As if the climate mattered…
Most of us want action on climate change[i] and yet somehow we seem to be stuck in the slow lane. There is a majority and stunning global consensus that people want to see their countries work together on climate change.[ii] We have proven technologies and we have deployment strategies that we have had at our fingertips for the last thirty or forty years. And we have a tried and tested system for giving people a voice over what happens where in our planning system. So why is it so hard to make climate change matter?
If you asked whether people would rather live in a home that was energy efficient or in one that was cold and expensive to heat, the answer would of course be the warm home.[iii] If you asked people whether they would support the development of renewable energy that brought them benefits, the answer is overwhelmingly supportive.[iv] If you asked people whether they would rather breathe clean air, its another yes. Safe cycling and walking routes get another thumbs up from most of us.[v] All of these developments are controlled by planning and building regulations and policy that make up the planning system.
And so if we’re agreed that most of us want to live in places that are climate and nature friendly, we need our planning system to work for us.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill does nothing to secure a climate, nature and people-friendly vision for places in England. It comes at the end of a long series of reform measures that have steadily eroded the requirements controlling what happens where.
Unfortunately if we don’t control what happens where, we don’t get energy efficient homes, we don’t get renewable energy that benefits local communities and we don’t get the sort of public and active transport infrastructure we need.
Let’s start with warm homes. Building standards and planning policy should work together, so that any developer (individual, public, private) comes into the system and knows that they have to build a home that is highly energy efficient. What’s so difficult about that? Up and down England, local authorities that want policies to improve on building standards (still waiting for them to be improved…two years now) are having to fight for these through plan examinations against developers determined to water them down. Who benefits from that dilution? It has cost people in the region of £9 billion pounds in extra heating bills in new homes that have been built in the last ten years to lower standards.[vi] We should have been building totally energy efficient homes from 2016 – that was the last Labour Government’s commitment.
And that is why we are taking the Government to court now on its energy efficiency planning policy, which basically tries to shut down local authorities from putting in policies to improve the quality of homes.[vii]
Let’s think about our local plan. This is a document that takes a while to make – to be fair it is a complex document (places are complex!) and it has a lot of evidence and options testing as part of its production. It also gives us our right to be heard at plan examination, and we are consulted on the whole thing before that. In the Planning and Infrastructure Bill we lose out on this right to be heard when it comes to spatial development strategies. In addition, there is no requirement for this local plan or for the spatial development strategies to understand and adapt to their ‘carbon footprint’.[viii] At the moment plans across England add up to an unsustainable level of carbon emissions.[ix] If you add the Government’s target of 1.5 million homes into that, how will we meet our legally binding targets? The Committee on Climate Change is asking this very question.[x] So far, the Government are not listening.
We are not the only voice who want our planning system to work to deliver development that’s fit for the future. Friends of the Earth, CSE, UK100, ClimateEmergency UK, UKGBC and the TCPA are all speaking on behalf of communities and policy makers up and down the country to try and change the disastrous effect that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will have by locking in development that will pour out unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions at great cost to our communities and places. Nor will it deliver the homes we do actually need because it fails to focus on social rent, as highlighted by the Manchester Social Housing Commission.
It feels like we are at a point of great jeopardy. We simply cannot afford the huge mistake that this Bill currently represents on climate change.
[i] Globally representative evidence on the actual and perceived support for climate action, Peter Andre, Teodora Boneva et al
[ii] UNDP Global Poll on climate change 2024
[iii] Research on people’s preference for warm homes
[iv] CSE research on renewable energy, and public opinion attitudes tracker
[v] National Travel Attitudes Study 2024
[vi] £9 billion lost in energy bills
[vii] RCA & Leigh Day press release and papers
[viii] Joint Letter calling for amendment to the P&I bill
