The new Labour government faces an urgent challenge: the need for new homes, energy and transport infrastructure is pitched against the biodiversity and climate emergencies. The challenge goes to the heart of more than housing supply. Energy and food security are at risk and atmospheric heating and species loss are existential threats. Central to facing this down is how we use land efficiently and optimally to achieve multiple critical outcomes.
Edge Recommendations emerging from theRoundtable
A National Land Use Framework should be established as a national service enabling everyone from policy-makers in central and local government to local groups and businesses to access the accurate information they need to plan for the future.
The National Land Use Authority should be positioned in Government so that it can link and coordinate the work of different government departments (See Appendix B), while sitting at arms-length from those agencies and departments.
The remit for a National Land Use Authority should be to rapidly deliver a bare bones land use framework covering key datasets (as above) but also to lay the foundations for a much richer national resource including a wide range of information as well as the capacity for crowd-sourced citizen mapping.
In 2022 The House of Lords Select Committee on Land Use in England explored the need for a comprehensive framework to tackle this. Richard Benwell, Chief Executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said in his submission to the committee that “a land use framework must have three features.
· Target-driven, setting out the land use changes needed to support key goals like climate change mitigation.
· Carry weight in planning, permitting and spending decisions, steering decisions away from harmful land-use choices, and helping reward nature-positive planning.
· Be transparent and adaptable, so the public can see whether government is on track.”
In response the Conservative Government committed Defra to publishing a land use framework (LUF) for England in 2023. When it did not appear, publication was promised before the 2024 summer recess.
While the scope of the LUF was never defined, there were high expectations that it would develop and provide comprehensive, accessible information systems to facilitate integrated land use and planning decisions and actions nationally, regionally and locally. In Baroness Young’s words, it should integrate “all the key land uses, including infrastructure, housing and transport, not just those for which DEFRA has a responsibility in terms of agriculture, carbon and biodiversity”.
This may have been the government’s intention as, in response to the Winser Review’s call for a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP), it refers to its “work to map out economy-wide land and marine use, such as the Land Use Framework.”
For now, though; as a result of the General Election; the creation, scope and purposes of a LUF are in limbo and it will be up to the next government to pick up the development work done on it - or not.
Whoever wins the election; a LUF must be much more than a technician’s tool. It should be an innovative, technology-driven resource to help policy makers resolve the challenge of accommodating people’s present and future needs within a rapidly changing natural world. As the Government’s former food tsar, Henry Dimbleby, said in 2022; “In terms of food, biodiversity, carbon and fuel ... the single most important thing the Government needs to do in this area is ... to create a [land use] framework, which informs, at a local and a national level, planning regulation and the [Environmental Land Management] (ELM) policy."
The inauguration of a new government with a strong change agenda creates the opportunity to re-engage in the discussion about a land use framework and drive it forward. To enable this, the Edge is bringing together key stakeholders as we emerge from the election to discuss:
· The LUF’s remit;
· Learning from experience of frameworks elsewhere;
· The mechanics of an effective LUF;
· Opportunities for cross-departmental and cross-sectoral working; and
· An implementation programme.
By invitation only
Venue: RICS, 12 Great George Street, London SWIP 3AD
Timing: 11th July 2024, 14.30 - 17.30
Downloads:
Further Reading:
The full outcomes of the Edge/RICS round table on why we need a land use framework held on the 11th July 2024 are available at https://edgedebate.com/edge-events/edge-roundtable-173-delivering-a-national-land-use-framework
The House of Lords Land Use in England Committee report: Making the most out of England’s land (December 2022) see: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/33168/documents/179645/default/
The Edge’s evidence to the House of Lord’s inquiry. See - https://edgedebate.com/s/Edge-Response-to-Land-Use-Inquiry-2022-220426.pdf
The Geospatial Commission’s Finding common ground: Integrating data, science and innovation for better use of land (May 2023): See - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/finding-common-ground-integrating-data-science-and-innovation-for-better-use-of-land/finding-common-ground-integrating-data-science-and-innovation-for-better-use-of-land