Planning and Infrastructure Bill – our briefing ahead of its second reading
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill has its second reading in the House of Commons on Monday 24 March.
The Better Planning Coalition welcomes many aspects of the Bill.
These include better resourcing of planning to ensure it delivers an effective and efficient process, and a new strategic planning level better able to guide development to the best locations to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits.
However, we’re worried about the lack of clarity in some areas and that it leaves too much for future secondary legislation and guidance.
Removing elected representatives from key planning decisions also risks further undermining transparency and public trust in decisions, particularly given wider local government reorganisation at the same time.
The new nature recovery proposals are worrying many of our members. The Bill would allow developers to pay a levy which fund nature restoration elsewhere in place of site-specific mitigation or compensation measures under the Habitats Regulations in some situations.
This risks removing environmental protections now without the certainty that the proposed and currently untested system will deliver environmental improvements at some point in the future at a level to significantly outweigh the harm that could be allowed in the interim.
The Bill could also be amended to create an effective link between the Climate Change Act 2008 and planning decisions and to give planning a positive, visionary purpose around sustainable development and the welfare of future generations.
There are opportunities to address these as the Bill proceeds and we look forward to working with Parliamentarians as the Bill progresses.
You can read our briefing here.