If everything goes to plan, over the next five years England will see 1.5 million new homes, a new generation of new towns and an increase in energy and economic infrastructure. We will also see improvements in our natural environment too.
However, housebuilding, infrastructure construction and nature conservation will all put pressure on the limited amount of land in England. Better land use coordination will hence be essential to achieving of all these important goals. A mechanism to resolve land use conflicts and to enable co-location (e.g. between agriculture and energy infrastructure) will guide us to build in the right place for the right use.
From the RTPI’s point of view, it’s time that England develops its own National Spatial Framework – just as Scotland and Wales did.
A bit of history
The idea for a national spatial plan in England is in fact not new. Back in 1918, Sir Patrick Abercrombie called for a Civil Survey of the UK on a regional basis to aid reconstruction in the aftermath of the First World War. Two decades later, in the midst of the Second World War, the Barlow Report echoed the need for a national plan – this time covering Great Britain – to coordinate between different tiers and elements of government. The report cited the then Town Planning Institute in suggesting a central authority to oversee national planning.
In the following decades, discussion on the development of a national spatial plan took a backseat. Particularly in the 1980s, amid the rise of the ‘neoliberal’ agenda, national planning was generally seen negatively as ‘rigid’ and ‘centralising’ (Alterman 2001, Wong 2002).
It was not until around the 2000s that the national scale of planning re-emerged as a topic of interest. This followed the publication of the European Spatial Development Perspective in 1999 and the devolution of planning powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. While Scotland and Wales went on to develop their national spatial plans, England went mainly down the path of Regional Spatial Strategies (RSS) (Tewdwr-Jones 2015). Some efforts to identify regional disparities in a national spatial form can however be seen in the Sustainable Communities Plan in 2003. This is despite the policy’s focus on London and the Southeast.
RTPI’s ‘A Map for England’ initiative
The RTPI contributed to the renewed debate in the 2000s through the ‘UK Spatial Planning Framework’ report in 2000, ‘Uniting Britain’ in 2006 and ‘A Map for England’ initiative in 2012.
These pieces of work cumulated to the RTPI’s suggestion of a non-statutory National Spatial Guidance, which would:
- Improve coordination of different policy frameworks;
- Provide completed national spatial coverage and consistent monitoring frameworks;
- Develop a national spatial vision of development;
- Provide more effective national solutions to the fast changing spatial structure; and
- Address clashes between planning and economic strategies.
The ‘Map for England’ initiative was a particularly significant project, where the Institute emphasised the importance of visualising the spatial implications of policies. As effects of policies often vary across the country, it is only through visualisation of their spatial implications that society can enter a transparent, meaningful debate about them.
Why now?
In recent years, the benefits of sector-based spatial plans have increasingly been recognised by government. The last government had committed to producing a Land Use Framework (covering England) and a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP, covering Great Britain). Not only have the current government promised to take these pieces of work forward, Rachel Reeves – in her maiden speech as Chancellor – announced that the SSEP approach will be extended to other infrastructure sectors.
At the RTPI, we welcome these policy developments. However, we are also concerned about the potential lack of coordination between all these plans.
Furthermore, there are plans to introduce a modern industrial strategy for the UK, as well as a local growth plan for each English region. From the RTPI’s point of view, it will be important that these strategies and plans have a spatial element to them.
What the RTPI is calling for
It is now high time that we rethink the national scale of planning – in the face of competing land use demands and strong government ambitions.
To this end, the RTPI calls for the establishment of a National Spatial Framework that corresponds to the National Industrial Strategy and coordinates between Local Growth Plans.
The National Spatial Framework should comprise of:
- Spatial plans for infrastructure and new towns (SSEP, Land Use Framework and other spatial plans under development);
- An overarching document that directs how these different sector-based plans should come together;
- A map that visualises the spatial implications of existing government policies.
The NSF will serve several purposes, including:
- Promoting integration between priorities across different government departments and agencies;
- Directing investments and coordinating between funding streams;
- Providing a place-based perspective for the proposed National Industrial Strategy and Local Growth Plans;
- Coordinating between local, regional and national planning.