the debate which surrounds the provision of new homes to meet the needs of an ever growing population.  Our persistent failure to build enough new homes has been a clear contributor to rising house prices.   Every Government promises to increase the supply of new homes by changing the planning system, releasing public sector land, and underwriting mortgage lending (Help to Buy).  Yet the numbers of new homes being built is only now recovering to pre-crisis level and remains well below what is needed.

Why is that?  Well Government has effectively curtailed public sector house building as it seeks to tackle fiscal deficits.  Housing associations are forced to raise money on the private market and local authorities have neither the budgets nor the capacity to restart building Council housing in any meaningful way.  So we have become ever more dependent on private house builders as the main source of new homes.

The difficulty is that their business model, which seeks to maximise return on capital employed commensurate with risk, appears unable to deliver either more or better quality housing at a price which people can afford.

So there is a lot of interest at the moment in Cranbrook, a new settlement to the east of Exeter.  Planned as a sustainable community, which will shortly have its own railway station, Cranbrook aims to be a sustainable community providing a mix of affordable and market homes all linked to a district heating system and served by a new railway station and cycle links.  Based on construction rates and sales (one new home is being completed every day) Cranbrook looks like a success for the private house builder model.  But dig more deeply and you will find out that it has been underwritten by some £90 million of public expenditure on infrastructure as well as social housing grant.  And with strategic land companies and speculative house builders in control the opportunity to create a place of enduring quality is being lost.

Contrast this with Poundbury, Prince Charles’ much derided new community to the west of Dorchester. Here the pace of development has been much slower but, even if you don’t like neo classical and pastiche architecture, few could argue with the quality of the place which is emerging.  This extends to creating work spaces for small businesses within the urban fabric and creating a pedestrian friendly environment by rejecting standard highway engineering solutions.  All this has been achieved using an approach to development which is controlled by the land owner and not the developer.

So what conclusions can we draw from this?

1. We know how to plan, design and build sustainable communities.  The UK planning profession pioneered garden cities and new towns and developed the tools to deliver them.
2. The private sector is capable of producing new houses in both quantity and quality. However depending entirely upon the market is unlikely to produce the optimum result in terms of sustainable development.
3. Adopting the right delivery model is key.  Allowing developers to extract profit from both land value increase and housing development is unlikely to deliver either the infrastructure or facilities which communities require to be truly sustainable. 

The essential difference between Cranbrook and Poundbury is between maximising development profit in the short term (inelegantly termed ‘build it and bugger off') and long term value creation and stewardship.  It is to be hoped that Plymouth’s new community at Sherford will combine the best of both approaches.

Professor Chris Balch is Professor of Planning and Chair of the ISSR Management Team

December 2013: The Visible Hand: Social Enterprise, Values and the Future of Entrepreneurship

Plymouth has recently been recognised as the UK’s first Social Enterprise City, building on a vision inspired by a network of social purpose businesses across the city who, a few years ago, began to ask “What would it be like if all businesses operated for social purpose?” “What if the economy of a whole city, country or even the world was dominated by activity which had social and environmental aims at its core?” This vision, of a world in which social and environmental benefit and costs are factored into the business model and where societal and individual wellbeing, fairness and sustainability are the reasons for going to work, has been championed by Plymouth’s growing Social Enterprise Network and is supported by an increasing number of people and organisations across the city. Plymouth University is a member of that Network and holds the Social Enterprise Mark, the only University in the UK to do so.

Social enterprises are businesses with “primarily social or environmental objectives, whose surpluses are principally re-invested for that purpose in the business or community, rather than mainly being paid to shareholders and owners” (BIS). There are an estimated 70,000 in the UK, contributing £24bn to the economy and employing about a million people. It’s a model that is growing fast, with social enterprises more likely than comparable SMEs to report an increase in turnover last year. All stats are from the 2013 The People’s Business Report compiled by Social Enterprise UK.

So, what motivates the social entrepreneurs who choose this business model? What are the socio-political, fiscal and legislative conditions that encourage social enterprise development and what are the implications of a social enterprise economy for global sustainability? These are all questions in need of an answer.

Zebra Collective is a Plymouth-based social enterprise which has recently celebrated its tenth birthday. The founding members were, and still are, motivated by social justice; the desire to challenge inequality and make a difference in the world. They chose to do this by creating a worker co-operative which improves lives directly through community development projects and indirectly by training staff in service-providing organisations. They describe themselves as a value-driven organisation. Values are complex – they operate at the boundary between self and society, mediated by both and the interplay between the two. Two decades of cross-cultural research into human values have provided us with a good understanding of the patterns they typically take; patterns which present even more interesting questions in relation to sustainability and social entrepreneurial motivation.

It seems that the values which are close to each other on the diagram are complementary and tend be held simultaneously [1]. Values which are on opposing sides are thought of as being in conflict with each other and are not usually held together. Look at the axis which runs from social justice, protecting the environment and equality through to social power, wealth, ambition and influence. Does this mean that people who are motivated by social justice and sustainability are less likely to be ambitious and driven? Less likely to be successful? Might that explain a few things about the multiple social and environmental crises we find ourselves in? Are we fundamentally predisposed to be motivated either by social good or personal success, but not both? And if so, what about the very many people, often social entrepreneurs, who are ambitious, goal oriented, influential and passionate about social justice?  What can their value orientations tell us that might help in the quest for sustainability? This is one of the research questions I have been pursuing.

Whilst individual values are relatively stable, changing little over a lifetime, there is no doubt that they are also culturally influenced. It has been suggested to me that as society has changed in the decades since Schwartz did his seminal work, maybe value patterns have altered too. It was speculated that the rise of individualism and entrepreneurialism (or maybe the decline of the communist vs capitalist worldview) has caused a subtle shift in value patterns. This links to another of my earlier questions: What are the cultural, socio-political, fiscal and legislative conditions that encourage social enterprise development?

Charles Leadbeater in his work on co-operation offers some insights in this video and report. In particular, he talks about altering the structural conditions which “crush” co-operation. These are, quite possibly, the same structural conditions which institutionalise the values pattern in the diagram above, amplifying the practical and perceived differences between self-transcending and self-enhancing values and helping to steer each of us to make choices between them.

The recent series of Beyond Capitalism? lectures hosted by Plymouth Business School  (next one on 30^th January 2014) has also kicked off some provocative discussions but there is much more work to be done.

I suspect that the phenomenon of social enterprise, currently receiving lots of popular attention but which, as any passing academic will point out, lacks clear definition or substantive theoretical underpinning is of value precisely because it is an anomaly in relation to our current understanding of how the world works. I wonder whether one day all enterprise will be social enterprise - combined social, environmental and economic purposes will be the norm and the aim will be the overall creation of value across these domains. Our current ideological and institutional bias towards the creation and capture of economic wealth; and even our belief that this is the best way to generate societal wellbeing and environmental sustainability may well be concepts that, like others before them, will one day be resigned to history.

[1] For more on this see e.g. Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1–65

Michelle Virgo, Researcher for Futures Entrepreneurship Centre, ISSR Management Team and Social Entrepreneur

November 2013: Planetary Health: starting in Devonport!

What have sustainability, global health and health inequalities in Plymouth got in common, and why should they be part of medical education?

The link is of course that the ultimate source of human health is our shared home, the earth. As we overstep what Johan Rockström has usefully described as planetary boundaries – not only for greenhouse gases, but many other critical things such as water use and chemical pollution, it will inevitably impact on health.

Here is the link with inequalities though; it will often be other people’s health that we affect. More precisely, most of the consequences, at least to start with of rich lifestyles will be felt by the poor.  This is health inequalities on a global scale: early death is the ultimate social exclusion!

Within medicine, voices have been calling pretty much in the wilderness for doctors to think seriously about climate change. Organisations like Medact (http://www.medact.org/), a pioneering group that grew out of the former International Physicians for the prevention of nuclear war have led the way. Its former chairman, Dr Robin Stott now leads the climate and health council (http://www.climateandhealth.org/). The “campaign for greener healthcare” was founded in 2008. Now called the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (http://sustainablehealthcare.org.uk/).

Over the last year though everything has changed, doctors leaders have listened to their scientific colleagues and most of the major medical journals have run articles on global health and anthropogenic climate change.

Map of the City of Plymouth and differences in life expectancy

The city of Plymouth demonstrates the problem of inequalities in heath as starkly as anywhere in England. The map below shows that if one were to catch a bus from Widewell in the north to Devonport in the south, there would be on average 2 years of life expectancy less for every mile travelled.

Why is health so unequal? There are probably 2 main underlying factors. One has been underlined very eloquently by Sir Michael Marmot who now leads the Institute for Health Equity at UCL in London. His research (most accessibly presented in his book “Status Syndrome”) demonstrates that health is to a great extent socially constructed. That is, it depends on the conditions in which people are born, live and work. Put simply, being poor is very bad for your health. This does not only apply to absolute poverty but also to relative poverty. There is a social gradient in health that is not fixed but depends on how we organise our society.

Another book, by social epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Katie Pickett called “The Spirit Level” shows that more unequal societies (and we are increasingly one of those) do worse not only on health, but on many other measures.

So, to answer my original question, the thread that links all this is that the way that we all live our lives and organise our societies will largely determine future health –and there is a win- win here. Most of the ways that we can respond to planetary threats like climate change will improve global and individual health too and reduce inequalities. Using cars less, walking and cycling more, eating less meat and processed food, producing clean energy, living in efficient homes – all will improve health.

This positive message drives what is now often known as “ecological public health” and it forms the basis for a curriculum in sustainable healthcare that has just been agreed across most of UK medical schools following a “Delphi” consultation conducted by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare mentioned above.

The full curriculum can be found at http://sustainablehealthcare.org.uk/sustainable-healthcare-education/expanded-learning-outcomes. It is based around 3 main headings.

1. Describe how the environment and human health interact at different levels.
2. Demonstrate the knowledge and skills needed to improve the environmental sustainability of health systems.
3. Discuss how the duty of a doctor to protect and promote health is shaped by the dependence of human health on the local and global environment.

At Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry we are now looking at extending sustainability teaching to include these outcomes. Perhaps more importantly, the new school has included “making a difference” firmly in its ethos.

The most practical outworking of this opened in February of this year. The new Devonport Academic Health Centre is a joint venture between the University of Plymouth and Plymouth Community Health Care, who provide primary care and community services in the city. Clinical academic staff both provide care and teach in the new centre. Medical students, together with dental, nursing and other healthcare students now divide their time between the safety of the medical school buildings and the more edgy environment of Devonport, a neighbourhood having one of the highest index of multiple deprivation scores and worst health outcomes in England.

Children in a Devonport primary school

Children in a Devonport primary school eating sausages and  “turkey twizzlers” produced in a welsh food factory (this situation has fortunately improved following the “Jamie Oliver” school lunch campaign)

Our aim is that puPSMD will truly be a socially accountable medical school, where students not only learn from a global and sustainable perspective, but are encouraged to make a difference themselves. I call this the “locally global” curriculum!

 Dr Richard Ayres, Lead for Population Health at Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry and GP Cumberland Surgery, Devonport.

March 2012: Professor Janet Richardson

Welcome to Janet’s BLOG on behalf of the Sustainability, Society and Health (SSH) Research Group http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/340. This is my first attempt at blogging so, as a ‘reflective practitioner’ I welcome feedback on what was useful / interesting and what is best left out – just in case I decide to do this again! I am also a self-confessed technological dinosaur, but was recently introduced to the magic of twitter by my colleague Pam Nelmes who is a bit of a twitter babe amongst the Department of Health glitterati. A few weeks ago I tweeted an event I co-organised with Plymouth City Council and NHS Plymouth (Public Health) on urban planning and health. Other colleagues from the ISSR and the Faculty of Health, Education and Society were involved. The event started with a public lecture by Professor Hugh Barton from University of the West of England who gave a presentation: ‘Planning and Design as if People Mattered’. Hugh’s work with World Health Organisation European Healthy Cities Network has been inspiring, and his talk raised a number of issues, particularly regarding planning and community engagement (see tweets at #Plan4Health). Hugh’s lecture was followed the next day by a full day seminar and workshop, hosted by Plymouth City Council at the Beautiful Devonport Guildhall: ‘Partnership working for healthy sustainable communities in Plymouth’. Designed to coincide with the new Localism Bill and health reforms leading to the establishment of Health and Wellbeing Boards, we heard presentations from a range of professionals concerned with making Plymouth ‘One of Europe’s finest most vibrant waterfront cities … where quality of life can be enjoyed by everyone’. The event was interesting and stimulating, and there was a real buzz and commitment to partnership working to integrate planning with health issues in the City. Some of the presentations from the day can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/7kj8v8l. Further details about the UK Healthy Cities and Towns Network can be found at: http://www.healthycities.org.uk/

The next important event in the Health and Sustainability calendar is NHS Sustainability Day on 28th March. The aim of the day is to raise awareness within the NHS and make pledges to change actions to become more sustainable. It has been organised by the NHS Sustainable Development Unity (NHS SDU), an organisation leading the way on sustainable healthcare through training, awareness raising and providing examples of good practice. For example, the NHS SDU has been receiving positive feedback on the Sustainability in the NHS: Health Check 2012. Our contribution to this day is to publish our New Horizon (ISSR) report ‘Win Win: Saving Cost and Carbon – Sustainable Waste Management in Healthcare’. It presents the findings of an interview study with key people involved in healthcare waste management in Cornwall and illustrates blocks and enablers to managing waste more sustainably. We are taking the project forward through our sustainable healthcare waste management research team by undertaking a number of observational studies at the Duchy Hospital and Cornwall Care (care homes). We are also keen to raise awareness on NHS Sustainability Day about the NHS Forest initiative http://nhsforest.org/. Linked to this, one of our undergraduate nursing students, Christelle Page is creating garden space for 2 wards at a hospital in Cornwall, supported by Benny Goodman and other School of Nursing and Midwifery colleagues – a great project!

Benny Goodman has recently advised on embedding sustainability into the nursing undergraduate curriculum, ensuring that sustainable healthcare is a core stand that runs throughout the curriculum, rather than an ‘add-on’. Interestingly the General Medical Council has welcomed recommendations from the Sustainable Healthcare Education (SHE) Network on priority learning outcomes for sustainable healthcare. Follow up plans are now being developed, including a wider consultation with medical schools and Royal Colleges.
Read more...

And for all you Midwives – check out the Nappy Waste Summit (find out more here). West London Waste Authority brings together a range of speakers to talk about their experience and interest in alternatives to disposable nappies.

The Sustainability, Society and Health Research Group has, up to now, been a ‘virtual’ community of colleagues interested in research and pedagogy around this topic. However, we are holding an inaugural meeting of this group on 29th March, 12.30pm – 3pm in Robbins SR3. Colleagues will give a 5-10 minute presentation on their sustainability and health projects, and we will discuss work in process and ideas for future collaborations. If you would like to attend this even please contact jane.grose@plymouth.ac.uk

The Sustainable Healthcare Waste Management Team are Janet Richardson, Andy Nichols, Jane Grose, Sabine Pahl, Maria Bennallick and Sean Manzi.

Please send any feedback on this blog to janet.richardson@plymouth.ac.uk

Professor Janet Richardson, School of Nursing and Midwifery

February 2012: Barker Was Right – Solar Power is not the Klondyke

Late last year The Observer reported that “An extraordinary alliance of countryside campaigners, wildlife groups and green activists has launched a savage onslaught on the government, accusing it of showing "stunning disregard" for the environment.” Reacting to what they saw as an environmentally regressive Autumn Statement, campaigners from across the spectrum accused the government of reneging on the green agenda. Citing “sudden cuts to solar subsidies” and “ill-conceived planning reforms”, leaders of RSPB, CPRE, Greenpeace and FoE accused the government of “an out-of-date approach that casts regulation and the environment as enemies to growth”.

On the latter point, the green movement may well be right. But on the specific question of subsidies for solar, the argument that has been overlooked is the question of exactly how solar photovoltaics contribute to the UK’s broader environmental, social and industrial imperatives. Indeed in several hours of debate on solar Feed in Tariffs in the House of Commons on 23rd November the topic of green industrial recovery hardly arose at all.

Clearly DECC Minister Greg Barker upset many people with his announcement of an early reduction to the amount of money the government will subsidise energy produced by small scale solar photovoltaic installations (from 43.3p to 21p per kWh). Many critical responses came from the business sector. John Cridland, director general of the CBI described the announcement as "the latest in a string of government own goals".

Sainsburys CEO Justin King angrily attacked the move, accusing Secretary of State Chris Huhne of being “disingenuous” on BBC’s Question Time. King said the Government had “stopped in its tracks a massive investment in photovoltaic energy in our country. " And according to Daniel Green CEO of solar installers HomeSun “only the super wealthy with an eco-conscience will be able to wait now for a breakeven of 14 years on a solar investment".

Much of the anxiety expressed by the business community arose because of the abrupt nature of the announcement, and in particular the fact that it came before the deadline for official consultation had been reached. The response of the government has been to argue that the uptake of solar installations was accelerating out of control, the policy was in danger of adding up to £80 to 2020 household energy bills, that in any case the new tariff matches that of Germany, and that people can still make a respectable return of 4.5% on investment after tax.

The Government has also argued that the developing ‘bubble’ was in danger of making the industry unsustainable, and that a reasonable reduction in solar FITs now stands a better chance of deploying £900m subsidies effectively over the next 4 years than the current ‘boom and bust’ alternative.

However, in my view, there are even more powerful arguments for reining in solar FITs for the parallel policy imperatives of climate change, social justice and industrial recovery. On all three points, it may be argued that subsidies for solar photovoltaics are at best a distraction, at worst a poor use of Treasury money that would be better deployed elsewhere.

According to DECC, just 0.5 per cent of renewable generation comes from solar photovoltaics. However 97% of small scale FIT recipients have been solar, with less than 1% combined for micro-CHP, hydro-electricity and anaerobic digestion combined. Yet these community scale non-solar renewable technologies hold far more promise for the long term.

And so even before we consider the more obvious climate change and social benefits of investments in energy efficiency, we must seriously question the wisdom of spending as much as £8bn over the next 20-25 years on subsidies for solar when the industry is – and will remain – a tiny fraction of the renewables story. Particularly when, as George Monbiot has argued, the subsidy actually represents a significant transfer of wealth from the rich from the poor.

When it comes to jobs and industrial recovery, again the solar industry is an interesting but not critical (or especially efficient) use of Treasury money. BIS estimates that around 39,000 jobs may be dependent on the solar industry, and according to Chris Huhne approximately 8-14,000 may be directly employed (including 500 in the Sharp factory in Wrexham). Of course these jobs are important and should be maintained.

But it is spurious to pretend that the UK can or should compete with Germany on solar (250,000 employed and half the world’s installed capacity), still less with China, the US or Korea who are really driving down the costs of solar products. These are the countries that will derive future competitive advantage just as Denmark did with wind energy through similarly judicious investments.

A better, and more differentiated model for the UK may be Canada. Ontario set aggressive solar FITs in order to attract $billions of inward investment and thereby create regional industrial competitive advantage. But Nova Scotia provides no subsidies for solar (which is irrelevant to that Province) and instead has set the world’s first FITs for marine energy in order to help develop the global market place for tidal energy. The Nova Scotia policy is backed by promises of $500m investment in ocean energy commercialisation by the Federal Government.

It remains to be seen whether the UK government will similarly bite the bullet and switch future Treasury subsidies from solar to marine energy, where the UK could still achieve global competitive advantage and where the installed capacity and number of real manufacturing and service jobs would completely dwarf those available from solar photovoltaics.

At time of writing: Professor David Wheeler, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Sustainability) and Dean of Plymouth Business School 

January 2012: Dr. Tim Daley

Imagine a world in which the scientists who were pioneering new understanding of earth system processes were also those who were most active in embedding that new knowledge in the delivery of social or economic value. That value might be represented by change in human behaviours. It might be embedded in new, exportable technologies. It might even be in both. The enlightenment economist, Adam Smith, might well have disapproved, recognising that the specialisation of labour results in improved efficiency and productivity. But that appears to be the developing world of academia, where the impact of research in terms of its measurable effect on policy or economy is now also the responsibility of the academics from whom that new knowledge has come. Despite the inevitable difficulties it will bring to some, the argument for this as a way forward is compelling. In large part, it is taxpayer’s money that is used to fund research. Why then should the sector not work to ensure that maximum value is returned to the investors?

The Institute for Sustainability Solutions Research (ISSR) with Plymouth University provides a vehicle for energising that transition, for bringing the academic and the “real world” together in the context of developing sustainability. Several projects are underway currently and it seems unfair to draw on one example, but that is all there is space for here.

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded research is currently being undertaken by a team that sees Plymouth University partnered with colleagues in Aberdeen, Swansea, Southampton and Exeter and is seeking to explore past changes in climate and its effect on peatland systems in both the northern and southern mid-latitudes. One of the early outputs from the research has revealed new insight not only into the mechanisms of regional climate change, but also linkage with carbon sequestration. Conservation of peatlands and their restoration has become a widespread management practice, partly on the belief that this improves carbon sequestration as well as providing a host of ecosystem services. Through the ISSR and assisted by a Royal Society grant, stakeholders will now be engaged with the new knowledge linking climate and carbon sequestration in peatlands. Through that linkage, it is hoped that experimental carbon accounting models can be developed that will allow that land owners to monetise the carbon asset that exists in their peatland and finance any required restoration via the carbon markets. The potential for a new mechanism for the delivery of a healthy environment is particularly exciting!

Inevitably, this process involves cross-disciplinary working and the drawing together of specific expertise. To that extent Adam Smith might well feel less aggrieved. The example, however, reflects awareness of just one of the potential applications of pure scientific research. Where the national steer has become increasingly clear, it is our sincere intention that the ISSR will grow this space and explore new and pioneering associations.

Dr. Tim Daley, ISSR Director (at time of writing, ISSR Deputy Director)

December 2011: Early reflections from an ISSR Manager

Right so I’ve been here three months and I’ve been asked to write a blog, come nonacademic sustainability thinkpiece, come outline of the future strategy of the ISSR (and all in 1500 words !) and it has to be punchy and controversial ! Help is my first reaction ! I’m not really used to writing in that style, in fact I haven’t done much “writing” for a while. Any how here it goes. These are my early reflections on the ISSR and Plymouth University (after three months of being here). I begin this blog with a short story that has influenced my own thinking about the ISSR, the Blind Men and the Elephant…….

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Six blind men were asked to determine what an elephant looked like by feeling different parts of the elephant's body. The blind man who felt the leg said that the elephant is like a pillar; the one who felt the tail said that the elephant is like a rope; the one who felt the trunk said that the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who felt the ear said that the elephant is like a fan; the one who felt the belly said that the elephant is like a wall; and the one who felt the tusk said that the elephant is like a solid pipe.

An argument broke out about who is correct!

However, a wise man explained to them:

"All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched a different part of the elephant.”

The significance of this story will be explained at the end……….

So what does the ISSR mean by Sustainability?

Sustainability often means different things to different people (!). The diagram on the left illustrates some of the activities that can fall under Sustainability. One of the first things that I wanted to understand when I arrived was - what does the ISSR mean by sustainability ? The answer is that at the ISSR we are currently taking a broad view of what Sustainability means and looking at all these different areas outlined (and more !). The challenges of sustainability are complex and deeply interconnected and we currently do not have a strict “definition” (or single perspective) that we are working with, rather we are keen to engage with organisations and researchers in any of these areas.

What does the ISSR mean by Solutions?

The ISSR is about delivering solutions to global sustainability challenges. We are focussing on “Real World” change in appropriate timescales. We are aiming to make a difference and to secure a sustainable future. Partnerships are key to achieving this both externally and internally within the University. The best example of this is the first major project to be delivered by ISSR on Smart Ticketing….

Smart Ticketing Solutions for South West Sustainable Transport – delivered through ISSR

In 2008, a conference of all SW local authorities, bus operators and regional economic stakeholders, established a Forum to explore the development of smart and integrated ticketing throughout the region. 

In September 2010, in partnership with Plymouth University, the forum was successful in winning £1.85m to deliver the regional smart ticketing back office system in partnership with the West of England Partnership. This will include the delivery of 1500 Smart enabled buses; a £100,000 consultancy support programme; a nationally acclaimed User Guide to assist migration to smart ticketing; and 12 Smart Interoperable Ticketing schemes, along with key outcomes of road based carbon reductions and quantifiable annual efficiency savings for both Local Authorities (LAs) and Operators alike. 

The partnership was formalised through establishing a public/private Company, limited by guarantee, South West Smart Applications Ltd (SWSAL), based in the ISSR. SWSAL was launched on 8th October 2010 by Rt Hon Norman Baker MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport. Since its launch, SWSAL has recently been awarded a further £2.98m from the Department for Transport’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund, in partnership with Plymouth City Council, to build upon the outputs of the £1.85m already won, and matched funding from local councils and bus operators to deliver in total:

• Smart ticketing on all 3500 Buses in SW England; 
• Europe’s 1st regional open access pay-per-use Card Management System;
• England’s 1st Regional E-Money Stored Value Transport Ticketing Platform 
• A Regional Fund to Assist the Smartcard Migration of Community Transport and Community Rail Partnership Schemes

ISSR – building on Plymouth University Excellence

From the outside of the University you realise that Plymouth has some excellent expertise on Sustainability. However, it is only when you begin to meet and talk to people that you realise the strength, depth and breadth of this expertise ! Also, it is clear that Plymouth University are very serious about “walking the talk”. Sustainability is a key part of the University, it is one of five University ambitions and there is some excellent work on the Operations side and “Teaching and Learning” as well as the Research side. I personally think we need to shout about this more!

Did you know?

• The University has Rainwater harvesting in Roland Levinski building and Nancy Aster
• Passive Ventilation and Night-time Cooling in Portland Square
• Over the next 12 months new voltage optimisers are being installed
• Plymouth University has a target to become carbon neutral by 2030
• A recent book on Sustainability Education, edited by Plymouth University staff, was noted by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL) as one of the 'Top 40 books of 2010' 
• The University’s approach to Sustainability through it’s tri-cameral structure won a “Green Gown Award” for Continuous Improvement- Institutional Change in 2011
• Since 2006, Plymouth University have been one of the top six performers in the People and Planet’s Green League and in 2010 came first out of 138 participating Higher Education Institutions.
• There are over 200 researchers at Plymouth University working on “Sustainability”

The ISSR is built on the prior success and outstanding reputations of Plymouth University’s world class researchers. There are over 200 researchers working on a range of applied sustainability areas from Sustainable Transport, Environmental Buildings and Renewable Energy to Psychology, Health and Policy. From Environmental Science, Climate Change and Sustainable Communities to Low Carbon Development, Sustainable Education and International Development. To name just a few!

What can the ISSR do for me?

The ISSR cuts across the whole of the University, all of the faculties. We have identified 3 key areas of activity:

Internal Network

The ISSR cuts across all faculties within the University and aims to facilitate internal communications between researchers and enhance research interaction. Sustainability solutions often require looking at problems from multiple perspectives and the ISSR will act as the catalyst for this. We have a whole host of activities planned. The first is to send monthly emails to all researchers with Sustainability research updates and funding opportunities, so we can join up on reactive research opportunities. More to follow on developing proactive research opportunities ………

External Gateway

By cutting across the whole University, the ISSR can offer a single point of contact to external organisations wanting to collaborate with the University on Sustainability Research. We can also offer dedicated project management to scope projects and monitor and ensure that project objectives are met.

In addition, together with the centres, we are helping to hold a series of events. For example the recent presentation by Alan Knight, held together with Plymouth Business School on “If only the Planet Was a Shop”

Bid Hub

Finally, we are also providing support to sustainability researchers by informing them about research opportunities but also by supporting the development of multi-disciplinary bids or bids that involve external partners.

Why the elephant?

So why the elephant ? Well, for me, the challenges of delivering sustainability are complex and deeply interconnected. No single discipline (or organisation) has the complete picture. Hence, in order to find “Real World” Solutions, we need to join up across disciplines and also engage organisations outside the University. It is only when we do this that we begin to develop a full, holistic picture of the solutions to sustainability.

These are my reflections after 3 months, it will be interesting to see what are my reflections after 3 years!

….If you have any comments, suggestions or would like to get involved, please feel free to 

email me at Paul.Hardman@Plymouth.ac.uk.......Thanks.......... 

Dr Paul Hardman, Manager of the Institute for Sustainability Solutions Research