One of the Council’s main priorities is the protection and enhancement of the environment. The Council, as a major employer, service provider and supply chain manager has a responsibility to be a good corporate citizen and community leader in respect of the district’s environment. In our efforts to achieve this, the Council are proud to say we gained ISO 14001 the internationally recognised accreditation in April 2010.

In order to demonstrate this, the Council has implemented an EMS to effectively monitor and manage the impact of its own operations on the environment.

The aims of the South Staffordshire Council EMS are to:

• Reduce the Council’s negative impacts on the environment.
• Enhance and publicise the Council’s positive impacts on the environment.
• Manage the process in a way that achieves continuous improvement in environmental performance and reduces pollution to a minimum.

The EMS is made up of a number of elements:

• An environmental policy, which describes the environmental performance aspirations of the organisation.
• An environmental review, which identifies the significant environmental impacts of the organisation.
• A legislative review, which describes the environmental legislation relevant to the organisation.
• An environmental programme, which sets out environmental performance improvement objectives and targets and details how they are going to be achieved.
• A management system with procedures, programmes and responsibilities for managing all activities, which have significant environmental impacts.
• Audit arrangements for checking that targets are being achieved and the system is being followed.
• External verification as an independent check that environmental performance improvements are being made and can continue to be made.

Our long term vision for our Environmental Management System is to continually monitor and review our impacts in order to maintain our own high standards, and share our learning and practice with others.

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