Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

INTRODUCTION
1. This note contains the initial response of the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland ("the Department") to the letter dated 21 July 1999 from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution ("the Royal Commission"), in which the Royal Commission sought the Department's views on the key issues which should be addressed during its study of environmental planning.
2. The note seeks to do 3 things:
   1. outline the main characteristics of the planning and environmental regulatory systems in Northern Ireland, focusing on some of the parallels to and differences from the systems elsewhere in the UK; and

   2. indicate some of the links between these systems; and

   3. describe some of the issues which the Department is addressing within them.

   PLANNING AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NORTHERN IRELAND

   Responsibility within Government

3. Unlike in the rest of the UK, land use planning and environmental regulation are the responsibility of central Government, specifically the Department. In the event of powers being devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly ("the Assembly"), responsibility for land use planning and environmental regulation will, with the exception of some matters reserved to Westminster, pass to the Assembly. In that event, according to an agreement between the Northern Ireland political parties in December 1998, responsibility for planning (except strategic planning) and environmental regulation (except those reserved matters) will pass to the new Department of the Environment, while strategic planning will become the responsibility of the putative Department for Regional Development.

The Planning System

4. The town and country planning system in Northern Ireland exists to regulate the development and use of land in the public interest. The Department is the sole planning authority and is, therefore, responsible for both central Government functions such as legislation, strategic regional planning policies and local planning policies and for functions such as the preparation of area and local development plans and development control, which, elsewhere in the UK, are local authority responsibilities. The Department's functions in this area are set out in the Planning (NI) Order 1991.
5. The Department's planning functions are largely carried out by the Planning Service, which was established in 1996 as a Next Steps Agency within the Department. The Planning Service is responsible for the implementation of the Government's policies and strategies for town and country. All planning decisions are taken in the name and under the authority of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who is answerable for them to Parliament. The main aim of the Planning Service is to plan and manage development in ways which will contribute to a quality environment and seek to meet the economic and social aspirations of both present and future generations.
6. The present Government decided, in 1997, to prepare a Regional Strategy for Northern Ireland. This has resulted in the draft Regional Strategic Framework (RSF), which was the subject of a Public Examination in October/November 1999. The RSF provides a strategic and long-term perspective on the future development of the region up to the year 2025. The RSF will establish an overarching strategic framework for Development Plans and Planning Policy Guidance Statements.
7. The investigations carried out in 1995/96 by the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee are relevant to some of the points which the Royal Commission intends to examine. The Committee reported the results of its inquiry ("the Planning System in NV"), in March 1996. The Government's response to this Report was the subject of a Second Special Report by the Committee, published in October 1996.
8. In its response to the Select Committee, the Government reiterated its support for the general principle that sustainable democratic control of the planning process would be established as soon as politically possible by cross-party agreement, in the context of a comprehensive political settlement.
9. In the meantime, the consultative role played by the District Councils remains a key feature of the planning system. The Department consults Councils on a wider range of planning issues than is strictly required by law; and it has established consultation mechanisms which are designed to ensure that elected representatives have a significant input to the decision-making process. The Planning Service is committed to seeking, in consultation with District Councils, ways in which these arrangements can be made more effective.

Environmental Regulation

10. The Department is also responsible for environmental policy and regulation, with the exception of a small number of powers exercised by District Councils. This responsibility includes both functions which in the rest of the UK, lie with central Government (policy and legislation); and regulatory and management responsibilities which, in the rest of the UK, lie mainly with NDPBs (for example, in England, English Nature, English Heritage, the Environment Agency etc). Policy and legislation are the responsibility of a division within the Core of the Department, while most regulation and management lies with the Environment and Heritage Service, a Next Steps Agency within the Department.
11. Environmental policy in Northern Ireland derives mainly from the UK's international obligations, especially those arising from its membership of the European Union. Though there is a separate corpus of environmental law in Northern Ireland, legislation in the region has tended closely to follow that in the rest of the UK.
12. These international obligations range from the overarching agreements at the 'Earth Summit' at Rio on sustainable development, climate change and biodiversity to specific targets on, for example, water and air pollution control, waste management and nature conservation.
13. While the obligations are shared with the rest of the UK, the Department has developed, or is preparing, regional approaches to a number of these issues; examples include waste management and biodiversity conservation.
14. Other aspects of environmental policy in Northern Ireland derive from national policies in the UK; an example of this is the National Air Quality Strategy.

Linkages

15. The linkages between strategic and land use planning and environmental regulation can perhaps best be examined in the context of sustainable development, the promotion of which is one of the Department's key objectives. Integrating sustainable development principles into existing and new policies and regulatory systems is one of the main ways in which that objective is being pursued.
16. Reference to certain major policies will illustrate that point. For example, one of the main reasons for the RSF's significance is the centrality of its aim to promote sustainable development. The draft Strategy was accompanied by a Strategic Environmental Appraisal, a process which ensured that the emerging policy proposals were appraised in terms of sustainable development, including an assessment of environmental impact.
17. The RSF's strategy for the environment, which the planning and environmental regulatory systems would serve, is to promote the proper stewardship of all the region's environmental resources : its good air quality and water, its relatively unspoilt countryside and its built heritage. The RSF aims to promote, within the wider community, a greater awareness of environmental issues; and to create an environment, which would contribute to health and well-being.
18. This approach is in line with the UK Government's Sustainable Development Strategy ("A Better Quality of Life"), May 1999 and with the broader EU approach to spatial development which seeks to integrate the objectives of economic and social cohesion, competitiveness and sustainability. Here, spatial planning is seen as a means of co-ordinating and integrating sectoral policies, rather than the more traditional approach based on physical infrastructure and the use of space.
19. A second example may be found in transportation policy. A Regional Transport Plan will be prepared, the first formal plan being in place for the year 2001/02. Among the measures postulated are reductions in the emissions of harmful pollutants and in noise; better road safety; the development of a fast, efficient and accessible public transport network; transport measure to address social needs; and possible charging mechanisms.
20. Third, the Department has almost completed work on a Waste Management Strategy. This will emphasise the need to use natural resources (especially those which are finite) efficiently and the need to manage waste so as to minimise its environmental impact; and it will underline the principle that landfill must be seen as a last resort and only where it is the best practical environmental option, for example, for heavy industrial sludges.
21. A fourth example lies in the relationship between countryside management and nature conservation. The use of agri-environment and countryside management schemes and the protection of some special habitats and species are seen as complementary in biodiversity conservation, strategic proposals on which are being drawn up by an Advisory Group appointed by the Government.
22. In these and many other areas, the Department is setting new strategic policy goals, whose fulfilment the planning and environmental regulatory systems will serve. In addition to contributing to such goals, the regulatory systems continued to perform specific and sometimes self-contained tasks. Thus, consents to discharge effluent to water, while they may be related to a development for which planning permission is being sought, are dealt with by a separate consent procedure; and a similar situation applies in relation to applications for Listed Building Consent and applications for consent to carry out certain operations on land which has been designated for nature conservation purposes. The Department does not use one consent system to deliver the objectives of another; rather, it seeks to exercise each within a framework of agreed strategic and policy goals. In that context, the Environmental Impact Assessment is playing an increasingly important role.
23. As indicated already, the promotion of sustainable development - defined by the Government as a better quality of life for everyone now and for generations to come - is one of the key goals which the land use planning and environmental regulatory systems are designed to achieve. The pursuit of this, because it involves integrating economic, social and environmental goals, raises situations which are both complex and sometimes potentially conflicting. This leads to the need to balance some critical considerations, many of which are explicit or inherent in the Royal Commission's letter to the Department
1. a policy or project may promise economic growth, but at a social and environmental cost;

2. the costs may be difficult to ascertain, especially when they are societal or environmental;

3. policies which are acceptable at a regional level may have unintended local costs;

4. short-term gain may be obtained at a long-term cost;

5. the need for urgent action may conflict with the "precautionary principle";

6. the "polluter pays" principle, while clear in relation to, for example, illegal discharges of chemicals, may be less certain where, for example, a landowner wishes to develop an area of nature conservation importance;

7. decisions may be taken in the absence of sound knowledge and research, for example in the area of climate change.
24. The Department seeks, therefore, to operate its regulatory systems according to 4 imperatives :
1. clear strategy and policy goals;

2. long-term, as well as short-term, planning (in the broader sense of that term);

3. the search for consensus in the community; and

4. partnership in the delivery of agreed strategies and policies.

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