Twenty-eighth Report Adapting Institutions to Climate Change Cm ...

Chapter 3
the end of March 2011. This strategy will set out the Scottish Ministers’ objectives in relation
to sustainable land use, which must contribute to adaptation to climate change as set out in the
adaptation programme and other matters.
3.36 Planning authorities will also turn to more specific policy, on flooding or biodiversity for
example, which may also make direct reference to climate change. For example, recently updated
advice on nature conservation issued by the Welsh Assembly Government provides for: “plans
to accommodate and reduce the effects of climate change by encouraging development that
will reduce damaging emissions and energy consumption and that help habitats and species to
respond to climate change”. 32 General government policy (for example, Scotland’s Climate Change
Adaptation Framework) 33 is also relevant in the planning framework.
3.37 The introduction of strategies such as Defra’s Making Space for Water34 in England (3.64) has
implications for land use planning, in particular the planned development of new property or
business infrastructure, which is obliged to consider flood and coastal erosion risk. Planning
policy was revised (in the form of Planning Policy Statement (PPS) 25 on development and flood
risk) 35 to ensure a closer relationship between planning authorities and the Environment Agency,
which was made a statutory consultee for planning applications involving major development in
flood-prone areas. PPS25 further provides that, where the local planning authority is mindful to
approve major developments despite maintained objections from the Environment Agency, the
Secretary of State can be asked by the Agency to consider ‘calling in’ the application for his or
her determination. Local planning authorities have to balance all material (including social and
economic) considerations; thus if they approve developments despite advice from one agency, it
is open to the Secretary of State to approve or not their balancing of different considerations.
The Environment Agency’s most recent assessment of flood risks for England36 reports that, in
2007-08, where the Agency objected to the grant of planning consent on flood risk grounds, less
than 4% of applications gained consent but 15 big developments gained approval against their
advice. In Wales, equivalent guidance is available in Technical Advice Note 15. 37
3.38
3.39
The formal legislative and policy arrangements for addressing climate change through the planning
system are, whilst fragmented and convoluted, thoroughly embedded. High-level policy is rightly
ambitious in terms of the contribution of spatial planning to adaptation, and there are emerging
frameworks with the potential to take that even further. For example, CLG plans to revise the
PPS1 supplement on planning and climate change and consolidate it with PPS22 on renewable
energy; we would expect adaptation to feature more strongly in this recast PPS on climate change.
PPS20 on coastal planning is to be replaced with an updated supplement to PPS25 on development
and flood risk. World Class Places, the Government’s strategy for improving the quality of place,
identified the need for a step change in the provision of green infrastructure to help urban areas
adapt to climate change, and committed the Government to updating planning policy to provide
a clearer message to local authorities about what is expected of them. 38
We are concerned that these high-level principles are not routinely part of planning practice.
Development planning and, more particularly, the review and updating of plans can be slow
relative to the developing science of climate change. Moreover, the importance of adaptation does
not seem always to be recognised in development control decisions in practice. In its report for us,
the Town and Country Planning Association concluded that even where strong guidance exists
on adaptation to climate change, it appears to be limited by its enabling rather than prescriptive
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