Question: what would bring together a coalition of 22 organisations, collectively representing 6.5 million members and thousands of volunteers?
Answer: the most significant change to the planning system in England in the last 60 years, in fact since the system was set up in 1947.
The UK coalition Government has started fundamental reforms to the planning system, which could have many implications for saving special places for wildlife, and for the environment generally. It’s not that they are going to redraw or remove wildlife designations – in fact they’ve promised not to – but they are introducing a completely new philosophy of planning and are changing the nuts and bolts of how the planning system works. The details were trailed before the election in the Conservative Party’s Open Source Planning Green Paper.
There are many possible implications for the environment, both good and bad.
We’ve come together in an impressive coalition to campaign on planning reform. It’s almost an A-Z of the environmental movement, with everyone from Amphibian and Reptile Conservation to WWF. The size and breadth of the organisation demonstrates people’s passion for a healthy natural environment and why decision-makers should listen to our concerns.
On Monday we published our Vision for the Future of Planning, which you can find on the Wildlife and Countryside Link website. See our comment here. We expect the Government to publish its Localism Bill very soon. It will contain many significant changes to the planning system, and we’ll be reporting on its progress and our views via this blog (to see the relevant posts just use the planning policy tag, or go to our planning policy webpages for the latest).
We’re also expecting the Government to start developing proposals for a National Planning Framework for England. This could be welcome news, provided it’s robustly assessed and has the natural environment at its heart.
Things we’ll be looking out for in the Bill and the National Planning Framework include:
If you’re affected by the planning system, let us know what you think.