Planning law has for many years placed a duty on local planning authorities to plan for climate change, while national planning policy requires plans to secure radical reductions in emissions and for decisions to be taken in line with the 2008 Climate Change Act. The latter has recently been updated to target net zero carbon by 2050. This is radical and transformational stuff, requiring proper planning and participation from all sectors.

Despite this strength and clarity of legislation and policy, local planning and decision-making is failing to deliver in ways consistent with the climate emergency. But all this is set to change. Lawyers at ClientEarth have written to those local authorities who are preparing Local Plans “warning them that they will violate their legal obligations and risk legal challenge if they do not introduce proper climate change plans” and to “explain how they will set evidence-based carbon reduction targets and ensure these targets are then central to their new planning policy.”

Hares have been set running in many LPAs, nervous about the implications for timetables and soundness of their plans. These are justifiable worries, not least because of the urgency of the crisis but because of the pervasiveness of the topic, from needing to understand overarching risks and area-wide targets, to strategic and site-specific land use choices, to determining planning applications and the detailed design of buildings and infrastructure. Ultimately, to fulfil the duty and deliver against legal targets, the strategic plan and every policy and decision that flows from it must be considered through the lens of climate compliance. The core questions become “how will this policy or decision reduce emissions, increase resilience and ensure we are not found liable in future"?

For most planners, climate change is nothing new, but it is a theme that had slipped down the agenda relative to housing and economic growth. This must now change. Helpfully, most of the tools exist to support planners. Third Revolution supported the TCPA and RTPI Rising to the Climate Crisis guide, which clearly sets out how local plans and decisions can deliver net zero and climate resilience.

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But legal compliance won't be enough. Climate focussed local plans are critical but on their own risk presenting the strategies and solutions as a cost to developers or strain on infrastructure spending. Tackling the climate emergency demands the refocussing of entire local and regional economies – a green new deal if you like – to exploit new ideas, technologies and investment in the right kind of infrastructure in the right places to stimulate climate compatible growth.

This agenda is cross-party, cross-sector and cross-boundary. Climate focussed economic and spatial strategies can form the basis of new jobs and support new economic sectors. They will realise investment in low carbon private and council-built housing, transport infrastructure, energy networks into which the private sector can connect energy centres or solar farms, and flood defences, including land management or rewilding in appropriate places. They also require strategies for skills, education and training, and support from priority sectors and specialist R&D facilities. Everywhere will be different and so place-based strategies are critical, with priorities defined and delivered at a local level.

Delivery matters. The economy is based on carbon, but the science is unequivocal that we must almost entirely remove this. Every layer of governance and community from the global to the neighbourhood needs to treat this challenge as the mission around which growth and spatial strategies, investment choices and decisions are based.

The imperative and legal duties are clear, but so are the opportunities for places to develop compelling and positive visions that reflect the urgency of the challenge and around which decision-makers and communities can unite. This demands local leadership and management to ensure Local Plans, economic strategies and infrastructure decisions are integrated, delivery focussed and proactive about putting the right kind of infrastructure in the right places and the right time.

This is the challenge of our age and is the cause planning and local government have been waiting for. It’s time to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis.

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This article was originally published on LinkedIn

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