As 2013 draws to a close, welcome to the A-Z of Planning Policy in 2013, an alphabetical tour of the people, the policies and the projects who’ve made this a memorable year for our work on planning policy and saving special places in England (mostly!).
A is for Autumn Statement and more “simplified planning to speed up delivery of new homes and support local jobs.”
B is for planning minister Nick Boles MP (pictured), who visited the RSPB in action at our Frampton Marsh reserve in June. Quote: “If anyone comes to me with a new idea for planning legislation, I am going to shoot them.” I’d better get out my bullet-proof jacket.
C is for climate change training, working with Sustainability East to deliver four events for local authority planners which included how to plan for renewable energy in harmony with nature.
D is for duty to cooperate, the inadequate substitute for real strategic planning by local authorities, and a fence at which many local plans fall in the race to adoption.
E is for Environmental Impact Assessment and a year of work with BirdLife International and other European partners to get a good deal for the review of the EIA Directive.
F is for faith, and, the publication of my sabbatical report, Saving Nature with Faith Communities, in June.
G is for guidance review, turning 7,000 out-of-date pages to something intelligible you can read on an iPad. See the beta version here, published in August.
H is for housing review by Sir Michael Lyons, launched by Ed Miliband in December and tasked with advising him on how to deliver 200,000 homes a year by 2020 – and, we hope, built in the right place and to the right standard.
H is also for hero – Mark H Durkan MLA – see why under N.
I is for inspiring case studies, from Wallasea in Essex to the Tana River Delta Land Use Plan in Kenya, from our Planning Naturally report.
J is for jay, a video-conferencing room at the RSPB UK Headquarters named after an acorn-loving woodland bird we see here, and the scene of many conversations about planning. Any other suggestions for J?
K is for the key role that planning plays “in helping shape places to secure radical reductions in greenhouse gas emissions...” (NPPF paragraph 93).
L is for localism, local plans, Local Enterprise Partnerships and landscape-scale conservation, working to embed the latter into the first three.
M is for minerals, and our colleagues’ work advising minerals planning authorities and the industry on how to restore quarries for wildlife.
N is for Northern Ireland Planning Bill, threatened with damaging amendments that prioritised economic growth and removed rights to legal challenge, but withdrawn in October by the new environment minister, Mark H Durkan MLA, after a NGO campaign.
N is also for nightingales.
O is for offsetting, responding to Defra’s proposals for biodiversity offsetting and its implications for the planning system.
P is for Planning Naturally, our flagship publication for local authority planners produced jointly with the RTPI and CIEEM and launched at this year’s RTPI Planning Convention in July. It’s full of inspiring case studies from around the UK which illustrate our 12 principles of good spatial planning.
Q is for DCLG Chief Planner Steve Quartermain.
R is for Roberta Blackman-Woods MP, the shadow planning minister, who launched New Directions in Planning: Beyond Localism, in November.
S is for the State of Nature report launched by Sir David Attenborough in May. Alarmingly, 60% of species studied are in decline. S is also for sustainable development, a principle we seek to uphold in the planning system and beyond.
T is for the Trent and Tame Futurescape, where we are working with colleagues to help embed landscape-scale conservation policies in local plans.
U is for unconventional gas, aka fracking, advising on how shale gas development interacts with the planning and EIA regimes.
V is for volunteers, who make the RSPB tick. We’re delighted to have some planning volunteers helping us this year.
W is for Wallasea, another inspiring case study from Planning Naturally which showcases an integrated solution to several planning challenges as well as providing some amazing new habitat.
X is for x-cutting, because so much of our planning policy work cuts across different teams at the RSPB.
Y is for you, who’ve supported us or had your ear bent by us. We’d like to thank you for all your help and look forward to continuing to work together in the coming year.
Z is for zeal, something which has characterised the RSPB from day one when we campaigned against the use of egret feathers in ladies’ hats. It’s a long way from there to campaigning on planning policy, but the need for zeal has never changed!