On the day of budget 2012 the (possibly) revised National Planning Policy Framework designed to cut red tape and bureaucracy enabling development to progress and underpin economic recovery is rumoured to be unveiled.
One cannot deny that the archaic planning system existing in England is not fit for purpose. With well over a 1000 pages it incorporates a plethora of issues and referral to directives and guidelines that confuse many. The decision by the Department of Local Government & Communities (DCLG) to attempt to condense planning guidelines into a document of less than a 100 pages would be, could be beneficial to all. There is both a serious shortage of homes and a vital need to protect the dangerously fragmented landscape in England and thus true sustainable development (SD) is a must for progression.
On publication of the draft NPPF released for consultation on the 25th July 2011, a collective groan was heard from those in land management and conservation as its contents were digested. A subsequent campaign quickly polarised those entrenched in the three camps which make up the bottom line of sustainable development, (economic, environmental and social) against each other in a very public, very heated debate. The reason was simple, in trying and needing to define SD, the draft NPPF on offer simply failed, miserably.
The Rt Hon Greg Clark MP’s foreword included his own take on the universally accepted Brundtland definition of SD;
‘‘Sustainable means ensuring that better lives for ourselves don’t mean worse lives for future generations.’’
And then we were told that the NPPF itself was the definition of SD for England. The draft NPPF did include the Brundtland definition, but made no reference to the 2005 UK Sustainable Development strategy, which had superseded Brundtlands’ in the UK. On the continent the definition of SD had spread even wider to include cultural needs and following the UK’S ratification of the European Landscape Convention in 2006, the cultural angle, which seemed to fit in with a landscape approach and therefore localism, the NPPF should of and could be furthering the boundaries of SD to fit in with most modern academic and practitioner thinking.
Confusing? Hell yes. And added to this is the spaghetti junction of acronyms and land designations that has come to define the English landscape and a cacophony of differing views as to what the English countryside is, where it begins and where it ends. What is worth protecting more? What is superfluous in biodiversity terms?
Therefore no one can really be blamed for throwing any old definition of ‘sustainable’ that they choose into the ring, because SD has been lost in a mist of PR and glossy brochures easily confused with others promoting such oxymorons as ‘sustainable tourism’ or ‘sustainable fashion’.
So the NGOs were pitted against the developers’. And the debate was harsh and still rages (follow #NPPF on twitter to see). A myriad of issues highlighting the complexity of the work of a planner, were pushed and pulled at. Property consultants became the staunchest of supporters for the homeless and the NGOs started to cite the need for green space for the whole population. And the worse thing that could possibly happen did; those that need to be in liaison with one another if we are to embrace what we all know is required to introduce SD into mainstream policy became an impossible dream. With the vital issues swept under the carpet such as; contaminated land, community engagement / public participation, urban green space, water – surface run off and drought and protecting all nature in all places.
We have been drip fed numerous and dubious initiatives by Defra, including ‘Biodiversity offsetting’ and the postcode lottery ‘National Improvement Areas’, which do little more than ensure further fragmentation of the landscape, whilst placating the NGOs with further possible funding mechanisms. Such things will surely help to subdue the ‘beasts’ within the hearts of the NGOs stirred up by the draft NPPF if nothing else works – imagine the potential flow of money from planning gains, more than any good run on tea towels of great country homes!
But there is an axiom, which destroys the pro NPPF camp who state the countryside is sterile / economically unviable or the anti NPPF camp who tell us the countryside can only be protected and managed for future generations by donation and volunteers, that the wider English rural landscape is wealthy, vibrant and stands virtually alone in having a strong, ascertained economic future.
Our future energy needs lie there. And the only real problem is trying to integrate all other essential sectors depending on soil to plan together according to what is in their location – and it is only they in their location who are capable of solving this.
Also we must remember that many ‘on the ground’ practitioners and professionals have been busy laying out true SD to the envy of the world without recognition from within England’s borders, for several years. And this has to be recognised before their industry is sapped of funding or halted by legal wrangling and they choose, as many are already, to move abroad.
The NPPF should be nothing more than a list of the societal, cultural and environmental obligations that the people in their place have to adhere to in designing local plans that suit their economic needs. And it would be pure unadulterated localism. It is time for all the population to have the right to be a NIMBY!
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