The Council operates an environmental management system (EMS) to support the Council’s Environmental Strategy commitments and to ensure that everything we do is done with minimal environmental impact and maximum environmental benefit.

The environmental management system is designed to meet the requirements of ISO14001, the international environmental management system standard, and it is integrated into our performance management system.

At the heart of the environmental management system is the EMS Manual (currently under development) which describes how the key elements of the EMS work and provides direction to Council procedures and processes that support our environmental commitments. These processes ensure that our approach to environmental management is supported by sound management principles.

Environment and Climate Change risk registers form a part of all Departmental and Local Business Plans and are reviewed and up-dated every year. Their purpose is to identify:

The process of completing the registers includes documenting how each risk is managed and assessing whether more needs to be done. Improvement actions are then planned and delivered through the Business Plan

In order to ensure that all decisions taken by the Council are made with a full understanding of the environmental implications, we have devised a simple tool for managers to use when proposing new projects, policies and strategies and when making procurement decisions. The use of the tool is compulsory for all projects over the value of £250K.

In addition, every report to a Member Committee must include a section identifying the report’s environmental implications and referring to the outcome of the Environmental Implications Tool where it has been used.

Understanding the impacts of severe weather in Leicestershire.

Find out how we are improving the resilience of the County Council to Climate Change.

Find out how we are working with our partners in our County wide approach to Climate Change.