Planning for the climate challenge? Understanding the performance of english local plans

With funding from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Town and Country Planning Association published this report.

This report shows that despite international commitments on carbon reduction, and the increasing intensity and frequency of climate-related impacts, local plans in England are failing to cut carbon emissions and to plan for the scale of severe weather predicted over future years.

To deliver the fundamental change required, climate change must be placed front and centre of the policy priorities of the spatial planning system. Only a radical refocusing of the system will meet the challenges of climate change, now and in the future.

The report sets out ten recommendations:

1. Re-prioritise climate change in the local plan system
2. Provide clarity on the legal requirements on climate change
3. Provide clarity in national policy
4. Define the scope of climate evidence in local plans
5. Deal clearly with risk
6. Reform the governance of the delivery of action on climate change
7. Review the scope of the English spatial planning system
8. Provide adequate resources to plan for climate change
9. Encourage spatial planning over the long term
10. Promote new forms of strategic co-operation.