Sustainable communities are described as successful, thriving and diverse urban and rural communities in which people want to live and work, both now and in the future. Some of the key requirements of sustainable communities are that they should be:

• Active, inclusive and safe - Fair, tolerant and cohesive with a strong local culture and other shared community activities.
• Well run - with effective and inclusive participation, representation and leadership.
• Environmentally sensitive - providing places for people to live that are considerate of the environment. 
• Well designed and built - featuring quality built and natural environment. 
• Well connected - with good transport services and communication linking people to jobs, schools, health and other services.
• Thriving - with a flourishing and diverse local economy.
• Well served - with public, private, community and voluntary services that are appropriate to people's needs and accessible to all.
• Fair for everyone - including those in other communities, now and in the future.

Sustainable communities are diverse, reflecting their local circumstances. There is no standard template to fit them all.

Sustainable communities embody the principles of sustainable development. They do this by:

• Balancing and integrating the social, economic and environmental components of their community.
• Meeting the needs of existing and future generations.
• Respecting the needs of other communities in the wider region or internationally to make their own communities sustainable.

At a national level the Department for Communities and Local Government is the Government's lead department for sustainable communities. At a local level local authorities and Local Strategic Partnerships take the lead.

In 2003 the government published Sustainable Communities: Building for the future , which outlined a substantial programme of action for economic, social and environmental development in both urban and rural areas in England. This was followed in 2005 by  Sustainable Communities: People, Places and Prosperity which sets out action to revitalise neighbourhoods, strengthen local leadership, and increase regional prosperity to create places in which people want to live and work.

Because creating a sustainable community involves many different elements a wide range of other government policies and strategies will also contribute including those on social inclusion; neighbourhood renewal; cleaner, safer, greener communities; community cohesion; culture and sport; crime and disorder and the Respect agenda.

At a local level the Sustainable Communities Plan, often called the Community Strategy, should set out the local vision for achieving sustainable communities and the Local Area Agreement (LAA) will help to deliver it. The government white paper "Strong and Prosperous Communities"  published in October 2006 further strengthened the local service delivery framework by setting out:

• a duty for local authorities to prepare the Sustainable Community Strategy in consultation with others as set out in section 4 of the Local Government Act 2000;
• a requirement that the Sustainable Community Strategy and other local and regional plans are drawn up with regard to each other;
• a new duty for the upper-tier local authority (in two-tier areas) or unitary authority to prepare a LAA in consultation with others;
• a new duty for the local authority and named partners to cooperate with each other to agree the targets in the LAA.