Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution¹ (RCEP) today welcomed the Government's response to its report on Environmental Planning² but called for more action on several key recommendations made in the report.

RCEP Chairman, Sir Tom Blundell, issued the following statement:

"RCEP acknowledges the advances since publication of our report. This is exemplified by the differences between the planning green paper published shortly prior to our report and the legislation currently before parliament. Many of our recommendations already seem to have been accepted and acted upon
However, we regret that the government has not seen fit to introduce a statutory purpose for town and country planning in the Bill, and we regard their responses to our recommendations for wider availability and better use of public information to be weak.
We cautiously welcome the government's proposals for regional spatial strategies. We remain to be convinced that this is a significant step towards our recommendations for full and long-term integration of environmental planning with other forms of land use planning. We fear that our warnings about the need for a more coherent approach to planning may not yet have been heeded. This was a matter of some considerable concern in our report, and we urge the government to keep the concept of integrated spatial strategies under review.
While we note that the government has not yet accepted the case for environmental tribunals we are encouraged that recent research findings, which clearly set out the case for environmental tribunals, are being considered by the government and that there will be further discussion. However, we take the view that the government's rejection of a third-party right of appeal will prove to be misguided.
It is the Commission's view that the wealth of detail included in our 23rd report will be an important resource in the implementation, through planning guidance and secondary legislation, of the forthcoming Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act."

NOTES TO EDITORS

¹   The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution is an independent body, appointed by the Queen and funded by government, which publishes in-depth reports on what it identifies as the crucial environmental issues facing the UK and the world. Its reports are presented to Parliament.

²   The RCEP report on Environmental Planning was published in March 2002. Further details of the report are available at http://www.rcep.org.uk/eplaunch.html

FURTHER INFORMATION

Please contact Alan Crockford on 020 7799 8979 (alternatively 020 7799 8970) or email alan.crockford@rcep.org.uk for further information or to arrange interviews.

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