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Green Infrastructure must be at the heart of the new planning regime says Landscape Institute

20th August 2007

The Landscape Institute has made a strong plea for the incorporation of the concept of Green Infrastructure in the Government’s proposed new approach to planning.

Responding to the consultation on the Planning White Paper ‘Planning for a Sustainable Future’, the Institute says that the Government’s passing reference to protection of greenbelt areas is ‘woefully inadequate’ and calls for the creation of a Green Infrastructure national policy statement.

LI Director General Marion Bowman said: ‘The value of creating Green Infrastructure is that it ranges across a diverse set of cross-cutting issues to ensure development safeguards and delivers landscape character and distinctiveness, biodiversity, water and coastal considerations, health, recreation, crop production, climate change adaptation and mitigation and a host of other land-based assets. Major infrastructure projects often cross local authority boundaries and have significant impact on local communities as well as the perceived national interest. A landscape or green infrastructure policy framework can ensure the holistic assessment we consider to be essential to the decision-making processes in planning.’

The Planning White Paper proposes to put major decisions on nationally significant infrastructure developments such as energy generation or water and waste projects into the hands of a new Planning Commission. The Institute believes that the Commission and the new methods of parliamentary scrutiny for the proposed national policy statements guiding the commission’s decisions will require significant input from the chartered professions.

‘The public interest would be significantly enhanced if the new system requires the disinterested expertise of professionals such as landscape architects,’ said Ms Bowman. ‘For instance, the government’s stated ambition is to ensure effective public consultation and engagement in the new planning regime. Hard to reach groups in local communities will continue to be left out if only web-based consultation is relied on. Landscape architects are expert in much more original ways of community engagement while still having in-depth technical knowledge about issues like transport planning, ecology, social cohesion, physical sustainability or climate change adaptation. Without adequate reference to the skills of landscape architects, public policy relating to planning in the future will not be successful.’

The Institute also calls for a stronger role for design considerations at the earliest possible stage in planning applications, for planning reform’s compliance with the European Landscape Convention and warns that while reform in principle is welcomed, the planning system should not put emphasis on speed at the expense of the quality of decision-making.

The Institute also calls for much stronger promotion of carbon emission reduction and climate change adaptation measures in new housing and commercial developments.

‘The White Paper is reticent on this instead concentrating on micro-generation by householders,’ said Ms Bowman. ‘We believe there is a very substantial unrealised opportunity for new developments to build in greater energy efficiency and locally sourced renewable energy at the early stages of site layout, design and construction. It requires innovation and long-term management but much of the technology is well established and the landscape benefits of this approach stand to be greater than individual householder microgeneration.’