ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces Local Agenda 21 (LA 21), which is the local strategy for sustainable development. LA 21 provides interesting examples of a marriage between environmental and social policy. In the United Kingdom, LA 21 built on the existing environmental policy and planning of local authorities. In the 1980s, some local authorities had been at the forefront of greening and environmental initiatives. By 1991, the year before LA 21 was announced, 70 per cent of local authorities had adopted an environmental plan. Integrating sustainability issues into the policy-making work of the local authority was an opportunity under the Conservative governments of John Major to widen the remit of local authorities and make connections between local authority departments, which had in some areas literally never previously spoken to each other. Public health was the main priority among the early responsibilities of local authorities, with housing, social welfare and education becoming local government services later in the nineteenth century.
