News

LANDSCAPE INSTITUTE RESPONSE TO PLANNING WHITE PAPER [England]

22nd May 2007

The Landscape Institute, which represents the environment and design profession, has given a qualified welcome to the new Planning White Paper for England, urging that landscape professionals are brought into the new processes of consultation on planning applications at the outset.

‘Communities must be involved in deciding how their areas look and work,’ said LI President Nigel Thorne. ‘It is only with the help of landscape architects that they will be able to develop a wider perspective on the forces that shape their environment’.

‘We also believe that it is essential that the government develops a landscape policy, which is singularly lacking in the White Paper. Landscape is the context within which development takes place whether it is at the scale of a small change to the look of someone’s roof because of a wind turbine, or at the strategic level involving major transport infrastructure projects like an airport.’

‘Planning has for decades been about development control. To some extent the white paper is now proposing a change to that fundamental approach, with climate change and the contemporary issue of consultation as the catalyst,’ said Mr Thorne. ‘This major reform to planning law will have an enormous impact on our landscapes, in towns, cities and countryside.

‘Landscape is too often disregarded as part of the process of change and yet it is the starting point. Every planning decision affects the look and feel of our landscapes. It is clearly time to get beyond a system that dwells too much on individual planning applications to really thinking about the major transformations we are about to see in the places where we live and work.

‘The demands of the 21st century cry out for the holistic professionalism of landscape expertise to enable appropriate development without risking bio-diversity, landscape character, liveability and the democratic rights of communities to influence how their environments are remade for the future.’

-ends-

Media contact:
Paul Lincoln
T: 020 7299 4506
E: paull@landscapeinstitute.org
Notes to Editors:

The Landscape Institute is the chartered professional body for landscape architects in the UK; it was founded in 1929 and was awarded a Royal Charter of incorporation in 1997.

The Institute works to maintain and improve high professional standards through education and development and to protect, conserve and enhance the natural and built environment for the benefit of the public by promoting the arts and sciences of landscape architecture.

For further information visit the website www.landscapeinstitute.org