"The Big Society... offers the potential to completely recast the relationship between people and the state: citizens empowered; individual opportunity extended; communities coming together to make lives better.
"We will end the era of top-down government by giving new powers to local councils, communities, neighbourhoods and individuals"

The New Coalition Government

GovToday presents Sustainable Communities 2010: Building the Big Society Conference and Exhibition, our second Annual Sustainable Communities Conference, which will be held on the 11th November 2010, at Church House Conference Centre, Westminster, London.

At its most fundamental level, achieving Sustainable Communities is a means of delivering sustainable development for individual places, balancing and integrating the UK's environmental, social and economic goals, placing People at the heart of the agenda.

‘The Coalition: our programme for government’ published on the 20th May 2010, set out the ambition of the new Coalition Government to achieve fairness and opportunity for all, putting more power into the hands of citizens - building the Big Society.

There is now a real opportunity to build Sustainable Communities - regenerating neighbourhoods and communities through a collaborative approach at local level and investing in our low carbon economy by mapping and prioritising the totality of public spending and capital investment in any given area.

Sustainable Communities 2010: Building the Big Society Conference and Exhibition will examine the priorities ahead for this agenda, featuring those at the forefront of policy and sharing case study examples of best practice from the community