It’s been a difficult year for environmental planners in England. In the summer we had the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), the subject of an intense public furore. Autumn gave us the Chancellor’s statement moaning about the burdens imposed by environmental protection and proposing changes that could make it more difficult for the statutory environmental bodies to step up for nature, as well as a raft of potentially damaging major infrastructure projects.
So it’s refreshing to report some goods news just before Christmas. A cross-party group of MPs on the Communities and Local Government Select Committee have been considering the draft NPPF in detail, and have released their report today.
Its findings chime with many of the objections we and other NGOs have been raising about the NPPF. It calls for a more measured approach to sustainable development, with a restatement of the five guiding principles of the 2005 UK Sustainable Development Strategy, a call also made by the earlier report of the Environmental Audit Committee. The report reflects the concerns many people have raised over the draft policy’s presumption in favour of sustainable development.
The MPs also said that the NPPF was weighted too far towards a single interest, and that the particularly objectionable sentence, “Decision-takers at every level should assume that the default answer to development proposals is “yes” “should be removed.
This is exactly what we have been saying for months, but now it’s clear that it’s not just ‘scaremongering’ NGOs kicking up a fuss about nothing.
We would also urge the Government to consider a strong and explicit reference to the protection of Sites of Special Scientific Interest, which in the draft document were under threat from damaging development.
The ball is now firmly in the Government’s court to publish a revised NPPF that meets the concerns of MPs, environmental groups and the thousands of members of the public who wrote in to make their views known.
The story has picked up a lot of coverage in today's media, including the Daily Telegraph, the BBC, Sky News and the Guardian.