The Sustainable Development Commission is today calling on the government to take urgent and radical action to meet its own sustainable development targets. The call comes as the Commission publishes the sixth annual assessment of government operations, which finds that, despite encouraging initiatives, government is still not on course to meet targets and urgently needs to raise its game.

The Sustainable Development in Government 2007 report finds that recycling targets are well on their way to being met, and targets for electricity from renewable sources have been exceeded. However, while overall carbon emissions from offices have fallen by 4% since 1999, nearly two thirds of departments are still not on track to meet the target of reducing carbon emissions from offices by 12.5% by 2010.

Performance against other targets shows little progress, with procurement standards introduced as 'Quick Wins' widely going unobserved, despite being mandatory. There was also little progress towards reducing water consumption or sourcing electricity from combined heat and power. In other cases, performance is actually worse than last year, with carbon emissions from road vehicles up across government. The Commission again found that the poor quality of data provided by departments in many cases made it difficult to arrive at a true picture. The SDC is warning that only radical and sustained action can have an effect on turning around poor performance to date.

Rebecca Willis, Vice Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, said:

"The UK government is making history by introducing the world's first Climate Change Bill, giving Britain the opportunity to lead the way on one of the most pressing issues facing the world. But government as a whole needs to take radical action to put its own house in order if it is to be in a position to lead by example.

"Failure is not an option. These targets must be the first step in a journey towards much greater sustainability; yet progress to date has been far too slow. We are pleased to see that the government appears to be taking the concerns we raise in this report seriously. We look forward to seeing the detail of the Delivery Plan, and to measuring its effects on the ground."

Among the findings giving the Commission cause for concern are:

• Carbon emissions from vehicles increased by 1.5% against the 2005/06 baseline year. This shows no progress towards achieving the target of a 15% reduction by 2010/11 and is an area of serious concern

• Energy efficiency per square metre improved by 21.7% against the 1999/00 baseline - higher than the target of 15% by 2010. However, without the improvements made by MOD, energy efficiency across the rest of the government estate has worsened by 3.3%

• Some limited progress was made towards the target for reducing water consumption (-0.1%), but not enough to be on track to meet the target of 25% by 2020

The Commission is recommending that Permanent Secretaries and Senior Civil Servants should have sustainability targets explicitly built into their performance objectives and that Departments must produce detailed plans of how they aim meet targets. The SDC also wants a central register of baseline information to be kept to ensure that changes to departmental estates are accurately accounted for.