The Greener Palliative Care Award provides a framework for progress in environmental sustainability. It uses existing experience and the available evidence to help drive forward environmentally sustainable practices, by showing a clear path towards progress in an area that can be difficult to approach.
Both the NHS and charitable organisations (e.g. hospices) can take part.
Clear, achievable standards are set out for each level. Supporting resources and examples are given, to help applicants work towards the levels. Actions also link to national work, such as within Greener NHS and the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare.
The award works alongside other key organisational changes such as developing and delivering on Green Plans, while offering actions that interested people from all professional groups (and volunteers) can work on.
Pilot Scheme
The scheme launched as a pilot in 2025. We are continuing to support our pilot sites, and hope to be celebrating our first Awards gained in 2026.
The next phase of our Award programme is to make the bronze criteria available free to access to all. This allows all palliative care organisations to assess where they are, and to start to make progress towards an Award level. Later in 2026 we will share how further Award levels will be assessed and awarded. The exact structure for this depends on if we are successful in funding applications, so please watch this space!
You can find the bronze criteria here.
Please note this work is subject to a creative commons license.
The Palliative Care Sustainability Network continues to run online education/practice sharing sessions for the whole sector, with successful pilot sites sharing their experiences/expertise.
Please do get in touch by email to pallcaresusnet@gmail.com with any queries or to join our team.
Why would I/my team want to do this?
Hopefully because you are all motivated to reduce your team’s environmental impact! But there are other clear benefits too. Increasingly there is a regulatory need to show work on environmentally sustainable healthcare is being done – for example the new CQC standard. Commissioned services will need to show evidence they are engaged with sustainability work, and for those in charitable settings our members have found funders may ask questions on this topic.
We also know it’s a positive step for teams to work on together, improving team cohesion and job satisfaction as you all make positive changes.
FAQ’s
I’m interested – what’s the first step?
Contact us to let us know you’d like to learn more, by email to pallcaresusnet@gmail.com. We’ll ask you to sign up to our Palliative Care Sustainability Network page to ensure you are connected to others doing the same thing, and that you get the updates you need.
How is a level achieved?
You don’t have to do everything all at once! As you complete each Award standard, make sure to collect evidence to show what you have achieved. This could be project write ups, meeting minutes, photos of team events. We have a case study template you can complete. Look out for updates in September 2026 on how we will review your evidence – we’re just working on the best model for this after the pilot.
There is no time limit on how long you can take to apply for your first level. We have designed the levels with the aim that each is achievable within a year.
At present there is no cost for the Award scheme.
What evidence do you need to see?
Evidence varies depending on the standard, but is likely to include minutes of meetings, project reports, and data showing reductions in environmental impact. We will guide you as to what will be accepted.
How is the Award scheme organised and run?
You can see our governance details here, as well as details of our partner organisations. We have a multi-professional group who oversee the development of the award scheme, and an assessment group who review evidence submitted and decide when to award a Greener Palliative Care level. You can see details of the people on our groups here.
What happens after we have achieved the level?
You will keep the award for three years. If you choose to, within that time you can apply for the next level up!
After 3 years you will need to provide evidence to show you are still working on the standards at the level you obtained – or hopefully you will be ready to move up.
Gold awards will also need to show progress by submitting evidence of ongoing actions every 3 years.
I’m not sure which level to start at?
Our structure shows you which actions are needed at each level, and gives some examples to get you going. To achieve gold, you also need to have completed the bronze and silver actions (and for silver, to have completed the bronze).
As a rough idea, if your team haven’t done any work on this area before, start at ‘bronze‘ where the focus is on getting together, education, awareness raising and identifying the first areas to tackle.
Silver is if you already have a good awareness, with an environmental group set up, and will help you to broaden your focus and provide evidence.
Gold will ensure your changes are embedded in the organisation and you are striving to continue to make year on year progress.
We might add a platinum level one day!