Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

Thank you for allowing the National Trust the opportunity to contribute to the preparatory phase of this study. We welcome the aims of the study and offer our thoughts on its scope.

General observations

1. Sustainable Development

Without sustainable development the National Trust, however considerable and environmentally rich its estate, is not able to protect its interests from environmental degradation caused by other unsympathetic land uses. Therefore the extension of land use planning measures in order that the system truly becomes one of environmental planning, with sustainable development as its guiding principle, is fundamentally important to the Trust.

2. Extending the Planning System

The RCEP should consider the environmental and other benefits of extending the planning system to cover developments presently outside planning control, especially agricultural buildings and permitted developments such as telecom masts below a certain size. The Commission could also explore the suitability of the planning system for regulating agricultural land use according to sustainable principles. For example, soils need better protection from damaging and unsustainable practices. Currently the planning system reserves high grade farmland from development, but then allows the soils and productive capacity of that land to be degraded by inappropriate and uncontrolled/uncontrollable farming practices. An example of this, observed by the Trust, is the present potato growing 'strip-mining' of the soils of the Lugg/Wye/Severn valley floodplains.

3. Indicative Planning Strategies

We would also suggest the further development of 'indicative' planning strategies, following the example of the Indicative Forestry Strategies of Scotland, where the principles of 'land capability', 'appropriate land use' and 'Strategic Environmental Assessment' can be developed and applied at the local, regional and national scale. These enable forward planning for certain sectors or types of development. The Cumbria Supplementary Planning Guidance for wind energy developments would be a good example of this approach.

4. Transparency of decision-making.

The Trust has consistently supported the need for transparency in the planning system as a whole, and in particular with its decision-making processes. One way to monitor this might be the development of a regional audit approach, to test the success or failure of the planning system and especially the democratic process. Questions to ask might be, has public consultation worked or merely constituted the bare minimum required? Have public values been canvassed and incorporated into the planning process? Have authorities been too influenced by economic arguments including the threat of competition for business with neighbouring authorities or vested interests?

5. Non-Statutory Plans

The Trust would like the RCEP to promote the value of present 'non-statutory' plans such as LEAPs. These canvass a wide range of views and promote a geographically based system of planning to a drainage basin unit rather than a political unit.

6. We have the following suggestions and comments on some of the topics listed a)- i) in the consultation document. The topic theme is summarised in bold.

   (a)    Democratic control and equality of access to the planning system. The interests and existence of planning committee members bonded by strong business or other collective influence should be more closely monitored, possibly by the local Government Office. Relating to our earlier call for greater transparency, the means and influences through which people are elected or nominated to agencies, authorities and boards should be open to the public.

   (b)   There is a real, not potential, conflict between national requirements and targets and local planning interests. A prime example is in the area of renewable energies, where national commitments by Governments to legally-binding protocols for carbon dioxide emissions reductions have to be delivered by the local planners and councillors - often against their constituents' wishes. The whole operation of schemes like the NFFO appear counter-democratic. We could suggest a range of situations where this national-local conflict of interest applies, such as in subsidised regional development projects including new warehousing or manufacturing developments, land reclamation schemes, EU funded capital infrastructural projects such as new roads or civil engineering works and sea defence works.

   (e)   It is quite likely that the three-pronged approach to sustainable development, which encompasses economy and human welfare as well as environmental wellbeing, could be detrimental to already-protected environmental interests. The provision of employment is often held to be considerably more important than the protection of the environment, even when it can be shown that the economic value of a clean environment to the community may outweigh the value of the job creating project. A summary copy of the Trust's publication, "Valuing our Environment" is enclosed for your information. This is a study, covering the South West of England, the results of which demonstrate the importance of conserved landscapes to the regional economy - a protection that only an effective planning system can deliver and sustain.

   (f)   There is danger of duplication of effort at the national, regional and local planning levels, unless specific duties and checks are put in place. However, this is more a duplication of effort on the Trust's part, as we try to cope with a myriad of planning authorities in a single Trust Region, or with two or three Trust regions within a single Regional Development Agency area. This is a reflection of the changing local government boundaries over the years, whilst National Trust regional boundaries have remained the same. We wait to see whether the establishment of the Welsh Assembly will help or hinder the development of a more unified planning system.

   (g)   We agree there is poor resilience in the present arrangements coping with major foreseeable events such as climate change. In the Trust's experience it can be difficult to get neighbouring authorities and even regional offices of the same agency to co-operate on studies and practical solutions. Even cross-boundary schemes like shoreline management plans or coastal zone management schemes tend to cover too limited areas. In other words the schemes are limited by local authority boundaries and in some cases parochial interests, rather than the natural erosion and deposition processes at work. There needs to be some renewed emphasis on the benefits of synergistic planning. Indeed for the coastline, there should be holistic planning - perhaps a single dedicated agency is required.

   (h)    Relationships between underlying environmental processes and the geographical areas to which plans and decisions at present relate. We would support the notion that planning must operate at the scale at which environmental processes work; the RCEP could canvas whether this should be in parallel with, or instead of, the current bureaucratic boundaries. We have consistently supported the drainage basin or river catchment basis for the former NRA, now Environment Agency. We have also supported the Countryside Agency and English Nature in their development of Natural Areas and Countryside Character Maps as a new basis for planning. The Environmental Capital programme has been supported for the same reasons, excepting our reservations on the substitutability argument. There is concern that substitutability could be misused by developers who would expect to be able to substitute land of similar environmental qualities for land which they wish to develop. We should support the new RDAs as they have more chance to operate at the natural processes scale than their county and district partners.

1. Resource protection: In our view this encompasses soil, air, water, energy sources, minerals, rare materials, vernacular styles and materials. All require better protection from the planning system in a "preventive" approach.

2. Land capability or capacity: This monitoring and analysis tool has not yet really taken hold in the planning system. For example, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions overruled the outcome of an otherwise widely praised urban capacity analysis carried out by West Sussex County Council. This recommended that the local environment did not have the capacity to absorb all the houses it was allocated by Regional Planning Guidance. Nevertheless, the Trust still sees a potential application of this approach to land use planning decisions, based on soil, water, productivity, nature and cultural heritage, opportunity cost, reversibility, etc.

3. Regional inventories: The Trust could follow up its work on regional sustainability indicators to press for regional inventories and audits. An exemplar of such work is the North West England Climate Group, of which the Trust is a member. This is currently preparing a North West Emissions Inventory and a North West Renewable Energy Strategy in partnership with the North West RDA.

4. Accountability: The Local Agenda 21 process started a very good movement to break down the conventional sectoral approach to planning, controlled by the major departments, typically Planning, Housing, Building Control, and Surveyors. Nonetheless we are keen that the RCEP keeps up the public encouragement and resourcing of the LA21 process to prevent backsliding into the old planning divisions.

5. Environmental standards: Much higher standards of environmental protection need to be developed and then enforced by the planning system, for example for Development Control and the implementation of Building Regulations, the protection of Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas, the management of TPO trees and hedgerows, and the enforcement of planning conditions. In its recent response to the Urban Task Force's final report, the Trust made the following comments, which are pertinent to the debate on this topic:

   "building regulations are ten years behind - in other words, they lag behind both the best practice in environmental building techniques and the planning system itself, the policy guidance for which is now thoroughly imbued with the sustainable development concept ... Planning needs the support of building regulations which should set rigorous 'green building' specifications for contractors. In this way production of housing and other buildings which are environmentally benign would become the rule rather than the exception."

6. Retrospective planning consents: We are concerned that the incidence of granting of retrospective consents is minimised. Furthermore, permitting bad development after the event can only encourage further abuse. We would like the RCEP to look into the question of what greater penalties or disincentives for infringement could be incorporated in the planning system. In particular we would like to see higher fines for non-compliance with the development control regulations to be tested.

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