With more than 60% of councils across the UK having declared a climate emergency, ensuring that an Authority’s expectations of sustainability performance in new developments are clearly communicated, measured and implemented through the planning process is necessary for ambitious carbon neutral targets to be met. This requires the necessary guidance to be in place, and appropriate and effective measures to be taken to track and monitor sustainability performance in planning applications through to delivery. A lack of clear targets and assessment criteria can lead to a significant gap performance between design and completion which will result in Authorities failing to meet their targets.