The provision of urban green space and its associated benefits are important for sustainable urban development from ecological, economic and social aspects, and are considered a key ingredient for city sustainability. The NSW Department of Planning, Industry & Environment (formerly the NSW Office of Environment & Heritage) led the delivery of a baseline dataset to assess urban heat and green cover in the Sydney Greater Metropolitan Area. The fine-scale urban heat and vegetation-cover baseline enables local councils to develop, monitor and evaluate green cover strategies, and supports a consistent monitoring methodology for doing so in the future. Engagement with a broad range of end-users and stakeholders ensures that they have the capability and support to use that data effectively. The datasets provide both necessary evidence for local environmental plans and local strategic planning statements and support key indicators for livability and sustainability. The urban heat and green cover datasets were made available on the  NSW Government’s Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data (SEED) portal  in April 2019 and have since become one of the most viewed datasets on the portal. We present an overview of this baseline data and how it has already been applied for strategic planning purposes.