Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

The environment is fundamental to our well-being: there will be severe economic and social implications if we ignore its fundamental constraints. This is one of the key conclusions of a major report published today by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. The report - Environmental Planning - explores how we plan for and protect our environment.

The primary purpose of the report is to examine the way the current planning system provides for the protection and enhancement of our environment. Many regard present arrangements, rightly in our view, as failing to give adequate protection against serious damage to human health and the natural environment, still less bring about the environmental improvements most people want to see. Fundamental changes are required. But the problems are complex, and the solutions must reflect that.

Speaking at Westminster this morning, the Chairman of the Royal Commission, Sir Tom Blundell, said:

'Planning needs to be efficient, but it also must be firmly based on strategic thinking. This is essential both to protect our key environmental assets and to give greater certainty to developers and other interested parties. We need to introduce Integrated Spatial Strategies, covering all uses of land and all other spatially related aspects of the environment, and incorporating appropriate contributions towards national environmental targets.'

Preparation of the integrated spatial strategy will involve a number of bodies. It should be the dominant plan in each area and should be statutory, with the legislation designating the lead body for each area. All other public bodies should be placed under a duty to co-operate in preparing such strategies and comply with them in their own activities.

The Royal Commission has investigated:

• how sustainable development ought to be interpreted and what are the requirements for ensuring environmental sustainability. It pays particular attention to land use.
• how confidence in the town and country planning system might be strengthened by preserving and extending opportunities for public involvement, making regulation more coherent and comprehensible, extending rights of appeal, and more effective safeguards for propriety.
• The sources and uses of information about the environment; and how data can be made more accessible to planners, developers and the public. It has also considered how information about the environment can be used most effectively in assessing projects, and more particularly in assessing plans and programmes.
• The need for statutory recognition of the role of town and country planning in protecting and enhancing the environment.
• The need for clearer objectives for environmental policies in the UK and properly worked out programmes for achieving them. It has considered the difficulties that have arisen where national policies for achieving environmental objectives require the construction of numerous plants of kinds that are likely to encounter opposition, and suggests an approach that would help to overcome those difficulties.
• The environmental problems that have to be solved if an urban renaissance is to be achieved and rural areas protected. It considers the effects climate change is likely to have on the environment in rural, urban and coastal areas, and what measures ought now to be taken in anticipation of that.
• The case for new procedures for integrated spatial planning in order to achieve effective coverage at strategic level of a much wider range of factors than town and country planning legislation covers, and in particular to ensure that environmental sustainability will be safeguarded.

The Royal Commission's report makes 84 recommendations. Many of them are addressed to the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as to the government at Westminster.

Sir Tom Blundell also said:

'The planning system has on the whole served us well over the past 50 years: certainly without it environmental deterioration would have been much more serious. We must recognise, however, that the 21st Century holds powerful new challenges - and planning systems must change to meet them.'

NOTES TO EDITORS

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution is an independent body, appointed by the Queen and funded by the government, which publishes in-depth reports on what it identifies as the crucial environmental issues facing the UK and the world.

The Royal Commission's reports are presented to Parliament. Environmental Planning is its 23rd report, and is the outcome of a major study, announced in July 1999, which was intended to review the UK environmental planning system: the various regimes at different levels for setting and achieving environmental goals. Its main focus has been on whether this system provides an effective, accountable and transparent way of protecting the environment. The study was intended to go much wider than land use planning (although that aspect was central) and would encompass other planning regimes, such as those covering pollution control, air quality, waste, water, agri-environment and biodiversity.

Environmental Planning is available from the Stationery Office (Cm 5459 price £25.00), or can be downloaded free of charge from the Commission's website: http://www.rcep.org.uk. A summary of the report will be available shortly on the Commission's website. Copies of the printed version will be obtainable without charge from Rosemary Ferguson (tel: 020 7799 8972, fax: 020 7779 8971, e-mail rosemary.ferguson@rcep.org.uk).

The report offers 84 recommendations (pages 165 - 171). The following list provides pointers to where some of the most significant topics are dealt with in the full report:

Third parties should have a right of appeal against decisions on planning applications in certain circumstances, and similar rights of appeal for third parties should be introduced for other forms of environmental regulation. (5.46)

We recommend the establishment of environmental tribunals to handle appeals under environmental legislation other than the town and country planning system, including those now handled by planning inspectors. (5.36)

Planning authorities must be properly resourced for their tasks so that will not have the incentive to accept forms of funding which could prejudice their decisions. (5.58)

Data which have been gathered in the public name and for the public good should be available electronically at no cost for public use. (6.20)   Government should fund a feasibility study on the use of Grid technology in planning. (6.34)   A virtual centre for environmental data should be established, in order to overcome the barriers to presenting coherent and consistent environmental data in electronic form. (6.36)

We recommend that a comprehensive and definitive statement of priority objectives for the environment should be produced now for each part of the UK, and widely publicised. Wherever possible, this statement must include a quantified target or targets for movement towards the objective by a specified date. (8.7)

The town and country planning system should be given a statutory purpose, and that an appropriate purpose would be 'to facilitate the achievement of legitimate economic and social goals whilst ensuring that the quality of the environment is safeguarded and wherever appropriate enhanced'. (8.33)   We recommend that town and country planning legislation should stipulate key aspects of the environment and natural resources as material considerations that should be taken into account in considering all planning applications. (8.36)

There should also be adequate opportunities for a wider public contribution to, and scrutiny of, the proposed policy framework for major projects. It is also essential that environmental considerations should be fully integrated into the policies put forward (8.49)   There must be an open forum in the form of a public inquiry at which the local implications of the policy on a major project can be examined in detail. If, however, the inspector conducting the inquiry concludes that those impacts will be unacceptable, he should be entitled to recommend to the Secretary of State that the approval in principle should be reconsidered. (8.58)

The overall policy objective for contaminated land should be to identify and seek to bring about the combination of remediation and subsequent use that represents the best practicable environmental option for each site. (9.10)   The government and the devolved administrations should set target dates for local authorities to complete their inspection of contaminated land, and provide the necessary finance for them to do so. (9.12)

Production subsidies to agriculture should be phased out as soon as possible, but while they remain part of the CAP, we recommend that farmers receiving such subsidies should be required to maintain a defined level of environmental protection on the land they manage. (9.32)

We recommend the withdrawal of the permitted development rights that currently apply to building conversions, and the construction of new building, roads and vehicle tracks when these activities are associated with agriculture and forestry. (9.42)

In future all agricultural holdings in the UK receiving public subsidy should be required to prepare a farm plan with environmental objectives whose achievement can be readily monitored; and that in order to simplify the existing arrangements all bodies giving grants, exercising regulatory functions or requiring certification of environmental performance should accept the plan as meeting their requirements. (9.54)

We recommend that integrated spatial strategies should be introduced covering all spatially related activities and all spatially related aspects of environmental capacity. They should be four-dimensional, covering the atmosphere and underground aquifers as well as the land surface, and looking at least 25 years ahead. (10.21)   An integrated spatial strategy must specify exactly what contributions are expected from local development plans and from the activities of other public bodies. (10.28)   It should be a statutory requirement that local plans or local strategic frameworks must comply with the integrated spatial plan. (10.76)

We recommend that the strategic development plans the Scottish Executive has proposed for the conurbations centred on Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee should take the form of the integrated spatial strategies we have recommended, and that consideration should be given to introducing integrated spatial planning in the remainder of Scotland. (10.79)   We urge the National Assembly for Wales to publish the promised national spatial planning framework for consultation at an early date. We also recommend that the Welsh Assembly take the initiative, in conjunction with the relevant local authorities, in preparing integrated spatial plans for sub-regions in Wales. (10.80)

CONTACTS

Press enquiries are being handled by
Howard Morrison: tel 020 7799 8980, e-mail howard.morrison@rcep.org.uk and
Anna Bradbury: tel 020 7799 8987, e-mail anna.bradbury@rcep.org.uk

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