Today we republish the rankings in our second annual Sustainable Cities Index. I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise on behalf of Forum for the Future for the clerical error which distorted our original tables.

We take the index very seriously. We have chosen our indicators because they measure things which councils can act on to improve the quality of their citizens' lives, the environment of their cities, and to future proof against a changing climate.

We know that councils benchmark their performance against this data and therefore it’s essential for it to be accurate. So when we were made aware of an error in our air quality figures we took the report off our website and launched a thorough review of all our data. We will be learning lessons to make sure this does not happen again.

What has changed as a result? Not much. The top eight cities are still in the same positions. Liverpool, Birmingham and Hull remain in the bottom four places. There have been minor moves: Liverpool is up two places; Coventry down two; London, Bradford, Sunderland and Leeds are all up one; Nottingham, Glasgow and Birmingham are down one.

The fact is that the revised index still paints much the same picture as the original one. Individual cities may have moved slightly in comparison with each other, but it still tells the same story about where each has been successful and what challenges they still face.

The index has received widespread coverage. We are now reviewing the media articles and where we feel the new figures fundamentally change the published story we will contact the newspaper, magazine or website concerned.

We will be releasing a revised report on our 2008 Sustainable Cities Index on our website in the next few days and we will send complementary copies to councils in all 20 cities. In the meantime, here are the correct 2008 rankings.

2008 rank (2007 rank)
1  (3)    Bristol
2  (1)    Brighton & Hove
3  (4)    Plymouth
4  (8)    Newcastle
5  (6)    Cardiff
6  (2)    Edinburgh
7  (7)    Sheffield
8  (14)   Leicester
9  (10)   London
10= (9)  Bradford
10= (11) Nottingham
12 (13)  Sunderland
13 (5)    Leeds
14 (17)  Coventry
15 (12)  Manchester
16 (16)  Wolverhampton
17 (20)  Liverpool
18 (15)  Glasgow
19 (19)  Birmingham
20 (18)  Hull