Professor Alister Scott responds to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Whilst there are a lot of positives with  the return of strategic planning after its 2010 pickling with spatial development strategies; a  national scheme of delegation  which will provide improved consistency across England making sure that only contentious applications are decided by committee and mandatory; the compulsory requirement for all councilors to complete training before taking up positions  on planning committees.  .   

However at the heart of the Bil is the desire to speed up planning and cut regulation and consultation to enable schemes to proceed quickly. Whilst this seems laudable goal there are problems with this approach that conflict with other legislation all ready in place and also serve to create perverse impacts.

The mitigation hierarchy is a core concept in planning policy and decision making. The current approach for the nature restoration fund appears to jump straight to mitigation missing the avoid function. The risks for nature here are clouded in uncertainty as the assessment tends to focus more on the compensation and develop viability aspects than the value of nature itself. This is exacerbated by the fact that the nature restoration fund is likely to be used off site thereby limiting benefits on site causing a significant environmental justice issue. The plans also come into tension with the requirement of the 2021 Environment Act to have regard to the environmental principles;   integration principle; prevention principle; rectification at source principle;  polluter pays principle and precautionary principle.

 The strategic planning function is welcome but there is still a need for a national spatial plan indicating the core areas for investment in nature, economy and culture. There is a danger that this only deals with nationally important development projects ignoring that some of these are needed to deal with the  climate and nature emergencies.  Here we need to view nature as critical infrastructure something that government minsters and the PM collectively fail to do and indeed tend to reinforce the fallacy of nature as a blocker to growth.  Here the role of the land use framework and planning system need to synergize more effectively as oppose to running on separate tracks in separate departments.    I have published a paper on strategic planning that emphasizes the importance of nature, economy and society as equal components of placemaking and place keeping strategies. The current government positioning still puts the 1.5 million housing target at the centre which distorts  good strategic planning.

The reduction of consultation processes for nationally important projects to help speed up decisions is dangerous.  First it definitely contravenes the Aarhus Convention which the UK government is a signatory to. In my experience many problems are caused by poor consultation processes ; not undertaken at the earliest opportunity thereby appearing tokenistic or where consultation involves long complex documents difficult to understand and navigate. The reliance on PDFs rather than more interactive materials is a key concern here. Equally the need to target group most affected by a proposal is often relegated to more reactive  modes favouring the usual suspects. This is  likely to be compounded in the current proposals.

The risk of dilution of Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and Conservation of Habitats and Species regulations 2017. Part 3 of the Bill imposes huge extra burdens on Natural England at a time when civil service department cuts are being planned. Here the design and approval of environment delivery plans risks delays and uncertainty (the real enemy of growth). Furthermore, this creates an ad hoc  two-tier system  to  nature protection with areas are covered by new EDPs   and those not.   As stated, the mitigation hierarchy seems trumped in EDPs and developer viability becomes a core consideration as opposed to whether the development is in the right  place also hindering the true costs of nature recovery being effectively realized.  It is also unclear how all this links into local Nature Recovery strategies and BNG. The lack of integration  (a core environmental principle) is a major concern.   The issue of monitoring and enforcement also rears its head as development may have proceeded on basis on unachievable gains for nature and it is not clear how that process will be managed or enforced. There is ap potential license to trash nature through overpromising and under delivering.  Enforcement and monitoring still remains the Cinderella of the planning system

The government has only recently finished the consultation of the Development and Nature Recovery white paper. It seems a little premature to have deposited this Bill before taking account and publishing the results of those consultation responses. My own response is here and questions the merits of another layer of environmental plans together with major concerns about the jettisoning of environmental principles and Aarhus Convention.  Moreover, the lack of synchronization with the land use framework is problematic raising real concerns over their future integration. There is also a wider issue over the extent to which concerns on the consultation will be taken into account by government or whether they are proceeding on their own terms.  I would liked to have seen how they are taking concerns into account before depositing a bill based on the development and nature recovery provisions.

The economics and value of nature are not understood in the Bill. As I have said before the HM Treasury 2021 Dasgupta Review on the economics of biodiversity was important in recognizing the need for a transformation in the way nature was viewed and valued as it was a core pillar for securing economic growth,. The current approach to nature does not reflect this sentiment and ultimately could then lead to further economic problems due to lack of preparedness for extreme weather (heat and floods); pandemics; heath problems and species extinction.  

 Equity is currently a concept that is poorly understood and applied in planning. The current Bill will exacerbate environmental injustice as nature gains are more likely to be secured off site thereby limiting nature gains in new developments.  The consultation  process will also further weaken those voices who are rarely heard in planning decisions. It is far better in my view to improve the targeting and quality of consultation processes as opposed to its limitation.  It brings us into conflict with the Aarhus Convention and principles of good democracy which surely apply to all areas of government policy.

FINALLY 

I would like to see more justified evidence-based policy and law. A lot of what is currently proposed in the Bill for Nature is based on an incomplete and erroneous understanding of nature  and its value. The provisions seem driven by ideology-based evidence which is not the way to make good law or policy.  Here there is an implicit assumption that regulation is somehow bad for growth when the truth is that good regulation protects the societal interest and can spark innovation and growth; the very things the government urgently seeks. An article I wrote on this in 2014 is equally relevant today.