Planning (SWO Housing and Planning Module)

This section of the site brings together information on planning policy and guidance with issues affecting local planning in South West areas and the Greater South West (including Berkshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire).

Context

European

The two pieces of the European regulatory framework that have most impact on/relevance to planning in England are the Directives on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic

Environmental Assessment (SEA). The latter bears primarily on plan making and policy formulation, while the former bears primarily on the determination of planning applications. Both have been 'imported' into the English regulatory framework and are well known to planning practitioners. For more information:

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA)
Strategic Environmental Assessment - SEA

National

Planning Policy Framework

On the 27th March The Minister of Planning Policy made a statement to parliament to announce the publication of the National Planning Policy Framework.

The National Planning Policy Framework sets out the Government’s planning policies for England and how these are expected to be applied. It sets out the Government’s requirements for the planning system only to the extent that it is relevant, proportionate and necessary to do so. It provides a framework within which local people and their accountable councils can produce their own distinctive local and neighbourhood plans, which reflect the needs and priorities of their communities.

In his ministerial forward the Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, Minister for Planning said:

"The purpose of planning is to help achieve sustainable development. Sustainable means ensuring that better lives for ourselves don’t mean worse lives for future generations. Development means growth. We must accommodate the new ways by which we will earn our living in a competitive world. We must house a rising population, which is living longer and wants to make new choices. We must respond to the changes that new technologies offer us. Our lives, and the places in which we live them, can be better, but they will certainly be worse if things stagnate.

Sustainable development is about change for the better, and not only in our built environment. Our natural environment is essential to our wellbeing, and it can be better looked after than it has been. Habitats that have been degraded can be restored. Species that have been isolated can be reconnected. Green Belt land that has been depleted of diversity can be refilled by nature – and opened to people to experience it, to the benefit of body and soul."

Planning News

Read SWO's Response to consultation on the Draft National Planning Policy Framwork (submitted 17/10/2011)

A list of Planning Acts of Parliament legislation can be found by clicking on the link to Planning Portal