Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

David Lewis wrote on 21st July, about this study, to Professor Amann. He has now left the Council and I reply as Acting Chief Executive.

Our response on individual topics is set out in Annex 1 attached. This follows the order of your suggested topics and suggests some additional areas that might be addressed to give a more comprehensive coverage of the differing regimes for environmental planning and the potential conflicts between them. The comments are based on a consultation we have carried out with relevant researchers that are, or have been, funded by the ESRC.

There is no doubt that the study will be very broad ranging but with the rapid evolution of the policy context, this is almost certainly a requirement if the study is to have a significant impact.

The recent problems over the proposed Wellcome Trust development in the Cambridge area underline the importance of further study in this area.

If you would like further information about any aspect of this response, please do not hesitate to get in touch with my colleague, Adrian Alsop, Head of our Politics, Economics and Geography Team (01793 413061).

Annex 1

ESRC Comments on Broad Topics and Possible Additions
(in order of the Broad Topics suggested)

1. Democratic Control. A key issue is the capability of the planning system to facilitate 'communicative rationality' and a 'learning society'. Planning has a great potential to engage people in debate and design, related to their 'habitus' and to factors affecting their quality of life. More experience of using 'deliberative and inclusive processes' is being gained all the time through plan-making, neighbourhood planning, community development and Local Agenda 21. Trust-building methods have been used in other areas of environmental management, including those handled by the Environment Agency (such as shoreline and river management), but these have not been strongly applied to pollution management, other than for a few individual waster facilities. The great advantage of the planning system is that it is based in local government and so automatically brings environmental decisions into the realm of public debate: at the very least it ensures that controversial proposals are debated in committee by elected members. (This was a strong argument, for example, in relation to indicative forestry strategies where an issue outside planning control was at least debated in a local democratic arena). Further linkage between the planning and pollution control frameworks would result in a degree of democratisation in environmental decision making which is presently not possible because of the 'ultra vires' status of most types of pollution management relative to local government. Whilst the various consensus building and dispute resolution methods are, or course, applicable to pollution control, their credibility and legitimacy are diminished in the absence of a formal connection to local democratic processes.

2. National/Local Conflicts. As set out, this topic implies that the dynamics of conflict over the delivery of sustainability lies between national environmental objectives and local developmental/private interests which may deviate from them. This over-simplifies the issue: in many instances local approaches towards sustainability, articulated through the planning system, find themselves in conflict with national development-promoting policies. The overarching problem is how to reconcile local flexibility with strategic co-ordination.

3. Planning Systems. The two key issues facing the Commission are likely to be whether 'horizontal' (integrated/holistic) approaches to environmental decision-making can deliver better solutions than the current 'functional' approach, and whether linking agency-based regulation to local government will enable the public to contribute more effectively to debates and decisions surrounding their quality of life.

   An important issue is whether a 'bottom line' solution to land use decisions and pollution/waste management can more effectively achieve a best practicable environmental option (BPEO). An improved BPEO may be possible, but that it may be at the expense of the highly regarded British planning tradition which balances environmental, social and economic considerations. There is a downside to equating 'land use' planning with 'environmental' planning, and the proposed study must be alert to this risk. However, the scope for developing a BPEO-oriented approach to integrated environmental management and planning should be a primary focus for the Royal Commission; the best single exemplar in this respect is the New Zealand Resource Management Act.

   A specific issue is how far could local planning activities communicate their concerns and capacity requirements 'up' the policy hierarchy to exercise claims over national institutions? This is not simply an issue for land use planning but also concerns policy arrangements for biodiversity conservation, transport and others.

4. Procedures and Arrangements. Town and country planning (both through plan making and development control) is the focal point in environmental planning because of its control over the location of activities. Indeed town and country planning was first brought into effect in order to address environmental problems and environmental protection remains one of its many overlapping objectives.

   It would be useful to explore innovative environmental planning (and town and country planning) practice. In particular the use of Section 106 agreements in waste disposal activities and the use of planning conditions have quite a long history. Many local planning authorities take great care to ensure that the environment is protected and whenever possible, enhanced when large scale developments are proposed. The Ebbsfleet Development in Kent is a case in point.

   There is clearly a need to link conditions and Section 106 agreements achieved under the development control provisions of the town and country planning system with environment management systems within individual enterprises. This has been somewhat neglected to date but there are useful examples of good practice.

   On public confidence, it is hard to imagine that any techniques which appear to resolve conflicts or to build consensus at a high level will de-fuse protest and opposition at a local level. Apparent agreement often founders on 'wicked problems' when tested by real proposals. (Of equal significance, perhaps, is the limited evidence on how NIMBY reactions can be harnessed positively when inevitable protest occurs). Indeed, too integrated a system will reduce the number of points at which individuals can make representations within a pluralistic context: this may be have some advantages for efficient, 'joined-up policy making', but may stifle legitimate debate and exclude important lay knowledge. Further integration may be desirable, but it will not necessarily reduce conflicts between local aspirations and central/regional policy.

5. Sustainable Development. Great care is needed here with the definition of "sustainable development". The concept is subject to a variety of competing interpretations which would have radically different implications for environmental planning.

6. Present Arrangements. Nationally integrative sustainability-orientated planning is emerging from a variety of nodes in the political system. In Scotland, for example, one has the activities of both the Rural Partnerships and the Community Planning partnerships, each keen to co-ordinate sectoral policy across the rural landscape, one responding to a rural agenda the other to a local government agenda. One approach ought to be to make 'integration' a key topic of the research, especially the capacities of environmental planning systems to achieve sectoral policy integration. Other over-arching issues include 'cross-compliance' (how can sectoral and spatial strategies be made to dovetail with each other and shared sustainability objectives?) and 'strategic authority'? (how can conflicts between strategies by legitimately and effectively addressed?).

   There are numerous overlapping and conflicting strategies. These need to be anchored, perhaps within structure plans or district plans. Thus mineral plans, waste plans, local environmental action plans, air quality and management area plans, Objective 1 strategy documents and numerous other types of strategy are frequently formulated with little concern for existing strategies and plans.

   There are considerable dangers of fragmentation and of environmental problems slipping between the fingers of the various responsible agencies. Regulation is often separated from policy planning. Thus, the Environment Agency, local environmental health departments, those administering building regulations and those monitoring planning conditions and obligations together with those involved in environmental assessment usually cover the full range of environmental problems but leave implementation responsibilities disaggregated and unclear.

   The multiplicity of objectives that local planning authorities must endeavour to meet means that environmental priorities are often subjugated to economic and social needs. Thus local planning authorities who are required to designate air quality management areas or to control new development in the vicinity of hazardous installations will be particularly careful to avoid planning blight while meeting their statutory responsibilities.

   There are many who wish to implement a project with environmental benefits such as wind farms, waste to energy incinerators, waste water treatment plants and land reclamation schemes who find the town and country planning system baffling, time consuming and obstructive. The RCEP should emphasise the advantages of developing a better collaborative system to clarify the overlaps between town planning and pollution control.

   The complexities of environmental regulation and environmental planning are increased by the formation of regional development agencies, by devolution and by local government re-organisation. These cause non-trivial problems which the RCP will need to recognise.

7. Climate Change. The UK response to climate change will be the major test of the adequacy of present and emerging arrangements. As taxation, technology and planning will interact the range of government departments involved needs to include H.M. Treasury and the DTI as well as the DETR. Social scientific research will also make an important contribution. The ESRC is investing in a new Climate Change Centre with the NERC and EPSRC, which should provide new options for policy by linking the perspectives of natural and social science in a way that has few parallels across the world.

8. Geographical Areas and Environmental Processes. The study should address the apparent need to base environmental analyses and policies on 'natural' units such as catchments and coastal cells (research on 'bioregionalism' is relevant here). The application of the 'proximity principle' to waste disposal is also pertinent, as it requires inspection of a region's assimilative capacity. If planning and pollution control are to become more integrated, they must be framed in a way which allows a genuine 'systems approach'. Planning decisions, being essentially adversarial, require to be based on legal and administrative boundaries; however, nature does not recognise these boundaries and pollution classically displays systemic and transboundary effects. Central planning guidance and regional/strategic plan-making must incorporate thinking based on natural environmental units. In practice, it is most realistic to envisage a buttressing of the present system, wherein non-statutory plans based on natural areas/units are used at the strategic scale, whilst statutory development plans continue to govern the rules of transference. The planning system is effectively driven by actual; localised instances of development, and it is difficult to imagine an effective statutory framework which is separated from development control and linked, instead, to abstract environmental concepts. In practice, it will be more effective to look at modes of effective linkage between 'systems-based environmental plans' and statutory development plans.

9. Knowledge Base and Environmental Impact Assessments. The ESRC is considering major further investments in the knowledge base, including a 10-year Centre and/or a 5-year Group addressing "Environmental Decision Making". The results of the competition will be available in April 2000 with work starting in October 2004. This new investment should be ideally positioned to follow-up in a number of issues raised by the Commission's study. In the area of transport, the ESRC is also considering a major investment on "Challenging the Culture of Mobility" which, together with the existing investment in the Transport Studies Unit will create the capacity to address one of the major pressures on the planning system and indeed sources of anthropogenic climate change. ESRC is investing in studentships jointly with NERC, a number of which will help to further understanding of issues at the interface between the natural and social science of environmental processes.

   There is considerable potential for 'rationalistic' models, such as environmental impact assessment, to facilitate integrated decision-making. These clearly offer scope for achieving a single point of data collection, interpretation, public consultation, decision making and impact mitigation. There are models of 'integrated environmental management' which provide evidence on how planners and pollution regulators can work together with public and developers through the use of rational techniques. The move towards 'strategic environmental assessment' at European and domestic levels may help to reconcile the dilemma of contradiction between national and local aims to which the consultation paper alludes. Similarly, emergent (but largely proven) techniques of 'ecological footprinting' and capacity analysis can potentially create wider debates and policy frameworks within which local decisions can be set.

1. One issue is the potential of integrated approaches to foster a paradigm of 'industrial ecology' rather than the current model of 'ecological modernisation'. Whereas ecological modernisation rests on refining standards of pollution management, industrial ecology seeks symbiosis between adjacent manufacturing processes so that, for example, one factory's waste can become another's feedstock. Such an approach is in its infancy, but there are exemplars which have attracted much attention, and it clearly requires a decision-making framework in which land use allocation is linked to pollution regulation. Although this model is presently contentious, it is certainly one to which the Commission should give serious attention.

2. There needs to be recognition that environmental planning is anticipatory. It can only be part of an overall approach to environmental protection. Environmental regulation is needed to control all existing activities and those yet to be approved. However, environmental regulation is not sufficient on its own, it needs to be complemented by environmental planning and town and country planning in particular.

3. Finally, the document does not mention the role of E.U. legislation, now and in the future. This deserves explicit consideration.

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