Global to Local provided us with a first class professional service on a challenging brief on international terrain. I would unhesitatingly recommend them to any other public sector organisation contemplating an international project of this kind.

Nothing beats going to see real projects making a difference to people's lives, and meeting the people who have made those projects happen. A week long tour meant a huge time commitment from all our regional partners but the double benefits were worth it. As well as increasing individual understanding of how to make projects work we also increased our connections as a group who can deliver on Yorkshire & Humber's commitment to sustainable development.

I have been on several Global to Local training courses and have always found the content informative and up to date and the interactive way of running them very useful. This was recently brought home when our Strategic Procurement Adviser reported that IDeA had commented favourably on the way that environmental dimensions had been integrated into Council procurement guidelines. The basis for this work was the Global to Local course 'Best practice purchasing' which had allowed me time out of the office to focus and provided a forum of good practice ideas and opportunity for discussion. My end of day notes from the course provided the framework for developing the policies and practices that have since been adopted in our procurement manual.

[Your] partnership … was particularly successful and should be congratulated on its achievements within the relatively short project implementation period of 12 months. One of its most notable successes has been the dissemination of the outputs. … We were pleased to see in the report that in January-March 2003 the network had expanded to more than 20 participating Ukrainian municipalities led by Nikolaev Municipality involving the helpdesk function of Global to Local.
I was impressed to learn that over the lifetime of the project 150 municipal employees, politicians, specialists and NGO’s representatives have been involved in the project’s awareness raising training. It is encouraging to see that the revised training has generated more than 100 professional proposals, 50 of which have already been accepted by different cities. The network you have created has enabled new municipal procedures, rules, and regulations to be developed and communicated.

Nikolaev with population of 500.000, Regional Center of Ukraine, participates in Ukrainian Environmentally Sustainable Cities Network since 2003 with annual voluntary fee 5.000 Hrv. Since 2000 Nikolaev Municipality is developing EMAS, which to 2003 successfully worked in 10 municipal departments. In 2003 Nikolaev coordinated the network and introduced EMAS in more 3 municipal departments: Trade, Market and Business Coordination departments.

Work was carried out by Ukraine staff led by Yuriy Kerbunov, Global to Local Associate and remotely by British Global to Local staff by the contract between Nikolaev Municipality and Analytical Center of Environmentally Safe Development, Nikolaev (Director is Yuriy Kerbunov) – Ukraine partner of Global to Local. Municipal and district administrations’ staff as well as Regional and City Sanitary-Epidemic Station took an active part in the work.

The work was carried out by systematic approach on the base of State Standard of Ukraine ISO 14001-97/ EMAS. During 3 months works were implemented: together with staff the most significant environmental effects were determined which can be influenced by the departments (such as extra normal music noise pollution of restaurants and summer dance pavilions, used plastic bottles, coordination of plastic bottle production and waste processing enterprises, market waste, parking oil leakages, etc.); short-term improvement programs were developed for each department as well as new procedures ready for approval by Executive Committee; staff was trained in accordance with approved EMAS training program. At the same time new demands for prevention of oil contamination for parking areas were developed.

Particular attention was given to prevention of noise pollution according to numerous complaints of citizens. Unified computer data base of such complaints was developed and analyzed, existing management procedures and developed new ones for agreements and inspections while giving permissions for placing of restaurants and summer dance pavilions, for monitoring of measures effectiveness for made complaints, for better coordination of the departments with Municipal Communal Property Fund for placing of potentially noisy objects, with Sanitary-Epidemic Stations, Tax Inspection and Police if absence of permission be find or for its’ recall. It’s worth to note that new procedures were well integrated into existing municipal management system of Nikolaev Municipality.
Nikolaev City is happy with the work done which let improve existing municipal management system and thankful to Global to Local Company and its’ Ukraine partner - Analytical Center of Environmentally Safe Development.